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> "They're spoofing identity" That's the entire point. By making it impossible for censors to distinguish Signal traffic from other web traffic going to AWS, d

> "They're spoofing identity" That's the entire point. By making it impossible for censors to distinguish Signal traffic from other web traffic going to AWS, domain fronting forces the government censors to either 1) stop censoring, or 2) censor many important websites that people rely upon. The associated economic cost has the tendency to discourage censors, and as shown by Signal, is actually quite an effective deterrent against many oppressive regimes. This concept is known as collateral freedom.[1] Instead of shutting this down, Amazon could have let Signal continue. In fact, all companies should collaborate to make censorship as expensive as possible. Someone here at HN pointed out that it is very difficult for someone under an oppressive regimes to speak out; this makes it all the more important for those of us who can to assist dissidents and support freedom of expression. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_freedom

sakarisson 8y ago
But isn't Amazon risking that Souq itself might get banned in these countries if they allow this to happen? Or am I understanding it wrong?
mattigames 8y ago
Exactly, free countries (or those who consider themselves as such) should make it fully illegal for private companies to aid in any kind of censorship in behalf of oppressive countries. But what we see in reality is the opposite, all companies trying to make it as cheap and as simple as possible to censor anything every government dislikes; meaning the liberal fantasy of allowing every private company to do as it pleases is not going to cut it in a world where every important event you can't find in Google for all practical matters never happened.
- non_sequitur 8y ago
  "in a world where every important event you can't find in Google for all practical matters never happened" Except Google isn't in China, and least I heard important events still happen there...the world isn't as FANG centric as western media would want us to believe.
  - abiox 8y ago
    > I heard important events still happen there where did you hear about this? :)
  - peteretep 8y ago
    > FANG Stands for Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, apparently.
    - StudentStuff 8y ago
      Three companies I don't use, and one that has lost nearly all of my search traffic due to terrible results for really simple queries. It will be interesting to see in what form they persist over the next few decades!
      - idonotknowwhy 8y ago
        > don't use > nearly So you do use it for search. And two of these companies are probably hosting some of the websites you visit.
        StudentStuff 8y ago
        I haven't been using Google much as of late, basic queries come back with crap results. Its as though they've screwed up their indexing so bad that large chunks of forums and (fairly static) support docs just aren't showing up or are ranked multiple pages back. Perhaps some of the sites I visit are hosted on Google, but since I stopped visiting reddit (the awful redesign was the last straw), I see very little traffic hitting AWS or GCP IP ranges. Part of that is probably uBlock Origin doing its thing though!
- munificent 8y ago
  > the liberal fantasy of allowing every private company to do as it pleases How is that a liberal fantasy? I thought the standard liberal belief is in heavy regulation of business? Or do you mean "liberal" in the general "lots of liberty" sense and not "in the liberal political camp"?
  - daveheq 8y ago
    A liberal fantasy isn't heavy regulation of business, it's regulations to prevent/punish corporate robbers from exploiting the public. It's only a fantasy because corporations are buying politicians to let them further chain the populace and siphon their money in as many ways as they can get away with (and no, just not buying their product is often not a good enough solution or is hardly even a choice, like private prisons or the electrical grid).
  - morganvachon 8y ago
    "Liberal" does indeed have tons of definitions and connotations. I would have called it more of a Libertarian fantasy (fully free, unregulated market and anti-censorship). That appellation too, though, is fraught with sometimes negative connotations; modern Libertarians in the political arena are derided as nothing more than neoconservatives hiding behind a Fawkes mask and stroking Nazi flags. Edit for the downvoters: I'm not saying I agree with how Libertarians are seen, just reporting what I've observed. I tend to lean Libertarian on a lot of issues (freedom of movement, freedom of and from religion, live and let live, the right to be left alone, and so on), while also being a socially progressive liberal.
  - proginthebox 8y ago
    Why do you say that the standard liberal belief is in heavy regulation of business? Liberal economics emphasize minimal regulation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism
    - munificent 8y ago
      I was thinking more along the lines of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_Unite...
- daveheq 8y ago
  > all companies trying to make it as cheap and as simple as possible to censor anything every government dislikes Not sure what you mean, I didn't see Napster fighting for censorship nor Craigslist fighting for FOSTA.
- qeternity 8y ago
  As you note, private companies are typically free to do as they please in free countries...that's kinda the point. You have no right to use AWS, so this is not censorship in the legal sense. And free governments also tend to have strong laws respecting the sovereignty of other nations, whether or not their laws are similar. Your frustration is noble, but it's also internally inconsistent.
  - derefr 8y ago
    > private companies are typically free to do as they please in free countries...that's kinda the point Er, no; in every "free" country, trade/export restrictions are still a thing. US corporations can't sell to North Korean citizens, or even Cuban citizens, despite not being in a state of war against either. And "munitions" (e.g. what encryption algorithms used to be) can be traded hardly anywhere. Just call censorship-enabling technologies "munitions" and it neatly solves the problem of who exactly US corporations can give them to.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
      > And "munitions" (e.g. what encryption algorithms used to be) can be traded hardly anywhere. That regulation is only in place to protect the established players ... and to ensure the CIA decides who gets the weapons.
  - mattigames 8y ago
    >You have no right to use AWS, so this is not censorship in the legal sense. I guess you meant "duty" instead of "right"; and respecting the sovereignty of other nations means they can block any site they like or even internet itself if they desire, but it doesn't mean we have to allow local companies to comply with laws from those countries. >As you note, private companies are typically free to do as they please in free countries...that's kinda the point. That's not the point at all; lets put it this way, companies are NOT free to poison the water we drink or even poison the water of other countries drink just because their governments tell them to do so.
    - 8y ago
hakanensari 8y ago
> Collateral freedom Wow. Is this not but a new form of political asylum[1]? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_asylum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_asylum
pishpash 8y ago
Or, you actually get the whole internet shut off for people who need it. It's not unprecedented and nothing is "expensive" when shutting out Google entirely is not considered "expensive".
crazypyro 8y ago
My first thought is "How is it in the interest of Amazon's stockholders to prevent censorship in countries ruled by dictatorial regimes?" and secondly, "How does consenting to being a front for services that are strictly forbidden in certain countries benefit our company?"
- xtat 8y ago
  Shareholders still come first if they do the right thing here. Letting reputable people do good with your product rises the tide for the ecosystem. Good for the Internet is good for AWS.
  - stingraycharles 8y ago
    What if souq.com is blocked instead ? How is that good for AWS or the internet ?
  - marklgr 8y ago
    > Good for the Internet is good for AWS. Isn't it begging the question to parent's point?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mtgx 8y ago
  You can apply this idea to everything, though. "How is it the interest of Github stockholders to not censor certain projects when China starts DDoSing the whole site?" or even "How is it in the interest of Cloudflare to raise the prices for all of its customers, just to protect a site Russia doesn't like?" It can't all be about money. Companies that think only about money fail in the long term. If you don't believe that, then I urge you to watch this Simon Sinek video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4
- apatters 8y ago
  Perhaps it's not. AMZN is a for-profit entity. Their shareholders come first. Profit comes first. The more interesting question is, how does this influence our engagement with Amazon, as members of the tech community and the business community? From hackers to founders to dev leads to CEOs we're all individuals with some degree of influence. Most of us hopefully value the idea of a free society to a great degree, because without one our industry wouldn't exist. I have no problem with saying that the business I own will think twice about making further investments in AWS because of this. I'm less likely to recommend AWS to our customers because of it. Businesses which host hate speech get punished by advertisers who don't want to be associated with that kind of drivel. I'd like to see businesses which enable dictators be punished in a similar way. By the market and this community. I'd like to see more hackers and founders say hey, this company enables dictators so we are re-evaluating/freezing/reducing our investment in their products. (Pick whatever level presents an acceptable cost to you.)
porlune 8y ago
Stomping on the rights of one party, to obtain rights for another, is not ethically permissible. This is about consent as much as it's about censorship.
manigandham 8y ago
You've posted this (wiki page that you wrote) several times in this thread... but the issue is that all the unblocked companies are already unblocked. What do they stand to gain from this other than a near-term disruption (at best)? The only way collateral freedom works is when there is mutual need for everyone to be included, otherwise why take the risk to carry the designated targets? Also I wouldn't underestimate the economic power of regimes and nation-states that know what they're doing.
- solotronics 8y ago
  The mutual need should be considering the freedom of communication that everyone should have as a human right. Like a lot of things when you think of it purely in terms of dollars you end up with an opressive authoritarian system like in China.
  - dbasedweeb 8y ago
    On one hand I agree with you, but on the other... why is this Amazon’s place? I don’t agree with how China censors, but what gives a private US entity the right to try and override that in this way? Their place is to choose to, or not to do business with China, not what amounts to a political operation. I think it’s fair to say that it’s the job of governments and intelligence agencies, and some things shouldn’t be privatized.
    - nojvek 8y ago
      A lot of companies have to bend to China, Brazil and others. They want to make money, they have to follow by their rules. Google was ballsy to exit from China, but I doubt others are the same. Wall Street judges a company by how much money it makes. GDP is how countries and govts are judged. The metric is delivering the result.
      - zero_intp 8y ago
        I think it is disingenuous to say that countries are judged by persons and other nations by GDP alone.
jdc0589 8y ago
you hit on the most important part. If an oppressive country's options are to block a bunch of stuff that's not all frowned upon, or allow something they really don't want, they choose the former. I'm not saying Amazon is evil or anything, but if a bunch of hugely important customers started getting their traffic blocked by huge geographic segments due to another unrelated customer.... business is business.
- simonh 8y ago
  And in case anyone here doubts this is true, try using Google, Facebook or Twitter in China. It is absolutely possible for countries to block these services, including AWS or parts of it. Amazon has a duty to it's other customers to protect them from that sort of impact caused by the frankly unethical action of another AWS user. This is a real shame and I wish there was a viable option open to Signal, it's an important app that provides a valuable service, but they really should have seen this coming.
tripzilch 8y ago
Isn't the first problem that mr Marlinspike has been holding off federation of the Signal protocol? If anyone could run a server and join the Signal network (like Riot/Matrix, who got it right), the problem of circumventing censorship would be a lot easier. Any one of these federated servers could use whatever tricks they like to circumvent censorship, and yes they'd risk getting banned themselves if their circumvention measures are violating TOS of where they're hosted, but they wouldn't have to demand special treatment in the light of that, like Moxie Marlinspike did, because it doesn't happen to block the entire Signal network at once. Their lack of federation is their censorship weak spot. I haven't heard a single reason for holding off federation from Moxie (and the "best" reason I currently can come up with is that he has issues letting go of "his baby", other reasons being more nefarious). There's a lot of strongly principled wording about why Signal should or should not do certain things, because Signal doesn't want to rely on anything but the protocol itself to guarantee its security, privacy and censorship resistance. But really, what are these principles worth if Signal is in fact reliant on a third party (Amazon) closing their eyes to violation of their own TOS? They shouldn't be, and federation allows for that property. And to add one more reason, it's not entirely fair to Amazon. By using the load balancing trick, the only thing that Signal risks is getting banned from Amazon, they can rent another server from someone else and set up shop there. However, by allowing Signal to continue to use their load balancing service in this manner, Amazon is risking having their entire service banned by an oppressive regime. It's not really cool of Signal/Moxie to ask Amazon to take this risk for them.
- thecrash 8y ago
  Federation significantly complicates usability, and Signal's approach tends to prioritize usability. This is probably its most significant difference from other open source crypto tools. Your argument is that Signal should erase its differences and become like other open source crypto tools. But as you pointed out, the tool you're asking for already exists! If Matrix is already doing it right, then what's the problem? Surely everyone will switch over to the superior infrastructure and not look back. I have a different explanation: Signal is successful specifically because of controversial decisions like refusing federation, and the reason other tools do not enjoy the same success is because of the usability compromises they have made.
Bartweiss 8y ago
> Instead of shutting this down, Amazon could have let Signal continue. In fact, all companies should collaborate to make censorship as expensive as possible. Amazon's general stance seems to be "spoofing is bad and makes the internet less reliable, so we're opposing it even here". It's understandable, but I think also thoroughly unjustified. If the objection is "Signal plans to impersonate us without our permission for a good cause", one obvious response is "so let's give them permission". (Not coincidentally, this is a reasonable alternative to a lot of corporate heavy-handedness. Fighting trademark erosion by slapping down small businesses falls into much the same category - an alternative to coercing harmless-but-unauthorized users is to authorize them.)

sakarisson 8y ago

But isn't Amazon risking that Souq itself might get banned in these countries if they allow this to happen? Or am I understanding it wrong?

mattigames 8y ago

Exactly, free countries (or those who consider themselves as such) should make it fully illegal for private companies to aid in any kind of censorship in behalf of oppressive countries. But what we see in reality is the opposite, all companies trying to make it as cheap and as simple as possible to censor anything every government dislikes; meaning the liberal fantasy of allowing every private company to do as it pleases is not going to cut it in a world where every important event you can't find in Google for all practical matters never happened.

non_sequitur 8y ago
"in a world where every important event you can't find in Google for all practical matters never happened" Except Google isn't in China, and least I heard important events still happen there...the world isn't as FANG centric as western media would want us to believe.
- abiox 8y ago
  > I heard important events still happen there where did you hear about this? :)
- peteretep 8y ago
  > FANG Stands for Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, apparently.
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    Three companies I don't use, and one that has lost nearly all of my search traffic due to terrible results for really simple queries. It will be interesting to see in what form they persist over the next few decades!
    - idonotknowwhy 8y ago
      > don't use > nearly So you do use it for search. And two of these companies are probably hosting some of the websites you visit.
      - StudentStuff 8y ago
        I haven't been using Google much as of late, basic queries come back with crap results. Its as though they've screwed up their indexing so bad that large chunks of forums and (fairly static) support docs just aren't showing up or are ranked multiple pages back. Perhaps some of the sites I visit are hosted on Google, but since I stopped visiting reddit (the awful redesign was the last straw), I see very little traffic hitting AWS or GCP IP ranges. Part of that is probably uBlock Origin doing its thing though!
munificent 8y ago
> the liberal fantasy of allowing every private company to do as it pleases How is that a liberal fantasy? I thought the standard liberal belief is in heavy regulation of business? Or do you mean "liberal" in the general "lots of liberty" sense and not "in the liberal political camp"?
- daveheq 8y ago
  A liberal fantasy isn't heavy regulation of business, it's regulations to prevent/punish corporate robbers from exploiting the public. It's only a fantasy because corporations are buying politicians to let them further chain the populace and siphon their money in as many ways as they can get away with (and no, just not buying their product is often not a good enough solution or is hardly even a choice, like private prisons or the electrical grid).
- morganvachon 8y ago
  "Liberal" does indeed have tons of definitions and connotations. I would have called it more of a Libertarian fantasy (fully free, unregulated market and anti-censorship). That appellation too, though, is fraught with sometimes negative connotations; modern Libertarians in the political arena are derided as nothing more than neoconservatives hiding behind a Fawkes mask and stroking Nazi flags. Edit for the downvoters: I'm not saying I agree with how Libertarians are seen, just reporting what I've observed. I tend to lean Libertarian on a lot of issues (freedom of movement, freedom of and from religion, live and let live, the right to be left alone, and so on), while also being a socially progressive liberal.
- proginthebox 8y ago
  Why do you say that the standard liberal belief is in heavy regulation of business? Liberal economics emphasize minimal regulation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism
  - munificent 8y ago
    I was thinking more along the lines of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_Unite...
daveheq 8y ago
> all companies trying to make it as cheap and as simple as possible to censor anything every government dislikes Not sure what you mean, I didn't see Napster fighting for censorship nor Craigslist fighting for FOSTA.
qeternity 8y ago
As you note, private companies are typically free to do as they please in free countries...that's kinda the point. You have no right to use AWS, so this is not censorship in the legal sense. And free governments also tend to have strong laws respecting the sovereignty of other nations, whether or not their laws are similar. Your frustration is noble, but it's also internally inconsistent.
- derefr 8y ago
  > private companies are typically free to do as they please in free countries...that's kinda the point Er, no; in every "free" country, trade/export restrictions are still a thing. US corporations can't sell to North Korean citizens, or even Cuban citizens, despite not being in a state of war against either. And "munitions" (e.g. what encryption algorithms used to be) can be traded hardly anywhere. Just call censorship-enabling technologies "munitions" and it neatly solves the problem of who exactly US corporations can give them to.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    > And "munitions" (e.g. what encryption algorithms used to be) can be traded hardly anywhere. That regulation is only in place to protect the established players ... and to ensure the CIA decides who gets the weapons.
- mattigames 8y ago
  >You have no right to use AWS, so this is not censorship in the legal sense. I guess you meant "duty" instead of "right"; and respecting the sovereignty of other nations means they can block any site they like or even internet itself if they desire, but it doesn't mean we have to allow local companies to comply with laws from those countries. >As you note, private companies are typically free to do as they please in free countries...that's kinda the point. That's not the point at all; lets put it this way, companies are NOT free to poison the water we drink or even poison the water of other countries drink just because their governments tell them to do so.
  - 8y ago

hakanensari 8y ago

> Collateral freedom Wow. Is this not but a new form of political asylum[1]? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_asylum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_asylum

pishpash 8y ago

Or, you actually get the whole internet shut off for people who need it. It's not unprecedented and nothing is "expensive" when shutting out Google entirely is not considered "expensive".

crazypyro 8y ago

My first thought is "How is it in the interest of Amazon's stockholders to prevent censorship in countries ruled by dictatorial regimes?" and secondly, "How does consenting to being a front for services that are strictly forbidden in certain countries benefit our company?"

xtat 8y ago
Shareholders still come first if they do the right thing here. Letting reputable people do good with your product rises the tide for the ecosystem. Good for the Internet is good for AWS.
- stingraycharles 8y ago
  What if souq.com is blocked instead ? How is that good for AWS or the internet ?
- marklgr 8y ago
  > Good for the Internet is good for AWS. Isn't it begging the question to parent's point?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mtgx 8y ago
You can apply this idea to everything, though. "How is it the interest of Github stockholders to not censor certain projects when China starts DDoSing the whole site?" or even "How is it in the interest of Cloudflare to raise the prices for all of its customers, just to protect a site Russia doesn't like?" It can't all be about money. Companies that think only about money fail in the long term. If you don't believe that, then I urge you to watch this Simon Sinek video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4
apatters 8y ago
Perhaps it's not. AMZN is a for-profit entity. Their shareholders come first. Profit comes first. The more interesting question is, how does this influence our engagement with Amazon, as members of the tech community and the business community? From hackers to founders to dev leads to CEOs we're all individuals with some degree of influence. Most of us hopefully value the idea of a free society to a great degree, because without one our industry wouldn't exist. I have no problem with saying that the business I own will think twice about making further investments in AWS because of this. I'm less likely to recommend AWS to our customers because of it. Businesses which host hate speech get punished by advertisers who don't want to be associated with that kind of drivel. I'd like to see businesses which enable dictators be punished in a similar way. By the market and this community. I'd like to see more hackers and founders say hey, this company enables dictators so we are re-evaluating/freezing/reducing our investment in their products. (Pick whatever level presents an acceptable cost to you.)

porlune 8y ago

Stomping on the rights of one party, to obtain rights for another, is not ethically permissible. This is about consent as much as it's about censorship.

manigandham 8y ago

You've posted this (wiki page that you wrote) several times in this thread... but the issue is that all the unblocked companies are already unblocked. What do they stand to gain from this other than a near-term disruption (at best)? The only way collateral freedom works is when there is mutual need for everyone to be included, otherwise why take the risk to carry the designated targets? Also I wouldn't underestimate the economic power of regimes and nation-states that know what they're doing.

solotronics 8y ago
The mutual need should be considering the freedom of communication that everyone should have as a human right. Like a lot of things when you think of it purely in terms of dollars you end up with an opressive authoritarian system like in China.
- dbasedweeb 8y ago
  On one hand I agree with you, but on the other... why is this Amazon’s place? I don’t agree with how China censors, but what gives a private US entity the right to try and override that in this way? Their place is to choose to, or not to do business with China, not what amounts to a political operation. I think it’s fair to say that it’s the job of governments and intelligence agencies, and some things shouldn’t be privatized.
  - nojvek 8y ago
    A lot of companies have to bend to China, Brazil and others. They want to make money, they have to follow by their rules. Google was ballsy to exit from China, but I doubt others are the same. Wall Street judges a company by how much money it makes. GDP is how countries and govts are judged. The metric is delivering the result.
    - zero_intp 8y ago
      I think it is disingenuous to say that countries are judged by persons and other nations by GDP alone.

jdc0589 8y ago

you hit on the most important part. If an oppressive country's options are to block a bunch of stuff that's not all frowned upon, or allow something they really don't want, they choose the former. I'm not saying Amazon is evil or anything, but if a bunch of hugely important customers started getting their traffic blocked by huge geographic segments due to another unrelated customer.... business is business.

simonh 8y ago
And in case anyone here doubts this is true, try using Google, Facebook or Twitter in China. It is absolutely possible for countries to block these services, including AWS or parts of it. Amazon has a duty to it's other customers to protect them from that sort of impact caused by the frankly unethical action of another AWS user. This is a real shame and I wish there was a viable option open to Signal, it's an important app that provides a valuable service, but they really should have seen this coming.

tripzilch 8y ago

Isn't the first problem that mr Marlinspike has been holding off federation of the Signal protocol? If anyone could run a server and join the Signal network (like Riot/Matrix, who got it right), the problem of circumventing censorship would be a lot easier. Any one of these federated servers could use whatever tricks they like to circumvent censorship, and yes they'd risk getting banned themselves if their circumvention measures are violating TOS of where they're hosted, but they wouldn't have to demand special treatment in the light of that, like Moxie Marlinspike did, because it doesn't happen to block the entire Signal network at once. Their lack of federation is their censorship weak spot. I haven't heard a single reason for holding off federation from Moxie (and the "best" reason I currently can come up with is that he has issues letting go of "his baby", other reasons being more nefarious). There's a lot of strongly principled wording about why Signal should or should not do certain things, because Signal doesn't want to rely on anything but the protocol itself to guarantee its security, privacy and censorship resistance. But really, what are these principles worth if Signal is in fact reliant on a third party (Amazon) closing their eyes to violation of their own TOS? They shouldn't be, and federation allows for that property. And to add one more reason, it's not entirely fair to Amazon. By using the load balancing trick, the only thing that Signal risks is getting banned from Amazon, they can rent another server from someone else and set up shop there. However, by allowing Signal to continue to use their load balancing service in this manner, Amazon is risking having their entire service banned by an oppressive regime. It's not really cool of Signal/Moxie to ask Amazon to take this risk for them.

thecrash 8y ago
Federation significantly complicates usability, and Signal's approach tends to prioritize usability. This is probably its most significant difference from other open source crypto tools. Your argument is that Signal should erase its differences and become like other open source crypto tools. But as you pointed out, the tool you're asking for already exists! If Matrix is already doing it right, then what's the problem? Surely everyone will switch over to the superior infrastructure and not look back. I have a different explanation: Signal is successful specifically because of controversial decisions like refusing federation, and the reason other tools do not enjoy the same success is because of the usability compromises they have made.

Bartweiss 8y ago

> Instead of shutting this down, Amazon could have let Signal continue. In fact, all companies should collaborate to make censorship as expensive as possible. Amazon's general stance seems to be "spoofing is bad and makes the internet less reliable, so we're opposing it even here". It's understandable, but I think also thoroughly unjustified. If the objection is "Signal plans to impersonate us without our permission for a good cause", one obvious response is "so let's give them permission". (Not coincidentally, this is a reasonable alternative to a lot of corporate heavy-handedness. Fighting trademark erosion by slapping down small businesses falls into much the same category - an alternative to coercing harmless-but-unauthorized users is to authorize them.)