Politech: FC: More replies to "Would the Feds regulate the Net?"

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

---

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 15:04:12 -0400
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: "Richard J. Solomon" <rsolomon () dsl cis upenn edu>
Subject: Re: Would the US Government regulate the Net? (by R. Solomon)
Cc: politech () vorlon mit edu, farber () cis upenn edu (David Farber)

At 1:56 PM -0400 9/15/99, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> [Forwarded via Dave Farber]
>
> I agree and disagree with the author, Richard Solomon. I agree, of course,
> that
> governments are trying to regulate the Net. The reasons are well-known:
> Taxation, law enforcement demands, stability, "public interest," and so on.
>
> But the author makes errors that make me question the analysis. For one
thing,
> he writes "the CDA may be unconstitutional," but everyone else, including the
That was the first case. Let's see what the Court says for the current case.


> Supreme Court, seems to know it is ever since 1997. (Perhaps this analysis is
> three years old?) In another place he says "Republicans more often than
> Democrats bring key anti-monopoly actions," when in fact peer reviewed
> research
> by antitrust scholars shows that Democratic administrations are twice as
> likely
> to bring antitrust suits as GOP ones. He says "federal influence over
I said antitrust actions, not suits. Read Toselli. The key actions in 
our area have settled by  Republicans usually against the large 
firms. They may be brought by Democrats. The AT&T case originally 
dated back to 1909 (under a Republican), kept going under successive 
Democratic Administrations one way or another, but was settled twice 
under Republican Atty Generals. That's why it's called the "modified" 
Final Judgement. It's the big guys against the big guys. Who do you 
think pushed for divestiture?


> infrastructure was anticipated right from the beginning," and gives
> currency as
> an example, but private and state currencies flourished, as the founders
> apparently intended, until the feds gave themselves a monopoly with the
> Federal
> Reserve in the early 1900s. And to me, "public interest" can be best
served by

the early state currencies were eventually ruled unconstitutional -- 
what makes you think that Hamilton wanted otherwise? This is a 
complicated history, in which the Federal government gradually took 
control as the technologies changed, but it began in the 1790s, not 
1900s. Paper money was thought to be a way around central control of 
coinage, but that viewpoint changed permanently in the Civil War when 
the Feds decided only the central government could print money 
("greenbacks" paid for the Civil War -- the Treasury only withdrew 
the last extant notes a few years ago. Those red seal notes are 
collectors items.) Banks that issued money after that did so under 
rules and regulations of the Treasury, until the Federal Reserve Act 
of 1913 transferred those powers to an independent agency following 
the disastrous Panic of 1907. Money is tricky and has been very 
controversial in the past. Remember Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech -- 
it swung an election? We tend to forget burning issues of the past 
which have little meaning today. Who would make such a speech now? 
Money issues may return to center stage as we play around with a 
fiduciary system still not well understood. But now the issues will 
be global (well, we've been global for 150 years, but the media just 
discovered it, so that makes it real).

This is not to argue that e-money won't be issued by non-governmental 
entities, but it will stress a system that took 400 years to more or 
less stabilize.

> keeping meddlesome bureaucrats out of our hair. Finally, it seems that we
> should ask three questions instead of the sole one he poses: 1) Will the Feds
> pass laws/regulations to control the Net? 2) Are such measures wise,
> justified,
> and Constitutional? 3) If not, what can be done to thwart them, such as
> deploying anonymous remailers and other privacy-protecting technologies?
>
> In any case, I invite and shall forward responses.

Who knows what will happen next? Are such measures wise, probably 
not, but that's never been a criteria for lawmakers. I find it 
interesting that even anarchists ask if things are Constitutional. 
Maybe they're more organized than they look.

Richard

---

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 11:26:06 -0700
From: Seth David Schoen <schoen () zork net>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: Re: FC: Would the US Government regulate the Net? (by R. Solomon)
Message-ID: <19990915112606.D29202 () stopgap zork net>
References: <19990915175652.MJMX1503 () alaptop hotwired com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Declan McCullagh writes:

> Finally, it seems that we
> should ask three questions instead of the sole one he poses: 1) Will the
Feds
> pass laws/regulations to control the Net? 2) Are such measures wise,
> justified,
> and Constitutional? 3) If not, what can be done to thwart them, such as
> deploying anonymous remailers and other privacy-protecting technologies?
Those were the sorts of responses I had in mind when reading that
piece, but you've articulated them very well, although I'd add (what
with the current ratings summit)

(1a) Will the Feds pressure powerful companies or industry groups to
adopt standards or practices to control the Net the way these laws or
regulations would?  Will these companies or groups do so?

I was mostly thinking about your question (3) as I read Solomon's
piece.  I went to DefCon this year in order to talk to people about
proxies that circumvent censorship (since public-key crypto already
solves most of the privacy problem).  My conclusion after
conversations with Bennett Haselton and Austin Hill was that the
technical problems can be solved.  But the legal problems may not be.

ZKS has a very clever plan to put proxies in many different regulatory
jurisdictions.  So if one government decides that facilitating
anonymity is illegal, you can still do regulatory arbitrage tricks and
route your packets through the dozens of other countries where
facilitating anonymity is _not_ illegal.

But from Solomon's point of view, governments that have decided
against anonymity or free speech will probably not sit idly by as ZKS
openly circumvents their restrictions (and advertises to the whole
world that they can use proxies to circumvent local government
restrictions).

The eventual outcome that I would predict if I shared Solomon's
outlook is (1) multilateral Internet treaties between governments,
saying it's illegal to conspire with someone in another country to
violate or to abet or conceal a violation of a local law, etc., etc.,
as many levels deep as they need to criminalize remailers, and (2)
telecommunications laws and regulations against connecting to any
country that is not a party to your favored treaty.

In the case of ZKS, for instance, they would try to make it illegal to
run a Freedom server, and also illegal to have a telecommunications
link with any country where it was not illegal to run a Freedom
server.

I don't think that Solomon sounds very familiar with proxy/remailer
technology, and I'd love to run into him on the floor of DefCon in
the company of some cypherpunk types.  But his general prediction
about (3) seems to be that the governments will eventually figure out
what technologies are being used to circumvent restrictions, and ban
those technologies outright rather than give up the power to impose
those restrictions.

-- 
                    Seth David Schoen <schoen () loyalty org>
      They said look at the light we're giving you,  /  And the darkness
      that we're saving you from.   -- Dar Williams, "The Great Unknown"
  http://ishmael.geecs.org/~sigma/  (personal)  http://www.loyalty.org/  (CAF)



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