THE CYPHERNOMICON: Cypherpunks FAQ and More, Version 0.666, 1994-09-10, Copyright Timothy C. May. All rights reserved.
See the detailed disclaimer. Use short sections under "fair use" provisions, with appropriate credit, but don't put your name on my words.
All rights reserved. For what it's worth.
for the mix of styles (outline, bullet, text, essays), for fragments and incomplete sections. This FAQ is already much too long and detailed, and writing suitable connective material, introductions, summaries, etc. is not in the cards anytime soon. Go with the flow, use your text searching tools, and deal with it.
quibbles less welcome, and ideological debate even less welcome. Corrections to outdated information, especially on pointers to information, will be most appreciated.
for a Cypherpunk to assert some kind of copyright. Perhaps. But my main concern is the ease with which people can relabel documents as their own, sometimes after only adding a few words here and there.
in places, to make points better than I felt my own words would, to save time, and to give readers a different voice speaking on issues. I have credited quotes with a "[Joe Foobar, place, date] attribution, usually at the end of the quote. If a place is not listed, it is the Cypherpunks list itself. The author and date should be sufficient to (someday) retrieve the source text. By the way, I used quotes as they seemed appropriate, and make no claims that the quoted points are necessarily original to the author–who may have remembered them from somewhere else–or that the date listed is the origination date for the point. I have something like 80 megabytes of Cypherpunks posts, so I couldn't do an archaeological dig for the earliest mention of an idea.
under the "fair use" provisions, e.g., a paragraph or two, with credits. Anything more than a few paragraphs constitutes copyright infringement, as I understand it.
and/or should others get involved, then the normal co-authorship and inheritance arrangements will be possible.
It is in fact likely that this FAQ will be available as a Web document. My concern, however, is that the integrity and authorship be maintained. Thus, splitting the document in a hundred or more little pieces, with no authorship attached, would not be cool. Also, I intend to maintain this document with my powerful outlining tools (Symantec's "MORE," on a Macintosh) and thus anyone who "freezes" the document and uses it as a base for links, pointers, etc., will be left behind as mods are made.
as reasonably self-contained analyses of some point or topic. Like this. Some of these essays were taken directly out of posts I did for the list, or for sci.crypt, and no attribution H (since I wrote the stuff…quotes from others are credited).
but I just don't have the hundreds of hours to go through and "regularize" everything to a consistent style. The outline style allows additional points, wrinkles, rebuttals, and elaborations to be grafted on easily (if not always elegantly). I hope most readers can understand this and learn to deal with it.
the points made are just too fragmentary, too outlinish, for people to make sense of. I've tried to clean these up as much as I can, but there will always be some places where an idea seemed clear to me at the time (maybe not) but which is not presented clearly to others. I'll keep trying to iron these kinks out in future versions.
which makes finding specific questions problematic. Such is life–shorter FAQ are of course easier to navigate, but may not address important issues.
as well as chapter- by-chapter versions (to reduce the downloading efforts for some people). Search tools within text editors are one way to find topics. Future versions of this FAQ may be paginated and then indexed (but maybe not).
in editors and word processors to find sections of interest.
This is likely faster anyway than consulting an index generated by me (which I haven't generated, and probably never will).
or whatever one calls it, is more than just a simple listing of frequently asked questions and the lowest- common-denominator answers.
This should be clear just by the size alone. I make no apologies for writing the document I wanted to write. Others are free to write the FAQ they would prefer to read. You're getting what you paid for.
I've tried to present some dissenting arguments in cases where I think Cypherpunks are really somewhat divided, such as in remailer strategies and the like. In cases where I think there's no credible dissent, such as in the wisdom of Clipper, I've made no attempt to be fair. My libertarian, even anarchist, views surely come through. Either deal with it, or don't read the document. I have to be honest about this.
in most courts in the U.S., contracts having been thrown out if favor of nominalism, but here it is anyway. At least nobody can claim they were misled into thinking I was giving them warranteed, guaranteed advice.
all warranties relating to this document, whether express or implied, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Tim May will not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential, indirect or similar damages due to loss of business, indictment for any crime, imprisonment, torture, or any other reason, even if Tim May or an agent of his has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In no event shall Tim May be liable for any damages, regardless of the form of the claim. The person reading or using the document bears all risk as to the quality and suitability of the document. Legality of reading or possessing this document in a jurisdiction is not the responsibility of Tim May.
Tim May, and certainly may not represent the views of other Cypherpunks. Certain ideas are explored which, if implemented, would be illegal to various extents in most countries in the world. Think of these explorations of ideas as just that.
before the RSA patents run out…
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