It seems as if Larry Lessig has figured out the fatal flaw in anonymous or untraceable systems - that they are not economically sustainable.
In the face of that argument, he does not propose that they be banned, as Declan suspects: > [Why do I get the feeling that Larry Lessig doesn't like "absolute" > anonymity much at all? What Larray proposes is that they be permitted, but he also suggests - quite rightly - that psuedonymous systems will have more "traction." This is simply because psuedonymous systems overcome the fatal objection to totally anonymous/untraceable systems, whilst providing some economic privacy that is currently unobtainable. In practice, most successful systems have been identity based in some form or other, with psuedonymous features at the edge. E.g., a hotmail account is a psuedonym that points to an IP number. Systems that preserve total anonymity or untraceability have not as yet achieved any success that qualifies as survivability (notwithstanding many brave efforts). ( To drag this back to the crypto context, psuedonymous systems are easily modelled as each client generating a private/public key pair and using it as an identity. In that sense, they are a core and useful result of crypto systems. ) iang PS: disclosure - my company builds psuedonymous systems. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
