LOL! Great piece :-) In spite of the absurdities you point out, people would *still* accept the shiny new credential if:
1. it actually was more convenient than cash or cards, 2. it did not give Verisign a right in perpetuity, to charge as much as the market will bear for certificates, and 3. the usage of data from new categories of transactions that are moved from paper into digital gave strategic value to individuals instead of distribution and financial services industries. All the designs I've seen, feature big IT systems on sellers' side and deliberately cripple information management on customer side. For example, individuals would never be provided digital receipts from supermarkets enabling them to submit their grocery requirements to regional auctions. In summary you're lampooning the wrong issues. :-) TOdd At 06:43 AM 12/20/2002, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Forwarded from something I ran across somewhere else .... Lets hypothesis an industry with a business model that every year they would sell a shiny new $100 credential to every person in the world ... and are finding out that nobody is buying the credential. Lets say that they go to business organizations and enlist them in getting laws passed based on credentials being equivalent to human signatures with the characteristics of non-repudiation (and furthermore, everybody has to get one). From the consumer's standpoint, non-repudiation means that in a dispute the legal burden of proof is shifted from the merchant to the consumer. Furthermore, the only thing that is necessary to achieve this, is to define a new bit in the credential (and the new laws). From the business standpoint ... the credential isn't costing them any money ... the consumer is paying for it ... and it has the advantage of shifting the burden of proof away from the business to the consumer. Some of the draft laws even refer to how all consumers are extremely eager to participate in such wonderful new technology (they just can't wait to get their shiny new credential every year and how shiny new credentials make them feel so good and safe). It is like they don't even have to perform a digital signature ... they just wave their shiny credential over the bits and everything is just magically blessed with non-repudiation and the burden of proof shifted to themselves and how such actions just bring such uncontrollable joy to their hearts.
