From: "Jean-Francois Avon" <jf_avon@citenet.net>
Date: Sun, 19 May 1996 07:33:58 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: (Fwd) Mail Delivery Failure.
Message-ID: <9605181736.AB07651@cti02.citenet.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



On 15 May 96 at 19:01, Mark M. wrote:


> > .  What if a company does not pay as expected -
> 
> A company could not afford to have such a loss of reputation. 
> Nobody is going to work for a company that doesn't pay its
> employees.


Yes, but anonymity would prevent the easy build-up of reputation too:

If Joe Anon9876 say: "company ANON1234 Inc screwed me, how peoples
will know that it is not a unscrupulous competitor trying to damage
their reputation?

Now, if Joe Anon9876 decides to disclose to the public that his real
name is John Doe to give more weight to his denounciation, and
depending on wether or not his bosses *are* or are not crooks, he
might very well get some sort of "prediction" on his head.

Now, Jim Bell's servers don't have to be completely public.  Suppose
some servers were built so that the donation address would be known
but the list of donation would be kept secret: Such server could
thrive.  Most "donation" here would not be 2 bucks but rather 20,000
bucks to ensure that the contract would get taken up promptly.  And
since the targets would not be published, there would be not even a
hint that company ANON1234 *might* have put a contract on John Doe
(Now, aka Joe Anon9876) .  The fact that an open AP server exists
makes the later possibility also possible.  To have access to the
target list would require to be member of a *very* close circle, or
maybe, actually, just en employee of ANON_KILLERS4567_Inc.


Reputation is standing on the fact that an entity disclose it's 
existence, accepts to act in full view of significant others, and is
prepared to show evidence of good conduct to said significant others.
And also on the fact that a challenger to the reputation have to put
his own on the opposite platter of the balance.

Anonymity makes it hard to do.

JFA

 DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee; Limoges porcelain, silverware and crystal
 JFA Technologies, R&D consultants;  physists, technologists and engineers.

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