From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Date: Thu, 9 Nov 95 18:21:36 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Market Value of Web Pages
Message-ID: <acc7f59c06021004e10b@[205.199.118.202]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 1:43 AM 11/10/95, Mark wrote:

(Description of a Web page earning $3,600,000 a year elided.)


>If you toss arguements like this at some of the sites that would be viable for
>the hit numbers and then explain the only way that will occur is if the crypto
>laws are repealed, you will create a lot more lobbiers annoying their reps
>for the cause. ecash without good crypto is like the Federal Reserve
>deliverying cash with open pickup trucks. Or doing credit card purchases on
>postcards.

And if you make arguments that this is easy to do, and add that crypto laws
are stopping this from happening, you risk losing your credibility.

The current crypto export laws are a pain, but are not stopping these
"million hits a day" transactions. Recall that the 40 bits allowed in
Netscape for export took some non-trivial number of machine-hours to crack
(I'm talking about the brute force crack by Damien G. and others, not the
more recent exploitation of the RNG weakness). While this brute force crack
showed the limitations of the 40-bit key for certain transactions, it is
not a viable attack on a single transaction whose value is pennies.

As to the "$3.6 million a year," nice work if you can get it.

I fully expect some folks to make a lot of money. But beware the siren call
of make.money.fast...most people won't.

In any case, let's not claim that the lack of strong exportable crypto is
the reason these "Web millionaires" are not all around us. (Actually, a lot
of them are, but because their companies are doing so well, not because
their home pages are getting a million hits a day.)

--Tim May

Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
Corralitos, CA              | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839      | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."