The aim of this projectis to provide a secure means of conducting monetary transactions across the internet network, where ever there is a reasonable link to the net. By providing a rapid and secure means of authentication and accounting, the system could act as a 'bank' for members of the net.
The system would use RSA cryptography, a public key system, to provide secure transactions across the essentially unsecure links which make up Internet. Accounting would take place across a geographically distributed set of 'secure' or 'trusted' machines to lower networking overhead.
The system would not provide credit. Members of the Internet community wishing to use the facility would have to be in credit to give away money.
A bank is usually a place where people borrow money or store money. Banks (or Building Societys) also provide convenient means of transferring money: electronic credit transactions for instance. In fact most pay slips are transeferred electronically, these days.
These transactions can be carried out easily within a country, although often this comes down to mailing a cheque. Monetary transactions betwen countries usual necessitate a change of currency, and incumbent fees. Furthermore there is a relatively slow feedback about current levels of credit.
An electronically based system could overcome these problems.
Transactions of credit between countries would use the current
value of the exchange (or, more likely a slightly unfavourably
weighted value, see 'Currency
Trading'.) More importantly, there should be a low overhead
in operating the system. (see
The biggest problem (also the greatest advantage) of electronic
distribution of documents is the easy reproducibility of the
work. The only expense in copying the document is in the storage
media, which is usually very cheap compared to the costs involved
in producing the information, and the media is generally re-
usable. The economics of the situation lead to a lack of
professional material: documents available on the net are almost
entirely volunteer produced.
If documents were very cheap, however, it is quite possible that
many people would prefer to pay a small charge than break the
law. I feel that most people would be more than happy to pay
small amounts of money (in the order of 1 or 2 cents) for
information. The amount is so trivial by curent standards it
would be hard to feel the cost was unjustified.
With a wide readership, and essentially no overheads, it is
worthwhile producing good documents. A FAQ compiler might charge
2 cents a document for the time they have invested in assembling
the information. With a (modest) readership of 2,000 people that
is a return of $40. Large news group have readership well in
excess of this number. (There are however questions of
information ownership, see 'intellectual
copyright'. Who for instance owns the individual sections of
a FAQ, when these sections may have been submitted by and large
individuals? )
A more traditional approach might be a magazine, which can charge
the princely sum of 50 cents or more an issue, one again
depending on a large readership. With a readership of 20,000
(not difficult, consider Wired
a popular magazine amongst the net literate which would have
have much wider readership than 20,000) the gross per issue
return is $10,000. For 50 cents many would prefer to support the
magazine than copy it for 'free'.
In fact, this would probably not cover costs for a professional
magazine like Wired, but it is simply a matter of
accounting. The fundamental concept holds, that if the document
is cheap enough, and the means of payment convenient and simple,
piracy would be much reduced.
(Of course this is all speculation. But it seems, to me,
reasonable speculation.)
RSA cipher system is a public key cipher
system, well established and capable of providing signed
documents, as well as secure transmissions.
The mathematical foundations of RSA are
explained in the RSA document.
How do you do it?
Other Issues.