[no subject]

I'm not sure how happy I am about someone being able to use my
digital identity in a legally binding way, with the burden of
repudiation being on me, rather than the burden of non-repudiation
being on the other party.  It makes individuals responsible for
the costs of fraud committed in their name.  Given how easy it is
to steal an electronic identity, it's really obnoxious to see the
changes in the law that did this.


> In your last-mentioned case of "fradulent identity", it is used to
> obtain (what most will agree would be) stolen services and so such
> crackers ARE defrauding the remote system.

Actually, the "theft of services" is relatively new.  In "the old
days", what they were doing was more bound up in tort law, since
the contract for the use of the machine established a value, and
the implicit limitation of users to established identities meant
that the person being defrauded was the person whose account you
were using, and not the company offering the services.  It's a
good thing to know who you are harming when you engage in illegal
behaviour; it tends to personalize it, which is a much better way
of discouraging illegal acts than further legislating against them
(English Bobby: "Stop!  Or I shall yell ``Stop!'' again!").

> Maybe the argument (Greg's?) would be that if he puts up a message
> ID filter, and I happen to slip past it (or only if I intend to or
> am aware of his filter, maybe?), then I'm using his electrons
> against his will and thus stealing from him.  I supposed it'd
> probably win in some courts.

I think you are missing the "intent" component.  SPAM relaying
is certainly theft of services.  As a mail server operator, and
being located in the state of California, it's actually possible
to collect $50 per message that transit the server (that'd be
one per target, in the case of a fan-out, so it would be the list
membership), up to a total of $25,000, per incident.

I think that most FreeBSD lists have at least 500 subscribers,
and even if they aren't in California, dragging them into the
California state of venue from outside, at least in the U.S.,
will cost them, and you can always get a court order that
garnishes their income, as a result of the incident.

Plus $25,000 per incident would tend to buy a lot of SMP and
IA-64 and SCSI crads and ... to push the project forward.

-- Terry

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