On Tue, 30 Jul 2002, James A. Donald wrote:

The plan, already implemented, is to flood file sharing systems with bogus files or broken files. The solution, not yet implemented, is to attach digital signatures to files, and have the file sharing software recognize certain signatures as good or bad.

This is completely unnecessary if you address the document with a cryptohash. An URI like http://localhost:4711/f70539bb32961f3d7dba42a9c51442c1218a9100 can only adress a particular document. If you serve broken content your node's reputation falls through the floor. Note that content is distributed, dynamic, and you have no idea what you're actually serving.

This involves scaling problems that have not yet been thought through or implemented.

As files get copied around, they would accrete ever more digitally signed blessings. The signatures should be arbitrary nyms, as in Kong, not true names. The files could also accrete digitally signed discommendations, though such files would probably propagate considerably less.

The issue of node reputation is completely orthogonal to the document hashes not colliding. Reputation based systems are useful, because document URI http://localhost:4711/f70539bb32961f3d7dba42a9c51442c1218a9100 doesn't say what's in there. A claim needs to be backed by someone (preferably anonymous) with a good reputation trail.

When we approve a file, all the people who approved it already get added to our trust list, thus helping us select files, and we are told that so and so got added to our list of people who recommend good files. This gives people an incentive to rate files, since rating files gives them the ability to take advantage of other people's ratings.

If onr discommendd a file, those who discommend it are added to our trust list, and those who commended it to our distrust list. If, as will frequently happen, there is a conflict, we are told that so and so commended so many files we like, and so many files we dislike, so how should future commendations and discommendations from him be handled.