Re: Wikipedia & Tor

[Adam Shostack <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Sep 27, 2005 at 12:09:26PM -0400, Bryan L. Fordham wrote:
| On Tue, Sep 27, 2005 at 12:00:38PM -0400, Adam Shostack wrote:
| > My apologies if the sarcastic comparison doesn't work for you.  Banksy
| > has done thing like hanging his art in the british museum.  Some
| > people see that as entirely wrong.  I think there's a long continuum,
| > and that's what I was trying to make clear.  Unsuccessfully, as it
| > turns out, I didn't make it at all clear.
| 
| Fair enough.
| 
| I understand your point: Some may not consider what he does art.  And it's a
| good point, as far as it goes.  If folks knew who he was, they could stop
| him from doing more; ie he would be spotted walking into the museum.
| 
| But I can't think of something like tor making what he does possible.  Maybe
| I'm not imaginative enough.  I think that's the key difference here, though:
| Banksy does what he does without a bit of technology enabling him.
| 
| So I think your point stands in support of anonymity, but not in favor of
| allowing abuse through tor.
| 
| (I know, there are other arguments about that, but I'm not addressing them
| here 8)

I'm sorry, but I don't follow your failure to follow.

You write:
"If folks knew who he was, they could stop  him from doing more; ie he
would be spotted walking into the museum" and "But I can't think of
something like tor making what he does possible."

Tor provides the internet equivallent of the real world anonymity
which he enjoys.  Banksy can't do what he does in the real world
because bits of internet architecture accidentally track him.  Tor
changes that balance.

That changed balance doesn't come with a morality bit:  If we let
people be anonymous, some of them will do bad things, others will do
great things.

Adam