At 10:56 AM 3/6/04 -0500, Steve Furlong wrote:

No, pseudonymity lets others identify messages on, say c-punks, as coming from a particular sender. Reputation can work here, even with no

meat-space identity attached. Anonymity means reputation can't work, so

each message has to be taken on its own, with no history to give clues as to bias or reliability.

I realize that your, RAH's, "book" mostly deals with financial transactions. In the very narrow domain of transactions which don't require any trust, anonymity should be as useful as pseudonymity. In

Correct. Think of pseudonymity as a persistant endpoint of a communication, which thanks to (PK-verifiable) persistance can accrue reputation. An anonymous endpoint is necessarily ephemeral. the

more general case, I'd think true anonymity would be a handicap. eg, I'm certainly not going to send my hard-earned e-money to the account of some untraceable joker in exchange for his promise to deliver me a week's worth of groceries.

Sure you will, if the groceries are in front of you, and the purchase or possession of some of them you don't want associated with anything. In this case the reputation of the grocer and/or your ability to assay the groceries (in meatspace) suffice.