List Archive (Was: Re: p2p, anonymity and security)

[Travis Roy]

Derek Martin wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 01:01:48PM -0500, bscott at ntisys.com wrote:
> 
>>On Fri, 12 Mar 2004, at 1:04am, invalid at pizzashack.org wrote:
>>
>>>>(and this is a wholely public forum).  
>>>
>>>I disagree there, also. 
>>
>>  Derek: *GET OVER THIS*.
> 
> 
> Thank you, but no.  
> 
> I agree that the nature of this specific list is much more public than
> private, but I will maintain that the requirement to sign up in order
> to participate makes it a closed, i.e.  semi-private, list.  There's a
> reason why most mailing lists are closed lists these days: to keep the
> rifraf (i.e.  the spammers) out.  This behavior is exactly analogous
> to private clubs which require membership, as I have argued before.
> Many private clubs will pretty much let anyone join, but they require
> membership so that they know who they're dealing with (and probably
> also to hit them up for money every so often)

ugh, not this again...

Any list that does not require a human to manually add somebody is 
public. Anybody can set up a disposable email to join the list and 
harvest email addresses. Anybody can write a bot to join the list 
automatically and sit there and collect email addresses from list 
emails. I also have no doubt that this is already happening.


> I do not currently object to anything about the way the list is being
> run (though I would prefer that the archives were available, but with
> e-mail addresses removed).  If I did, I would (as I always do) ask
> that it be changed, and if that failed, I assure you I would do as you
> suggest.

How do you know that somebody that's subscribed to the list isn't 
already putting up an archive of the list with the email addresses intact.

> A private club which has one or more members who videotape its
> proceedings, and subsequently post them on the Internet, is still a
> private club.  Your personal archival of the ensuing events on a
> public network makes no difference...  Though it's possible that some
> of the members may want to hunt you down for violating their privacy,
> depending on the situation.

So if me, or anybody else on the list decides to start posting a public 
archive of the list with email addresses attached you'll hunt them 
down.. I'll remember that and be sure to do it under a yahoo account 
with bogus information and have it archive the list on a free web 
hosting site that also has bogus information. I'd wonder how much they 
would laugh at you when you try to get the sites taken down because 
you're email address is posted in the archive.