Re: Selling a Persistent Identity

[nobody@neva.org (Neva Remailer)]

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Amad3us wrote:
>Try this Monty:
>
>The new owner of the Monty persona is defined to be the first public
>key which is signed by Monty's private key and posted to this forum.
>
>So the buyer sends Monty a public key, and Monty signs it and posts
>it to the list.  (Optionally via a trusted third party to ensure fair
>play.  There is a race condition in the making there but it's not too
>bad, we could fix it if we were bothered.)
>
>So Monty can cheat and post one he signed earlier selling to a
>different key, but we will ignore those because we base it on first
>posted.
>
>Buyers will no longer be interested in buying Monty's persona after
>they have seen it sold, because they know it is no longer his.
>
>The person who buys Monty's persona could resell it.  Using the same
>protocol.

This arrangement has analogs in the real world.  When a doctor sells
his practice, the patients are all notified.  But, I think there are
some True Name issues.  The doctor tends to assure the patients that
he has carefully selected the new doctor.  People know the doctor and
as a consequence tend to believe him.

This isn't really true of an anonymous persistent identity.  Let's say
it was doing a significant amount of business.  If you knew that its
ownership had changed, you might hesitate before doing a deal which
had a lot of fraud exposure.

On the other hand, the purchaser of the identity has an investment
which he may not want to endanger.  If the identity cost $1 million
and the outstanding deals only amounted to $100,000, fraud would be a
bad deal for the owner.

One reason why trading anonymous identities is a good idea is that it
baffles pursuit.  Every time you use one, information is revealed.
Even if you are doing things like transmitting 100K to the remailers
every hour, from time to time your net connection will go down, or
whatever, and increase the odds that The Enemy will have a more
accurate picture of your True Name.  (This works best if the
transaction is handled privately.)

But, if the persistent identity starts operating from someplace else,
it makes those attacks quite a bit more difficult, especially if there
is no public announcement regarding the change of ownership.

The transaction makes sense even if two identities of equal value are
traded.

(BTW, "Monty Cantsin" a.k.a. 0x5857856C436435C2D70FE503CA4E4190F766AD3
D16F9CFAA94105426C7DA7A1AEC488C0455AB4421C19B7D38F48DB7742112866EBB884
7570F61B072AFE5056A0339C4776128BB718C8C384D455031EDAAE94B07DE6C6211C83
FC06A844F1CF82240EC589C5C58DE2F699470A12802CCF14BEF0F45423E37879671DC4
E820A4416FDB6B6F2C5D5F694E5622F440ED1AF94A550A9D111749147945BA8D01AFB2
FE3EE908D9C54C639449ADF12CAF56D6CF29F414B23D8E74E9CFAE80D778F479E06326
075DDC599F8F50C8FC1685F9C98B702787C832DA6E7F63EB19658B1448BB5A97E3C564
4E5B75A66DD63977EE4B18EDF6D266AAD62349696B634A6447FF9 is not for sale.
After using one persistent identity for awhile, you become emotionally
attached to it!)

Monty Cantsin
Editor in Chief
Smile Magazine
http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html
http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.htm

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