Re: [s-b] Consultation

[Alex Smith <ais523@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2008-12-26 at 16:57 -0800, Ed Murphy wrote:
> Question:  Is an e-mail address described to a person by specifying
> domain and MD5 checksum, but not account name (e.g. describing
> cabal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx as "the address at jaycampbell.com with MD5
> checksum 4dcd83b0338eaee8e8f8196f34095d18"), reasonably accessible
> to that person (as required of Emergency Fora by Rule 5E0)?
> 
> There are multiple members of the Super Sekrit Forum Cabal, so I won't
> bother naming an unbeliever.
> 
> Questioner's arguments:
> 
> While such an address is generally accessible in the sense that it
> accepts messages sent to it, it is not /reasonably/ accessible to the
> person in question, because the effective requirement for that person
> to send a message to it (i.e. computing the correct address) would
> require unreasonably difficult effort.  Contrast easily-reversed
> encodings such as base64.
> 
I submit the following arguments on that consultation:

Thinking about this, there is only one real point of contention here,
which is whether a forum counts as reasonably accessible if it could be
reasonably accessed by a PEP who knows its location, or whether the
required standard is of a forum which can be reasonably accessed by a
PEP with no information at all. One argument that requiring knowledge of
the location is reasonable is that many of B's Public Displays require
knowledge of their location to access; a player who does not know the
location of the wiki would have a hard time determining what the rules
are, and yet it is not all that common to post the location of the wiki
here on the lists. In this case, there is a clear loophole in the
emergency rules being exploited: the rules require that the forum be
reasonably accessible to all PEPs, and also that PEPs are informed of
its existence. A non-buggy version of this would be a rule that required
that the forum be reasonably accessible to all PEPs, and also that all
PEPs are informed of its /location/; in this case, the Emergency
Coordinator is merely withholding information which the rules do not
require him to give. The second condition is necessary.

For instance, suppose that the Emergency Forum was, in fact, s-d. I hope
nobody would argue that s-d is not, in fact, reasonably accessible.
However, nobody has explicitly said that s-d is the Emergency Forum!
Would that cause it to suddenly /cease/ to be reasonably accessible,
just because its locations weren't given?

The only logical conclusion is that whether a forum is accessible or not
exists independently of any emergency. The Emergency Forum is in fact
reasonably accessible (more so than s-d, in fact, as it does not require
subscription to post messages). It was before the Emergency started, and
still is, and barring technical glitches will remain so all Emergency
(although this is another loophole, by the way). The mere fact of
designating it as the EF does not cause it to cease to be accessible.
-- 
ais523

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