From: John Day <day(_at_)std(_dot_)com>
...
I think anyone who understands why an address is not a name
understands why this is a bad idea. However, the people who are
making these noises do not have this understanding. This is
political and imposing technology on it is difficult. While this may
resemble legislating that pi = 22/7, it is going to be much more
difficult to explain that it is.
While I agree that this is really dumb, I think we need to take it
very seriously and not just brush it off. ...
I *thought* this had been killed off over a year ago, when it came up
on this list. But apparently not.
There are many incredibly stupid things in the human universe, and this
nonsense is far from the worst. This will not go away for at least
several decades, because until it is actually tried, each time you kill
it, another techno-political genius like our erstwhile inventor of the
Internet re-invent it, and all of the previous advocates will revive
If you don't come up with a way for the demagogues to have their way,
they'll force worse than we can imagine with legislation. To the extent
that what they want is impossible and perhaps a little more, whatever you
actually provide doesn't have to actually work. It need only fit their
specifications.
Deal with this circus as the TV industry handled the v-chip foolishness.
It was obvious from the start that could not work and it didn't. There
is now some minor grumbling from the demagogues, but because the TV
industry gave them what they asked for, the demagogues are stuck.
That tactic is also the right answer for other political brain farts, from
the Asian efforts to censor political speech to the FBI's ambition to
become big brother. Giving the wanabe and real authocrats what they ask
for is the cheapest, safest, and quickest way to end the threat they pose.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com