Re: Problems with anonymous escrow 2--response
Anonymity & reputation as assets:
From Hal:
Besides the question of trustworthiness, another problem I see with anonymous escrow agents applies more generally to any form of anonymous business. Anonymity makes sense to me for the individual. Each person manages his own affairs and he can keep secret or reveal what he wants. But at the business level it is going to be much harder to keep the same level of secrecy.
From Tim:
...what good would assets do if they can't be traced? More generally, reputation capital is what they need, not physical assets. ............................................................... I'm not seeing the relationship of these two concepts of anonymity in conjunction with reputation. How could such attributes co-exist? Can they really function successfully together for both the agent & their client: how could one individual or escrow agent be both unknowable and yet depend upon reputation capital to go on? To have reputation means that one's behavior from the past must be known & evaluated for future interactions, but to be anonymous means that their client will not know who that particular entity is with whom they is dealing: so would this like doing business with God, where you only know what s/he's *supposed* to deliver, but never really know who it is wot does the deed, or whether there really is one? Blanc
Blanc quoth:
I'm not seeing the relationship of these two concepts of anonymity in conjunction with reputation.
How could such attributes co-exist? Can they really function successfully together for both the agent & their client: how could one individual or escrow agent be both unknowable and yet depend upon reputation capital to go on? To have reputation means that one's behavior from the past must be known & evaluated for future interactions, but to be anonymous means that their client will not know who that particular entity is with whom they is dealing:
People are using anonymity in a different way than has practical value within cyberspace. Anonymity usually means that you can not match a physical realm person to a cyberspatial private key. But that doesn't mean you don't know anything about the entity. The skills of an entity without any reputation capital are absolutely worthless. But usually an anonymous entity will come around brandishing all sorts of certifications (reputation capital). So, as it is usually used, anonymity does not mean zero knowledge. It means you lack knowledge that would enable you to match the key to the physical realm person it corresponds to. With this in mind, the coexistence of the aforementioned attributes ceases to be problematic. JWS
Jason S. said:
People are using anonymity in a different way than has practical value within cyberspace. Anonymity usually means that you can not match a physical realm person to a cyberspatial private key. But that doesn't mean you don't know anything about the entity. The skills of an entity without any reputation capital are absolutely worthless. But usually an anonymous entity will come around brandishing all sorts of certifications (reputation capital).
So, as it is usually used, anonymity does not mean zero knowledge. It means you lack knowledge that would enable you to match the key to the physical realm person it corresponds to. With this in mind, the coexistence of the aforementioned attributes ceases to be problematic.
I think most of us understand this is what "pseudonymity" means...we only use "anonymous" as shorthand for this. You can quibble about this, and I might agree that the more awkward "pseudonymous" is a better term, but no one is being misled into thinking that "anonymous" means truly anonymous, with no credentials, no reputation, no trail. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."
participants (3)
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Blanc Weber -
solman＠MIT.EDU -
tcmay＠netcom.com