[111] in libertarians
Re: A semi-social cyber-event idea?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sethf@MIT.EDU)
Tue Aug 16 01:42:40 1994
From: sethf@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 16 Aug 1994 01:41:33 -0400
To: libertarians@MIT.EDU
[note: I'm not a Libertarian, but I'm an avid follower of PGP and encryption]
> I was thinking it may be a good thing for the libertarians
> to get involved in as well. We could assist/encourage people
Hee hee hee - be sure to emphasize the coercive role of
government in creating "intellectual" property, and how patents,
particularly software and algorithm patents, are evil and anti-liberty.
The writer of PGP has taken a lot of flack for supposedly causing damage
to the possessors of this "intellectual property", which include,
prominently, MIT!
> to get involved in as well. We could assist/encourage people
> to make keys, trade them, help certify them and so on,
It's probably OK to do now, because broad licenses have been
granted, but up until months ago certain involvement with publically
trading keys (e.g. "running a keyserver") would get you a notification
from MIT that you are acting against their property interest, and if you
would like to continue to be a part of this voluntary contract called
"being a student", you will cease to do so.
Note I'm not making this up, though I may have some details
wrong because the first-hand source who related the incident wasn't very
amenable to specifics and documentation. I urged him to make the
cease-and-desist as official and provable as possible, but he quite
understandably didn't want to be contentious.
I believe the only reason the AI server is running is because a
tenured professor in effect pointed to the provision in *his* contract
that says MIT can't dismiss him without good cause, and MIT didn't want
to make an issue of it.
But I don't want to scare off people, things are better now,
some legal arrangements have been made. However, besides the
government/civil-liberties angle, which has a certain set of risks (some
possible, but remote), people should also be aware of the MIT/property
element, which has different risks (some smaller in absolute value, but
quite near).
> above "novice" in the world of cryptography, but electronic
> issues and privacy seem definately more interesting to MIT
Yup. MIT is a big outpost on the Electronic Frontier. So the
politics becomes concrete. But the question of practical action is hard.
Certainly, spreading the word is helpful. Documentation on how to use
the program is always useful. But to do a lot of trading, you need a key
server of some sort. That requires some skill and hardware (and a
network connection). However, I think the biggest problem will be
getting the world at large computer-comfortable enough to both be able
to use PGP, and see the need for it.
For starter and technical information, look at the files
available by "anonymous-ftp" on the machine "rtfm.mit.edu", directories
/pub/usenet/sci.crypt and /pub/usenet/alt.security.pgp
================
Seth Finkelstein
sethf@mit.edu
