At 11:33 PM -0400 on 4/12/00, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> Clearly information about me cannot be "property" in
> the sense that my car is.
Actually, it isn't but not the way you think. Information can be possessed,
but transaction cost to own it is *extremely* low. Like something
asymptotically approaching the cost of transmission, storage, and, of
course, encrypting it.
In other words, if it's encrypted and I have the key to it, information
becomes my *property*, no matter what the information is, whether it's
about me, or someone else.
In "cypherspace" encryption has the same place that fences, or legal title,
or armed force, whatever.
Somewhere Dr. Coase is smiling...
Cheers,
RAH
(Who offered to review Simpson's book until he saw the blurb on the back
about it's delusions of (Rachel) Carsonhood, and the paragraph about
cypherpunk "privacy fanatics" in the back. Simpson, for the lack of a
better phrase, and as nice a guy as he is personally, is just another
liberal with a privacy fetish, I'm afraid.)
--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
