Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 11:17:46 -0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: We are ALL guests (except Eric)
From: eric@remailer.net (Eric Hughes)


   From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)

   I haven't said I plan to leave the list. I've said that if my posts
   are blocked/bounced/rejected, I would likely choose not to remain.

Let me ask something more proximate.

Tim, if the server puts a header on mail that identifies it as unsigned,
how will you feel about seeing your mail marked as such?  What might
you do about such a situation?

   I will register a note of purely personal frustration that many have
   framed the current debate in terms of "Eric's list" and "If Eric wants
   to do it this way, then this is how it should be done," etc.

   I have no animosity toward Eric, but think this is a misguided
   rewriting of history. 

Ah, assigning credit.

Let the world know that there would be no cypherpunks without both Tim
May and me.  Tim and I met at a party at Hugh Daniel's place; we were
the first two to arrive.  We became pretty much instant friends when I
said that I was going to work with Chaum in Amsterdam.  A year later
Tim was gracious enough to put me up at his place for a few days when
I was there, ostensibly as it turned out, to look for housing.  I was
much more interested in conversation that accommodations, and Tim and
I had a three day conversation in which the germ of cypherpunks was
developed (among many others).  Tim and I spent a lot of time later
working on the first meeting, which was held with people we both knew.

Why is it then, that people refer to "Eric's list"?

At our first meeting, John Gilmore offered both a computer for a
mailing list and a site for a meeting.  We are no longer meeting at
Cygnus, but we are still using John's machine.  I began maintaining
the mailing list, and with this was a symmetry breaking.  As many of
you know, I spent hours and hours and hours doing mailing list
maintenance (adding and deleting by hand) and dealing with all of the
problems.  I don't spend so much time on that anymore because of
majordomo, but I still do deal with the bounces and the complaints and
the exceptional requests.

Cypherpunks is certainly _not_ "Eric's group", but the mailing list is
not unreasonably called "Eric's list".

Personally, I hate the term "Eric's list".  I try to avoid saying "my
list" in coversation as shorthand for "the list I'm the maintainer
for" because of the potential confusion with "the list I own".  I find
the property argument, at root, specious.  Information can't be owned
in any sort of natural sense, even though one _can_ remain vigorously
silent.  The comments of Dave Mandl and Todd Masco about the social
character of mailing lists address the actual issue, which is
political and not legal.

Yet there is still the realpolitik that I do maintain the list.  While
there are some internal checks (I need Hugh's cooperation for certain
things), the fact remains that I can make changes basically
unilaterally.  Pragmatically speaking, the phrase "Eric's list"
reflects this situation.  In addition, the phrase is short.  When one
is not distinguishing between subtleties, short phrases win and long
phrases lose.

So there are three reasons why the phrase arose: history, position,
and brevity.  When a deduction from the phrase relies upon some other
possible subsumption, all may rightly point out an unintended meaning.


Now we must shift subjects.  What good is assigning credit if no use
can be made of it?  Many substitutes are available for obtaining a
good feeling.  Social position allows one to influence the world.  One
of the most valuable abilities in the world is the ability to get
people to listen to you.  This is not new, merely highlighted by the
collapse-generating properties of computer networks.  Tim and I and
many others have spent much time devoted to writing clearly enough
that we will be listened to preferentially, both for clarity itself
and for the anticipation of clarity.

The whole "cypherpunks write code" nexus assumes this communication
process.  It's comfortable to write manifestos, express your position,
be indignant at the government, and teach privacy.  We generally live
in free societies where there is little recourse taken against speech.
It is must less comfortable to use tortious cryptography, run a
remailer, finesse export controls, and deploy code.  Far and away the
most extreme reactions have come from what people did and not from
what they said.  Speech affects the world, but action affects it more,
because every word that affects the world only through a sequence of
body motions.  Cypherpunks get listened to not because we talk a lot;
that's insufficient.  Cypherpunks get listened to because we do
things.

"Actions speak louder than words" is true for local politics as well
as global.  Both Tim and I yammer a lot, but I do the list work.  The
assymetry is not incidental.  In discussing potential server actions,
I do not feel constrained come to agreement with any single voice,
including Tim.  I have a lot of respect for Tim and with respect to
cypherpunks generally I try not to put myself above him, but with
respect to the technical underpinnings of the list I feel no such
constraint.  This difference is a long consequence of actions chosen
by both parties.

Now, Tim, I don't know exactly that you feel slighted in this debate
with respect to origins and their values, but I suspect that you do.
If so, I regret that, but ask you to, well, deal with it.  Symmetry is
broken, cypherpunks is no longer new, and we who appeared
interchangeable to the world two years ago now seem different.

Eric