Hollywood Hackers

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Wed Jul 31 02:01:58 PDT 2002


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. 





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