Sigh. A company called I-Planet is trying to trademark the term "Cypherspace", even though we've been using it for a couple of years in the cypherpunk community. They're doing an IPSEC Virtual Private Network, with friendly HTML administration; http://www.i-planet.com/P2cypherpb.html . Looks like interesting stuff, and I wish them luck except in TMing the name :-) I looked on AltaVista and HotBot, and the earliest reference I found was from a 1994 article by Tim May. I'd be interested in finding any earlier refs. There's also a line of comic books using the name, and a Java Applet from 1996, plus references from I-Planet in late 96 and 97. Anybody know if the term's been used in print in the dead-tree press? http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/6095/assorted-short-pieces/may-police-state.txt 05-Oct-94 http://www.pi.net/~mvheezik/cypher.html 20-Dec-96 http://infinity.nus.sg/cypherpunks/dir.archive-96.10.17-96.10.23/subject.htm... pointing to David Lesher's article Alice in Cypherspace http://www.insitecomp.com/webdev/java/javasites.htm 7-Dec-96 points to "Cypherspace", a Java Application on a machine I don't seem to be able to reach right now. ============================================================= ==== FROM http://www2.netcom.com/netcom/cypher.html and also ==== http://www.i-planet.com/P2cypherpb.html ======== Introducing i-Planet's CypherSpace As part of the i-Planet Solution product family, CypherSpace allows a company to securely link all of its locations together over the Internet by creating a Virtual Private Network (VPN). This represents an enormous cost savings especially for multinational organizations. ============================================================= Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com Regular Key PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639