From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 93 22:49:48 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re:  anonymous video rental store
Message-ID: <9312240648.AA05023@anchor.ho.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Another technique for anonymous video rentals that's a bit more complex
than buy-and-sell-back but feels more like a video store is to use deposits.
Remember when video stores were just starting out and charged membership
fees to join (letting them get started with minimal capital)?
You could do a deposit system instead, where either
	- you pay the deposit when you join, equal to N times the
	cost of a relatively expensive videotape, and get N membership cards,;
	when you rent a tape, you hand them a card (they can be anonymous),
	and they give you a card back (pulled off a stack) when you return it.
	If some of their tapes are a lot more expensive, they may be 
	two-token tapes.  If you want to get your cash back,
	you give them the card and ask for cash.
	If this sounds like private money, yes it is.
	You could probably do it digitally, using online systems
	which can check whether a given number is in the bank when
	you try to deposit it, or getting fancier than that.

or	- when you rent a tape, you leave a $50 deposit per tape,
	and get it back when you return the tape, less $N/day.
	The tape and/or the plastic box it's in has their signature on it,
	and maybe the typical bar-code.  If they want to get fancy,
	they can give out dated tokens/boxes with the tape,
	and you use the token to get the deposit back; it's probably
	much harder to forge a receipt that has the timestamp 
	public-key signed by them along with the movie name,
	and if *they* start cheating, people start spreading rumors...

Why would people other than cypherpunks, fervent civil-libertarians,
undocumented non-citizens, and other professional paranoids (:-)) bother?
Unless there's a run of major movie-rental-outings in the press
(to make Republicans look bad so people forget about liberals not
paying their housecleaners' socialist security taxes or whatever),
the two most likely market drivers I can see are the porno market
(Gerald Van Leun's (sp?) observation that sex is always a major
influence on adoption of technology) though they'd probably have done it
by now if they were going to,
and perhaps the non-childrens' videogame market, especially to block
heat from Janet Reno et al. for censorship and/or mandatory registration
(registering all "assault videos" as a first step toward confiscation?) 
Using large deposits decreases the usage by children, so it may be a
politically acceptable alternative.

			Bill
			
----
One of the corollary's to Godwin's Law is that many discussions will 
lead to someone saying "If %ss are outlawed, only outlaws will have %ss." :-)