-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Lucky Green wrote:

On Sat, 27 Sep 1997, Anonymous wrote:

...

There also seems to be an idea that there is some big R&D investment in adapting a remailer to use e-cash. There isn't. You have to open an account at Mark Twain Bank. You have to figure out how to call the Digicash executable from within a Perl script. (Since nobody has corrected me on this, I am becoming confident that it is really as easy as I think.) Why not try it? Worst case, you lose a little time. Best case, you get rich and the remailer network takes off.

There are a number of technical reasons why you really don't want to call the standard commandline Ecash client from a script to add/retrieve Ecash from Mixmaster remailer packets. The biggest problem being that you can fit only a few coins into the packet header as specified. There is no feature in the standard Ecash client that allows coin level control. DigiCash firmly resited and continues to resist adding it. A $0.25 payment could be paid as three coins or as 25 coins. The user has no control over this. For this and a number of other reasons, DigiCash's software is unsuitable for the task.

You certainly could use DigiCash's software with Type 1 remailers. Though why anybody would want to pay for a service as insecure as Type 1 remailers is beyond me. Type 1 remailers should be removed from service.

Nonsense. Type 1 remailers offer a certain level of security. It is suitable for many applications. Type 1 remailers require a fairly determined attacker to thwart. They would certainly keep you safe from the IRS, but maybe not the NSA. Even if you were running a child kidnapping ring and failing to report the income, you would be pretty safe using Type 1 remailers. The NSA would never take the chance of revealing their capabilities just to save a few kids. In this instance, Type 1 remailers offer a real benefit in that it is easy to extend them with new features, such as accepting payment.

Furthermore, the barrier to entry is too high for the consumer.

Correction: for many consumers. The barrier for entry is not too high for the hard core "privacy extremists" of the cypherpunks list. And, were there a sizeable number of goods and services purchasable using ecash, you might discover many consumers did not find it too high a barrier to entry. Getting ecash is certainly easier than getting a credit card.

All these problems are about to be solved by third party software. Perhaps then we will see for-pay remailers.

Maybe, but today this is vaporware. In my experience, plans based on vaporware are unreliable. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNC6bDpaWtjSmRH/5AQFaPgf9HKbBpJS6DB4jWof3l67Mg7BecFD/d2Kw XsmEAI/wlasD81YhoYCyOzFBienb/ev2XiM/nQqQuOQFdNs7lll+GP1zAd8TTURt yPlL5mX9BOMjLaYUgfz/8j5h6ld/OTyZoh/cygXD8Glg4u8Y+af+wlosWm80IvpT lnM0HJ02KIYd1yPA8W0dqKS6qCmOJzbMijOhii3HuCUYUJtTlGx1tYt7dNej2/NR nNSjKhfv5xUYc/r8npzeqLwFJ0BBQwrjE3NG/+3IFJK8LXndHldNASy0gNBJ70Xa XenXJp5OquJXTyIlLSLFvCZOPnffvXFEgEew75HjZttYpkeg2qggbw== =ULi0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----