From: bureau42 Anonymous Remailer <remailer@bureau42.ml.org>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 13:11:43 +0800
To: cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: Re: Adding Memory to the Net
Message-ID: <HIOwFt43SCuZM9Wap1fmuQ==@bureau42.ml.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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This is an interesting proposal.  It would be easier for people who
are new to this business if there were more specifics about how this
would be implemented.  I'm sure you have particular techniques in mind
for splitting the data across servers, etc., but everybody else
doesn't necessarily know what they are.  Examples are nice because you
can go over them one bit at a time.

Here are some ignorant comments and questions.

Mike Duvos wrote:
> Bob makes a secure connection to a Trusted Agent doing business...

Why is the Trusted Agent necessary?  What does the agent do that Bob
couldn't do himself?  It seems like Bob could split up the data and
pay the servers to hold it just as well as the agent.  And he wouldn't
have to trust anybody.

> For the next 100 days, Bob and all of his friends may use the 256
> bit TAG/CONTEXT pair in place of Bob's data and may serve that data
> for free any number of times off any network file system server.

Or the people getting the data could also pay small fee for good
service.  Like a tip, if storing the data itself is the dominant cost.

This makes it harder to attack the servers by saturating them with
requests for data.

Usenet has traditionally been free for posters.  This model could
continue if there were users who were willing to pay to see other
people's posts.  Servers would keep the data around so long as there
seemed to be people asking for it.

You could imagine the price going up over time as fewer people want to
see it.  At some point not enough people may want to pay as much money
so it goes away.  In this model the server operators would just be
information speculators.

And, if The Bad Guys started knocking out servers, there would be a
powerful financial incentive to start serving the information that was
eliminated since its market price should go up.

> After 100 days, bob may fork over another 10 cents for another 100
> days, or his data will disappear.  The TAG assigned to an Octet
> String is unique, and no two strings have the same TAG, and no
> string is ever assigned multiple tags, no matter how often it may be
> entered and purged from the system.

It would be nice if the ten cents sells a promise by the server to
make the data available for some period of time in a way which is
independently auditable.  If the server stops carrying the data, Bob
can publish his proof that he was defrauded.  Because the facts would
not be in doubt, it would be unlikely to happen frequently.

> Users could boot their machines off the Network, and instantly see
> gigabytes of software available to them.  After syncing their cache
> file system with the network, they could drop their PC off the roof,
> buy another one, and by typing in just one TAG/CONTEXT pair, see all
> their files again.

This is very cool.  You can hide 256 bits pretty easily, which makes
The Great Satan's job harder.

> Aside from replication done for reliability, there should be only
> one copy of a file in the system at any time.  If multiple users
> submit the same file, there should be no more copies than if one
> user submitted it.

Would this really be worth the effort?  If Bob wants to pay to put the
file up twice, why not let just let him?

Just Another Cypherpunk

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