Re: (eternity) Eternity as a secure filesystem/backup medium (fwd)

[Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>]

Forwarded message:

> Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 12:02:34 -0800
> From: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
> Subject: Re: (eternity) Eternity as a secure filesystem/backup medium (fwd)

> There are alternative ways of paying for the service that do not in
> any way depend on ecash, and after thinking about it a bit, they seem
> more robust, as well. 
> 
> The basic idea is as follows:  The fundamental eternity service is 
> free to readers, and is financed entirely by writers.  The writers 
> supply the disk space, the network bandwidth, and possibly pay for 
> the software to support all this.

It is clear that there are two diametricaly opposed models of payment
mechanisms and who those costs should fall on; producers or consumers.
I personaly have no faith in systems where the producers bear the burden of
the costs since they have no clear mechanism to obtain the funds to finance
the enterprise in the first place.

Imagine for a moment that a couple of persons come into possession of a set
of documents which would cause considerable political embarassment and legal
difficulties for a head of the local government.

Why should these two individuals pay to have their data dissiminated to
anyone who wants it? It certainly isn't going to improve their social,
political, or professional standing since the server will anonymize the
data. They then have two options, release it themselves and hope for the
best (and hence reap the benefit of any economic benefits that might acrue)
or do nothing with it.

How about information to build man portable atomic bombs? It doesn't make
sense to take all those chances and the data haven operators to take the
chances when they will get at most the monetary input from a *single* party.
It is clear that these resources are clearly inferior to many parties paying
to get the data.

I guess the question boils down to why the individual operator in running
the server in the first place. I assume a priori that the goal of both the
submitter and the operator is to make a reliable income from the users of
the service since there are clearly many more consumers of information than
producers of it.


    ____________________________________________________________________
   |                                                                    |
   |       The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate,       |
   |       but the desire to edit somebody elses words.                 |
   |                                                                    |
   |                                  Sign in Ed Barsis' office         |
   |                                                                    | 
   |            _____                             The Armadillo Group   |
   |         ,::////;::-.                           Austin, Tx. USA     |
   |        /:'///// ``::>/|/                     http://www.ssz.com/   |
   |      .',  ||||    `/( e\                                           |
   |  -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-                         Jim Choate       |
   |                                                 ravage@ssz.com     |
   |                                                  512-451-7087      |
   |____________________________________________________________________|