What is a cypherpunk?

[Anonymous]

Justin writes:

> No, I want the right to fair use of material I buy.  If someone sells
> DRM-only material, I won't buy it at anything approaching non-DRM
> prices.  In some cases, I won't buy it at all.

Well, that's fine, nobody's forcing you to buy anything.  But try to think
about this from a cypherpunk perspective.  "Fair use" is a government
oriented concept.  Cypherpunks generally distrust the collectivist wisdom
of Big Brother governments.  What fair use amounts to is an intrustion
of government regulation into a private contractual arrangement.  It is
saying that two people cannot contract away the right to excerpt a work
for purposes of commentary or criticism.  It says that such contracts
are invalid and unenforceable.

Now, maybe you think that is good.  Maybe you think minimum wage is
good, a similar imposition of government regulation to prevent certain
forms of contracts.  Maybe you think that free speech codes are good.
Maybe you support all kinds of government regulations that happen to
agree with your ideological preferences.

If so, you are not a cypherpunk.  May I ask, what the hell are you
doing here?

Cypherpunks support the right and ability of people to live their
own lives independent of government control.  This is the concept
of crypto anarchy.  See that word?  Anarchy - it means absence of
government.  It means freedom to make your own rules.  But part of the
modern concept of anarchy is that ownership of the self implies the
ability to make contracts and agreements to limit your own actions.
A true anarchic condition is one in which people are absolutely free
to make whatever contracts they choose.  They can even make evil,
immoral, wicked contracts that people like you do not approve of.
They can be racists, like Tim May.  They can avoid paying their taxes.
They can take less money than minimum wage for their work.  They can
practice law or medicine without a license.  And yes, they can agree to
DRM restrictions and contract away their so-called fair use rights.

One of the saddest things I've seen on this list, and I've seen it many
times, is when people say that the laws of their country give them the
right to ignore certain contractual elements that they have agreed to.
They think that it's morally right for them to ignore DRM or limitations
on fair use, because their government said so.  I can't describe how
appalling I consider this view.  That anyone, in this day and age,
could consider _government_ as an arbiter of morality is so utterly
bizarre as to be incredible.  And yet not only is this view common, it
is even expressed here on this list, among people who supposedly have
a distrust and suspicion of government.

I can only assume that the ideological focus of this mailing list has
been lost over the years.  Newcomers have no idea what it means to be a
cypherpunk, no sense of the history and purpose which originally drove
the movement.  They blindly accept what they have been force-fed in
government-run schools, that government is an agency for good.

That's one interpretation.  The other is worse.  It's that people on
this list have sold out their beliefs, their ideals, and their morality.
What was the bribe offered to them to make them turn away from the
moral principles which brought them to this list originally?  What was
so valuable that they would discard their belief in self ownership in
favor of a collectivist worship of government morality?  Simply this:
free music and movies.

The lure of being able to download first MP3s and now video files
has been so great that even cypherpunks, the supposed defenders of
individual rights and crypto anarchy, are willing to break their word,
violate their contracts, lie and cheat and steal in order to feed their
addictive habit.  They are willing to do and say anything they have to in
order to get access to those files.  They don't feel the slightest bit of
guilt when they download music and movies in direct contradiction to the
expressed desire of the people who put their heart and soul into creating
those works.  They willingly take part in a vast criminal enterprise,
an enormous machine which takes from the most creative members of our
society without offering anything in return.  And this enterprise is
criminal not by the standards of any government or legal code, but by
the standards of the morality which is the essence of the cypherpunk
worldview: the standard of self ownership, of abiding by one's word,
of honoring one's agreements.

This poisonous activity has penetrated to all parts of internet based
society, and its influence has stolen away what honor the cypherpunks
once possessed.  Its toxic morality ensures that cypherpunks can no
longer present a consistent philosophy, that there is nothing left but
meaningless paranoid rantings.

I challenge anyone here to answer the question of what it means to be
a cypherpunk.  What are your goals?  What is your philosophy?  Do you
even recognize the notion of right and wrong?  Or is it all simply a
matter of doing whatever you can get away with, of grabbing what you can
while you can, of looting your betters for your own short term benefit?

Is that what it means to be a cypherpunk today?  Because that's how it
looks from here.