Re: Ross Anderson's Eternity service

[Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>]

Hal Finney <hfinney@shell.portal.com> writes:
> Sherry Mayo posted here a while back a reference to Ross Anderson's
> Eternity service paper, <URL: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk:80/users/rja14/#Lib >.
> He is also giving an invited talk on the subject this fall at a crypto
> conference in Prague.
> 
> The goal of the Eternity service is to make published information
> permanently and ineradicably available, despite efforts on the part of
> powerful attackers to destroy it.  The attack model explicitly
> includes governments.  This has obvious relevance to current
> controversies involving copyright, trade secrets, etc.

I too read this paper a while ago (probably after reading Sherry's
post also).

> It's difficult to evaluate the proposal because many of the issues
> seem more legal than technical.  Can a service like this, which
> would seemingly exist largely to circumvent legal restrictions on
> publishing, possibly be legal?

Probably not.  Perhaps it could be operated illegally.  If it were
possible to operate it illegally without getting individuals martyred.

> A few questions for discussion:
> 
>  - Would it be possible in practice to run a network like this?

Technically, I don't see why not.  Legally and politically much more
tricky.

Continuing with the theme above of operating the system illegally,
another approach might be to use disposable accounts as nodes, with
anonymously opened accounts.  If legal pressure got to the stage that
countries outlawed anonymous accounts, perhaps cracked accounts bought
from crackers could be used to run transient nodes in the Eternity
service.  A useful ethical role for system crackers even.

Or alternatively perhaps there are enough countries around that
Anderson's suggested use of many jurisdictions (particularly those
with low regard for copyright would be good candidates) would be
possible.  These countries could lead the role in supplying the
service for the unenlightened powers in other countries.  I have a
vague memory of hearing that there is at least one country which has
no copyrights on software for individuals, but does for commercial
use.  Perhaps the service could survive on this model for a while
before the US/NATO/OECD felt obligated to act as world police man and
offer to nuke the countries, or cut off all trade or something.

>  - Would there be much interest in it among users?

You bet!  It would be a most excellent source for a number of groups: 

- cypherpunks, users of crypto software for ITAR restricted material

- Scientologist detractors could publish their views anonymously
  without fear of reprisals, remove problems of censorship in general

- People who use copyright software without buying it: copyright
  software could be distributed with impunity, for free

- Anyone with an interest in obtaining a permanent URL for themselves
  could purchase 50 years worth of exposure for 1Mb (Anderson proposes
  selling space with ecash per Mb year).

>  - Would it be a net benefit to society for such a service to exist?

Depends on your views of the benefits to society as a whole of
copyright, patents and so on.  Granted many have commercial interests
in seeing these systems continue.  Some people on this list seem to be
of the opinion that patents, and product copyright are becoming an
obsolete system with near free copying.  (These people make analogies
with the advent of the printing presses, the loss of power of guilds,
and so on).

I'm not sure it need destroy civilization as we know it if some of
these changes did take place... many people would benefit from access
to a wider range of software and ideas.  There is the argument that
perhaps people won't bother to write software if they can't sell it.
I think that vendors would -cope- if software copyright were
hypothetically to be disabled in one swoop as a fait-acompli, they
would structure their charges differently: charge less perhaps,
include printed manuals (photocopying often costs more than the book),
include tech support contracts, and so on.

I'm sure it's widely acknowledged that only a modest percentage of
software is actually bought anyway (if we were to take a brief survey
(anonymous of course) of the percentage of non-paid for software on
their hard-drives, a fair amount of non-copyright compliance by
individuals would be demonstrated).

Adam
--
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