[316] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: new services
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Gilmore)
Thu Mar 7 16:47:54 1991
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 91 13:25:14 PST
From: gnu@toad.com (John Gilmore)
To: com-priv@psi.com
ddern@world.std.com (Daniel P Dern) wrote:
> What do folks have in mind, in terms of new services...
I know a company that will offer downloadable copyrighted documents, as well
as be an online broker for consulting services, which would love to offer
their services over the Internet. Currently they're doing PC and Mac front
ends with the Telenet PSN to connect to their back end.
Electronic money would be a great service; there are so many things we'd love
to buy over the net (CPU time, storage, rental of particular programs for
an hour when we need them, information, gateway access without advance billing
arrangements, ...). David Chaum has worked out the mathematics and computer
science and founded a company to do this (DigiCash) in the Netherlands.
When will we see it accepted by service providers on the Internet? When
the Feds get out of the way of doing business here... Of course, this
electronic money is untraceable unless spent twice (fraudulently), so
our Big Brother government won't want us to have access to it anyway. I
mean, 1% of us might spend it on drugs, so let's keep the other 99% from
having any financial privacy. End rant...
Mobile access to the Internet would be another great service. It's not
just another TCP port, it's a whole new set of physical locations. Of course,
the infrastructure for this costs money and users would have to pay for it.
The people who want to pay for this currently can't, if their packets would
have to traverse the NSFnet.
Cryptographic security underpinnings for the Internet are another
overdue service beyond YATCPP. NIST/NSA is actually funding this one,
with Mitre doing the work, but so far I have seen no plans for actually
like, uh, releasing, the software for anyone but the government to use.
