At 4:29 AM 8/19/96, Rich Graves wrote:

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True, for controversial political and artistic materials whose authors/distributors have an interest in disseminating.

And artistic, political, cultural, etc. materials are of course one of the main markets, as the large number of bookstores shows. (And the success of "Primary Colors," by "Anonymous," shows that one need not the True Name of an author, obvious to all persons on this list.)

However, with neither a government to enforce contracts nor an identifiable location/identity that can be used for the private enforcement of, ahem, contracts, the barrier to entry for anonymous markets in real commercial products seems rather high. How are buyers and sellers to trust each other? How do you build reputation capital from zero? Once you have reputation, transaction costs should be pretty low, but building it?

Yes, a topic we've discussed many times over the years. I don't have the time to compose a new essay on this, so I'll refer folks to either the archives or my Cyphernomicon FAQ, which discusses reputations, third party escrow services, etc. (Imagine an equally anonymous "Ace Escrow Service," which holds the cash until a product is transferred. Essentially, this is what a _store_ does. For example, a Barnes and Noble or a Home Depot chooses which products to stock based on their own evaluations, tests, and reputation assessments...and they make good on defective products, etc. This lessens the risks to the consumer that he will be screwed by a vendor he has little recourse against. "Middlemen.")

If what you're selling is a physical product, you're ultimately going to have a location. If what you're selling is information, how do you demonstrate the worth and trustworthiness of your data without distributing it? And once you have distributed it, what's to stop a "counterfeiter" from redistributing it, stealing your profits before you have had a chance to establish your reputation capital as the preferred source?

Sure, these are all issues. (As the Assyrian merchant said in 1300 B.C. "This idea of a "store" you have...I can think of many problems. How will they all be solved?")

I don't see anonymous digital cash as the tightest bottleneck. Distributed trust in an anonymous marketplace seems more difficult.

I disagree, but this was obvious from the focus of my post. I believe we see "distributed trust" (though this is not the choice of words I would use) all around us. Too many issues to debate here. My point was that the BlackNet approach *is* like a physical data haven, except with some advantages. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."