On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 07:54:43PM -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: | > | Just to sort of thrash things a bit, in a capital markets | > | transaction, an exchange isn't such a hard thing to do, in the | > | sense that a secondary bearer-form asset transaction (primary is | > | like an IPO, or, for cash, a collateral asset conversion like an | > | ATM | > | transaction), cash for bond, say, would require the participation | > | of the underwriters in the exchange protocol. | > [...] | > | At primary issuance, a trustee is involved, so, that probably | > | supervises the Underwriter, who ever it is owns the underwriting | > | engine. The above should hold for all kinds of unique, uncopyable | > | things, teleoperated surgery, or opinions, for instance. | > | > A nym is none of these. | | I'm not so sure. If you create a nym as a unique entity which has | control of keys which control assets, the word "unique" points to | bearer-instrument protocol of some kind. A stock-exchange seat comes | to mind. You don't want to sell multiple copies of a key, for | instance, at least for lots of interesting uses. What is the unique entity seperate from its key? You can't have a pen legally controlling your stock exchange seat, so how can a keypair? You can use a keypair to show control (like a chop), but I'm unaware of anywhere the instrument is considered to have control. | | > | For "software", in the Gary Becker sense of something that can be | > | copied, all we're really looking for is something which | > | authenticates that a given copy of an information good is in fact | > | signed by the person proported to be the "author" of that | > | information/content/code. Coupled with a decent third-party | > | time-signature mechanism, you're fine, because, after the first | > | copy, such a good is a purely fungible commodity ala Hughes' | > | "Institutional Piracy", or the Agoric guys' "digital silk road", | > | or my "recursive geodesic auction" stuff. Such situations are | > | classic examples of so-called "perfect competition", as found in | > | physical graded-commodity markets everywhere. | > | > So here's the rub. A nym (as I'm using the term) is control over a | > private key thats associated with some reputation, which Alice is | > trying to sell to Bob. Alice can not provide direct assurance that | > she won't keep copies of the thing she's selling. | | Which means, you need a different protocol for selling them. I think | you walked away too soon from the idea of a nym as a financial | instrument, a contingent claim of some kind. Title to assets, at the | very least, plus or minus "goodwill", for lack of a better word. I | *think* it's part of the definition of a firm, in the Coasean sense | of a collection of assets that are worth more together because they | can transfer the value of those assets for more competitive advantage | internally than the firm gets if those assets are sold into the | market directly. Nyms don't have assets. People and legal fictions have assets. | > Through intermediaries, Bob can buy some insurance that the | > revocation games Alice can play are limited. | | See, you're talking about finance already :-). Insurance is a | contingent claim on assets based on external events. Remember how | they called program trading of various derivatives "portfolio | insurance" once apon a market crash? All men are Socrates. I can buy insurance against the value of things without needing to allow those things to own other things. For example, I have this fine diamond ring, which is insured. I have this fine .jpg of Bill and Monica, which is not insurable, because it is copyable. Neither my diamond ring, nor my jpg, may own property. | > How valuable that insurance is | > depends on the trustworthiness of the intermediaries, how likely | > the reliant parties are to properly check signatures, and the value | > of social engineering in a field where process issues are not yet | > well understood. (See also | > http://www.seifried.org/security/articles/20011023-devil-in-details. | > html) | | Say 'amen', somebody... | | > There might be a relationship here to the sale of music bits; the | > RIAA is all worked up over issues of how do they sell the same | > bits over and over. If you can answer the question of "How to sell | > a set of bits exactly once?" you may be able to answer the question | > "How to ensure that I don't keep a copy of those bits?" or "How do | > I sell a million people copies of the same bits without them | > transferring them around." | | First of all, I think that music shouldn't be copy controlled, | because it's "software", in the pure Beckerian sense of something | that can be copied, and, on the net it can be copied for almost | nothing, something that probably makes Coase smile, somewhere, which | was my point about commodity markets for information. So, how does music differ from a key? Its all bits, and those bits are easier to create than musical bits. | The part about selling something once is what Chaum did already with | DigiCash. The mint keeps a copy of the first "note", and, if another | one crosses the transom, the key of the counterfeiter is revealed. | Anyone who takes the cash offline, without the participation of the | underwriter, deserves what he gets if the cash is double-spent, | right? | | I think the apparatus for selling nyms is there already. Like I said | before, all we need is an exchange protocol, something, like price | discovery, has already been solved by lots of people (Micali has one, | for instance, though I'm not sure how good it is because I'm not | qualified to examine it), so we just have to find the best one. And why can't we apply those to music? Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume