From: szabo@netcom.com (Nick Szabo)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 93 23:26:52 PDT
To: newsham@wiliki.eng.hawaii.edu (Timothy Newsham)
Subject: Pseudonymous & anonymous billing & credit
In-Reply-To: <9310140537.AA03804@toad.com>
Message-ID: <9310140623.AA01295@netcom5.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



[Attribution lost, sorry] 
> > XYZ can cut off an anonymous user who fails to pay his bill...

Stuart Card:
> XYZ can also cut off an anonymous user who has paid all his bills.
> The user will then either lose his money or get in contact with
> the company to resolve the issue.  This is an excellent opportunity
> to match an ID with a face.

A pseudonymous customer has the opportunity to either file a
tort under their pseudonymous ID or to publicize the fraud,
either under their pseudonymous ID or anonymously.  Either
way the service provider's reputation is damaged if it
cannot disprove the allegation.

In general, the difficulty of anonymous credit is a good argument
for making the payments as fine-grained as possible (eg digital postage), 
instead of tallying up bills.  A trusted bank that knows the customer's 
True Name, long term reputation, or co-signers can handle extensions 
of credit to that customer for various purposes.  With such streamlined
credit and postage there's no reason for most service providers 
to be concerned about a customer's credit.

Nick Szabo				szabo@netcom.com