Adam Back:
If the participant in the CPU resource market is not expected to be able to vet all source code he runs, this gives the would be eternity operator a chance to distribute his risk.
It's even better than this - your PC becomes a common carrier and you are no longer liable :-) If this doesn't happen, then the advocates of Java need a whole new security infrastructure to assure users that the applets they download aren't defamatory, pornographic, seditious or in breach of copyright! Tim May:
Another science fiction writer, Bruce Sterling, popularized "data havens"
At one time, Malta was thinking seriously about becoming just such a data haven, and I expect one will appear sooner or later. After all, what's left of the British Empire is funded by money laundering and tax evasion - pardon me, Sir Humphrey, `offshore financial services'. Once the online world becomes a significant part of the global economy, small countries that wish to achieve the high living standards of Bermuda, Gibraltar and Jersey will be able to get there by cashing in on `offshore data services'. Countries like Tonga already sell domain names, but a full offshore data service would need some way of resisting pressure from the EU and the US government. Most of the tax havens do this by being under a colonial umbrella. Is there an alternative? Can we create virtual colonies in cyberspace? Can we set up a gateway to Eternity in some country like Liberia or Somalia, which is too dangerous even for the US Marines? Or do we have to cut a deal with Sir Humphrey? Hiding stuff inside usenet is actually a bit like hiding behind the skirts of Empire, isn't it? The same goes for hiding stuff on open access web sites, or in spam. Given the rate at which spam is growing these days, maybe that's where to put it. If the only way for Authority to cut mortals off from Eternity was to pass effective laws against spam, and the only way to stop spam was to have a global non-escrowed public key infrastructure so that all mortals could be strongly authenticated, then ... Ross