Note: This message being responded to originally had
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" as the cc: address. Like many, I am filtering
all toad.com traffic into a special folder, for likely dumping. Most
of the list's junk seems to have a toad.com address. Anyway, I caught
Dave Molnar's message here when scanning my toad.com junk folder
before dumping it. The moral? Folks should use one of the "real"
Cypherpunks list addresses if they want their stuff to escape the
junk filters many of us have deployed.
At 1:18 AM -0400 7/12/00, dmolnar wrote:
>On Mon, 10 Jul 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>> both companies seem to make the point that you don't have to trust
>> them as a third party, and yet the first thing they ask for is my credit
>> card number -
>
>This *is* a problem. Not least because I don't have a credit card. :)
>If I recall correctly, the official reason why ZKS hired Brands was
>to fix this problem by launching some kind of e-cash. (of course,
>you'll probably have to buy the e-cash with a credit card, won't you,
>and for a while ZKS may be the only vendor using it...).
The ZKS product doesn't appear very interesting, so I'm vague on the
details. Weren't they touting the ability to walk into a Fry's or
Good Guys store where a cash purchase could be made?
They don't need Brands- or Chaum-style semi-untraceable digital cash
if a purchaser can walk into any software store and buy a set of
(five, isn't it?) nyms with a a couple of twenties.
(Of course, the fact that their extremely complicated Terms and
Conditions means they will cancel a nym on the flimsiest of
complaints or suspicions of Wrongdoing makes their system not very
interesting. And not very economical for those who don't like to pay
$40 or $50 only to see their hard-earned nym reputations evaporate
because some bureaucrat in Canada has decided that Naughty Bits are
being exchanged.)
>
>>
>> an economy based on "nyms" is a pipe dream. No human has ever purchased
>> a car, or purchased a home, or taken out a loan, or started a business,
>> or gotten a job by using an anonymous "nym". Any significant economic
>> transaction, in both the real world and the virtual, requires
>>accountability,
>>
>
>What do you consider a "moral person" - i.e. a corporation?
The original author doesn't seem to remember that cash purchases were
once common. "No human has ever purchased a car"...gotta laugh at
that one.
Accountability does not equal traceabilty. This is well-trod ground.
--Tim May
--
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
