Introduction

The publication of written words has long been a tool for spreading new (and sometimes controversial) ideas, often with the goal of bringing about social change. Thus the printing press, and more recently, the World Wide Web, are powerful revolutionary tools. But those who seek to suppress revolutions possess powerful tools of their own. These tools give them the ability to stop publication, destroy published materials, or prevent the distribution of publications. And even if they cannot successfully censor the publication, they may intimidate and physically or financially harm the author or publisher in order to send a message to other would-be-revolutionaries that they would be well advised to consider an alternative occupation. Even without a threat of personal harm, authors may wish to publish their works anonymously or pseudonymously because they believe they will be more readily accepted if not associated with a person of their gender, race, ethnic background, or other characteristics. Quotations about the Internet's ability to resist censorship and promote anonymity have become nearly cliche. John Gillmore's quote ``The Net treats censorship as damage and routes around it'' has been interpreted as a statement that the Internet cannot be censored. And Peter Steiner's famous New Yorker cartoon captioned ``On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog'' has been used to hype the Internet as a haven of anonymity. But increasingly people have come to learn that unless they take extraordinary precautions, their online writings can be censored and the true identity behind their online psuedonyms can be revealed. Examples of the Internet's limited ability to resist censorship can be found in the Church of Scientology's attempts to stop the online publication of documents critical of the Church. Since 1994 the Church has combed the Internet for documents that contain what they describe as Church secrets. Individual authors, Internet service providers, and major newspapers such as The Washington Post, have had to defend their publication of excerpts from Church documents (some of them fewer than 50 words) in court. The Church has used copyright and trademark law, intimidation, and illegal searches and seizures in an attempt to suppress the publication of Church documents [13]. In 1995 the Church convinced the Finnish police to force Julf Helsingius, the operator of anonymous remailer anon.penet.fi, to reveal the true name of a user who had made anonymous postings about the Church. When the Church tried to obtain the names of two more users the following year, Helsingius decided to shut the remailer down [16]. The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, established to help copyright owners better protect their intellectual property in an online environment, is also proving to be yet another useful tool for censors. The Act requires online service providers to take down content upon notification from a copyright owner that the content infringes their copyright. While there is a process in place for the content owner to refute the infringement claim, the DMCA requires the online service provider to take down the content immediately and only restore it later if the infringement claim is not proven to be valid. We developed Publius in an attempt to provide a Web publishing system that would be highly resistant to censorship and provide publishers with a high degree of anonymity. Publius was the pen name used by the authors of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. This collection of 85 articles, published pseudonymously in New York State newspapers from October 1787 through May 1788, was influential in convincing New York voters to ratify the proposed United States constitution [17].