| R. A. Hettinga on 7 Mar 2001 06:36:52 -0000 |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
| Re: <nettime> Napster offshore? |
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 6:26 PM -0500 on 3/6/01, Felix Stalder wrote: > Offshore data havens have long figured prominently in the dreams of > cypherpunks Actually, real live cypherpunks, not the ones portrayed in science-fiction books, believe that cryptography on the net, not political jurisdiction, is what matters. See Tim May's 1995 cyphernomicon (no, not Neal Stephenson's 1999 "Cryptonomicon" :-)) for details to this. Note that the Caymans, Vanuatu, Anguilla -- not to mention those old chestnuts Switzerland, Luxembourg and Lichtenstein -- are all rolling over on financial privacy. In that kind of environment, HavenCo is just another excuse for the eventual use of gunboat diplomacy. Frankly, the reason we have modern wholesale violations of privacy is because we use book-entry settlement. Until things like functionally anonymous internet bearer transactions, like Chaum's blind signatures, for instance, actually are cheaper than book-entry settlement, say, three orders of magnitude cheaper, we won't have financial, much less any other, privacy. Put another way, the reason we have book-entry settlement is not because the evil state (or evil corporations, insert your favorite bugbear here) wants to control our every move, it's because debits and credits through a database are cheaper than my Brinks truck full of paper bearer certificates to your cage. Cryptography is also the solution to the intellecual property mess. If it's encrypted, and I have the key to it, it's my property, to do with however I chose, including selling it, for cash, over the net. Oddly enough, in this kind of recursive auction market, the first copy is the most expensive, and the last marginally above the cost of bandwidth. Meaning, of course, that the people making new stuff make the most money, which is as it should be, right? Cheers, RAH Who's not a cypherpunk. Ask Tim May. :-). -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 7.0 iQEVAwUBOqWpKcUCGwxmWcHhAQFPUgf+KVCfQwhH5MDwlJXGHIYlcSuMTH+sT1+K atrjbQcKuwpsDL1g0CSmJtrjLa3hR2Kp2FxnhpmnALQVNHPYBY3fLQXb8ZcfbH8w IBQZMgM5u8JONaQvK38vLyyFyaEBsH/SSdicymYs47aT2BHGmBgSmoJaIaXtl4xo 2qQYhAxskmJAIUNaTSG1noN4cCa5Y7/qyDgWu+4uBwpF2KVHugY6f4j2olNiVxcn UZVGftCh7R2wdnY7rvhNHQC08kWaGVLPGd7t8fwlVIdyqutEwQ7A6pQpa+iZOUqK 1WEJmW0s2Ot6icYfNiwTqC1NN/JjEgVj4vP7WzNyBk2mG9J7hBuhiQ== =N5rF -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [email protected]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]