From: Ryan Lackey <rdl@mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 13:34:43 +0800
To: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Subject: Re: Eternity Services
In-Reply-To: <v03102801b0df03d95cd4@[207.167.93.63]>
Message-ID: <199801120523.AAA12947@the-great-machine.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Tim May wrote:
> At 3:06 PM -0800 1/11/98, Adam Back wrote:

> News spool services are already showing signs of getting into this "Usenet
> censorship" business in a bigger way. Some news spool services honor
> cancellations (and some don't).  Some don't carry the "sensitive"
> newsgroups. And so on. Nothing in their setup really exempts them from
> child porn prosecutions--no more so than a bookstore or video store is
> exempted, as the various busts of bookstores and whatnot show, including
> the "Tin Drum" video rental case in Oklahoma City.

There is no market-based reason for a general-purpose news server to store a 
file once it is known it is illegal or even offensive and someone puts any 
serious
amount of pressure on them.  You end up needing to steganographically protect
your data in the usenet stream, yet then you have to resort to security through
obscurity, which royally sucks if you have published source :)  You could use
some kind of cryptographically steganographically protected data, such that
you need a secret key to know stegoed data exists, but then knowing which 
files to
extract becomes a pain -- your server needs to try to extract on *everything*. 
 True,
this also solves part of the TA problem (while making the other parts far 
worse) :)

But it really hammers the servers, and makes it unlikely they'll continue to 
let you access
them.  You could then foil this by using a bunch of tentacles to pull in data, 
but this
increases complexity and security vulnerability.  
> 
> 
> >The solution I am using is to keep reposting articles via remailers.
> >Have agents which you pay to repost.  This presents the illusion of
> 
> This of course doesn't scale at all well. It is semi-OK for a tiny, sparse
> set of reposted items, but fails utterly for larger database sets. (If and
> when Adam's reposted volumes begin to get significant, he will be viewed as
> a spammer. :-) )

Yes.  This (and the URN issue) was one of the initial reasons why I doubted the
functionality of his Eternity implementation if it ever became popular.  One 
of MIT's
news admins was actually vehemently opposed to this "abuse of usenet", and 
implied he
would go out of his way to not carry such articles.

E-DDS should scale well because everyone involved is trying to make a profit.
> 
> >> - CD-ROMS made of Eternity files and then sold or distributed widely
> >
> >This is an interesting suggestion, but surely would open the
> >distributor up for liability, especially if copyright software were
> >amongst the documents.  Were you thinking of
> >
> 
> The CD-ROM distribution is just a side aspect, to get some set of data
> widely dispersed. For example, if the data base is of "abortion" or
> "euthanasia" information (a la Hemlock Society), which various parties want
> suppressed, then handing out freebie CD-ROMs is one step.
> 
> Many examples of this: Samizdats in Russia, crypto/PGP diskettes handed out
> at conferences (was Ray Arachelian doing this several years ago?), and
> various religious and social tracts. Obviously, this is what broadsheets
> and fliers are designed to do. Self-publishing in general.
> 
> If the intent is to collect money for the data base accesses, then of
> course other considerations come into play.
> 
> (Critical to these "Eternity" things is a good model of the customers, the
> reasons for the data, etc.)

My implementation allows flexibility -- someone pays for every scarce 
resource, yes, but
it does not have to always be the same person.  There will hopefully evolve to 
be people
willing to speculate in data, storing it for free in exchange for a cut, 
others willing
to pay the cost of putting their own data up and making access free up to a 
certain point,
etc.

I like CD-ROM distribution.  My discman carried munitions, as well as music, 
recently,
on the same disc.
> 
> (* I say "working" in the sense that the concept was very easy to
> demonstrate just by using PGP and remailers. Not much more than what I
> demonstrated in 1993 would be needed to deploy a real system. Except for
> one thing: true digital cash. Not the bullshit one-way-traceable stuff that
> Chaum and others are now pushing, but the original, online-cleared or
> escrow-cleared form, a la the work of Goldberg et. al. For some of these
> applications, below, simple token- or coupon-based schemes might work
> adequately.)

There are currently-under-development systems which will meet the digital cash 
requirement,
from people who I consider highly respectable and competent.

Yes, blacknet is a perfect model of a distributed high-latency system.  
However,
to get a system which will actually be useful to end users requires quite a 
bit more than
just storing data -- services like reporting on the reliability of data, 
allowing
easy access to data by third parties, etc. are all pretty essential.  
Cypherpunks
may find blacknet highly useful, but most end users want something that works
like the web, or like a database, which is the primary advantage of the current
"Eternity" systems.
> 
> How these models will work using existing infrastructure (Usenet,
> remailers, Web proxies, etc.) depends on some factors. It might be useful
> to consider some benchmark applications, such as:
> 
> 1. Anonymous purchase of financially important data. (A good example being
> the Arbitron ratings for radio markets...subscription to Arbitron is quite
> expensive, and posting of results on Usenet is prosecuted by Arbitron. A
> good example of a BlackNet market.)
> 
> 2. Anonymous purchase of long articles, e.g., encycopedia results...
> 
> (I'm not sure there's still a market for this....)
> 
> 3. Anonymous purchase of "term papers." (A thriving market for ghostwritten
> articles...already migrating to the Web, but lacking adequate anonymizing
> methods.)
> 
> This is an example of a very large data base (all term papers on file)
> which cannot possibly by distributed feasibly by Usenet.
> 
> And so on...lots of various examples.
> 
> The whole Eternity thing is interesting, but we haven't made a lot of
> progress, it seems to me. (I distributed a proposal a bit similar to what
> Ross Anderson was proposing, a proposal more oriented toward making a
> _persistent_ Web URL for academics and lawyers to reliably cite, with less
> of the "404--File Not Found" sorts of messages, the things which make the
> Web largely unusable for academic and scientific citations.)

Yes, having a persistent URN is highly useful.  Adam's implementation kind of 
solves
this, and I have not yet come up with a solution to it -- it would be easy to
do a pretty simple persistent URL, but having something which would allow
indexing to be something other than a web-search-engine style kludge is more 
difficult.
I've been reading some papers on the topic.
> 
> 
> >> It is also likely in the extreme that a working Eternity service will
> >> quickly be hit with attackers of various sorts who want to test the limits
> >> of the service, or who want such services shut down.
> >
> >I agree with this prediction.  Remailers have seen this pattern, with
> >`baiting' of operators, and apparently people posting controversial
> >materials and reporting the materials to the SPA or others themselves,
> >etc.
> 
> Yep, it's hard to disagree with this. Any centralized "Eternity service"
> will be hit with various kinds of attacks in quick order.
> 
> Building a data base, as Ryan comments seem to indicate he is mostly
> interested in doing, is the least of the concerns.

I think perhaps this is inaccurate.  I am interested in being able to subsume 
the
functionality of a database for some applications, but I'm trying to build 
something
more like a distributed active agents system.  A database implies a single 
central
design -- this would be more a medium in which people could place databases, 
agents, etc.
> 
> --Tim May
> 
> The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
> ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
> Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
> ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
> W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
> Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
> "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Ryan Lackey
rdl@mit.edu
http://mit.edu/rdl/