-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 8:41 PM +0200 on 7/2/02, AAA, our Anonymous Austrian Amphibolizer blathers:

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If it's encrypted, and it's on my hard drive, than it's my property. I own it, not someone else. That's a private good. I can turn around, and sell it to you. You can encrypt it, and put it on your hard drive, and you can sell it. It's *your* property.

This has nothing to do with the definition of public versus private goods, which was quoted in the message to which you replied. Public goods are non-rival and non-excludable, terms which were defined there. Do you understand what these words mean? Can you use them in a sentence that begins, "Digitally signed information is not a public good because..."?

Digitally signed information is not a public good because... some eurosocialist wanker wants me to use his second-hand definitions from some French eurosocialist rag (Le Monde Diplomatique) in some combination on-line open-book bluebook exam and pissing contest? Give me a break, AAA. Hell, I forwarded that exact article to the dbs not list six weeks ago, and I deliberately *didn't* use it here because the, forgive me, eurosocialist wanker who wrote it didn't define a public good, he defined what it wasn't, and, furthermore, it did not discuss digital copies, the exact things that are *not* covered by his definitions, or at least, his, and your, by extension, implicit statist conclusions about those definitions. In pulling your pud off in the corner of the argument about meatspace definitions that don't apply to digital goods and information, you're missing the point. Heck, you'll be trotting out the tragedy of the commons pretty soon, won't you. Guess what, AAA? On the net there *is* no commons. None at all. It's all private goods, even when the *state* pays for it. Nonetheless, in the spirit of your cherished double-negative non-definition of public good, and of statist pud pullers everywhere, let's look at the world in your own terms, shall we. Bash to fit, paint to hide, as they said in Detroit in the early 1970's "Rival" means that only one person can own something at once. That, technically, is the case with anything digitable. My copy (particularly if it's encrypted and no one else has the key) of a picture of Hillary Clinton spanking Bill with a bullwhip is, for all intents and purposes as "rival" as if you had bought it as part of a magazine and stuffed it under you bed for night-time flashlight assignations. Only you can see that particular copy, it costs you money to keep that copy on the hard drive in terms of electricity and amortized rust-space on the platter, and it cost you money, in bandwidth, if nothing else, to download that picture onto your hard drive. When the value of empty hard drive space exceeds the value of you drooling at Hillary in her leather corset, crotchless fishnets, bowtie, and stilleto heels flogging Bill on his hammer-and-sickle-tattoed behind, you delete the picture. When you delete it, guess what that makes it? Excludable. Nobody can have those particular bits on on your hard drive. Excludable, if you want to go back to your eurosocialst wanker Le Monde Diplomatique definition, means that when you've used it, it's useless to anyone else. You've deleted it, right? Only one person can have something at a time. In the case of an encrypted bit of information, nobody but *you* can decrypt that data and use it. The fact that it's an exact *copy* of something has no bearing on that fact. It is, in fact, excludable. It's price, however, is very, very, small, however, but just because it's cheap doesn't mean that you can't do transactions that small. Especially with some more cryptography, like a streaming cash protocol, or Chaum's blind signatures, for larger transactions. Which, idiot, was my point. If you actually went out an *thought* about what I said, instead of went out looking for appeals to authority to hit me over head with you'd have figured it out by now. Hell, if you'd go read some econ and finance, instead of quoting sorry statist french rags at me, you'd have figured it out *yourself*. Now, where were we... Yes. There's this bit of drivel:

Right, I'll do that as soon as you learn to spell dirigistes. There's nothing like using French incorrectly to show someone up as a pretentious jackass.

Touchi mon pidant, touchi... I seem to be guilty of making an innocent spelling error transcribing a (semantically accurate, even if it didn't pass your spell checker, just like pidant won't :-)) quote from Hayek. Misspelling, of course, is quite literally a crime in France, which, among other things, is why I'd never want to live there. :-). I'm also guilty of being an American, which, as the old joke goes, is the definition of monolingual. Notice, however, we're having this discussion in *my* native language, bucko, not *yours*, what*ever* that is. In honor of your first spelling flame on cypherpunks, I've trotted out another Hayek quote, below. See if you can find anything wrong with *that*. If you find something, let me know, and I'll send you, free of charge, *my* copy of Hillary in crotchless fishnets beating Bill's candy-apple-red Internationale behind. If I haven't deleted it, already. Sheesh. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 7.5 iQA/AwUBPSIyfcPxH8jf3ohaEQJHugCfVdG4RPWMt2Zq7JG62v72u7SoTzwAn0OY aIN4E9im60uVo1HPicjunzMn =C3CI -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions and will receive praise or blame for them." -- Friedrich Hayek, 'The Constitution of Liberty'