From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 08:39:43 +0800
To: cryptography@c2.net
Subject: Re: Hughes Markets? (Was Re: Copyright commerce and the street	musician protocol)
Message-ID: <v0311073fb08806bd261a@[139.167.130.248]>
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Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 14:52:30 -0500
To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
From: hutchinson@ncri.com (Art Hutchinson)
Subject: Re: Hughes Markets? (Was Re: Copyright commerce and the street
musician protocol)
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Reply-To: hutchinson@ncri.com (Art Hutchinson)

Robert Hettinga wrote:

>A whole bunch of people are now talking about these cash-settled recursive
>auction processes, and they're a direct, and now obvious, consequence of
>bearer (or at least instant) settlement markets for information on geodesic
>networks. When you add anonymity to the transaction, you pretty much have
>the final straw for "rights" tracking. Watermarks just tell you who the
>information was stolen from, for instance. So, one more industrial
>information process bites the dust.

Whoa!  Hang on here.  Sure, watermarks will tell you who information
was stolen from, but they're just a stalking horse... a weak second cousin
to *persistent* content control technologies (such as IBM's Cryptolopes
and Intertrust's Digiboxes).  These allow rightsholders to manage a wide
range of parameters (including price, usage context, and any other variable
for which you can imagine having a certificate).  Whats fundamentally
different about what are generically referred to as secure envelopes, is
that they can maintain controls *indefinitely* (persistence), across an un-
known, ad hoc, web of distribution over which one otherwise has no
control.  And yes, this can all work even in a completely disconnected
environment (laptop at 35,000 feet).

They allow rightsholders, if they so choose, to *continue* being rights-
holders in a highly networked, digital world, and in a wide range of new
ways, based on entirely new (or old) business models, that take advantage
of rich/elaborate conditions for usage (e.g. you can view this picture
anonymously, but it will cost you 2X as much, and you can only get it at
low resolution, and you can't view it at all unless you can prove that you
don't live in the Middle East).  No certificate for these conditions?
Sorry, no content.

They are based the same basic stuff (public key cryptography of course)
that *can* fuel wild anarchic visions of anonymous exchange.  ;)

But they aren't at all deterministic of any particular economic model.

Regards,

- Art

Art Hutchinson                                       hutchinson@ncri.com
Northeast Consulting Resources, Inc.     phone: (617) 654-0635
One Liberty Square                                 fax: (617) 654-0654
Boston, MA 02160                                 www.ncri.com
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-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
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experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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