[44931] in Cypherpunks
More FUD from First Virtual
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Douglas Barnes)
Thu Dec 7 19:17:16 1995
Date: Thu, 7 Dec 1995 15:59:02 -0700
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
From: cman@communities.com (Douglas Barnes)
It is important to remember that Nat Borenstein is a principal
in a company that very much does not want to see anonymous e-cash
succeed. Their extremely backwards technology cannot compete in
the long term with cryptography-based methods, and therefore they
are compelled to run around the country and on the Internet, bad-
mouthing cryptography and anonymity at every turn, while pointing
to some charity work for Phil Z. as a fig leaf to cover their
actions in this regard (sort of like Exxon building an artificial
reef and claiming to be friends of the environment.)
I have, on several occasions, refuted his "infinite liability" rant,
but it keeps on resurfacing. A few months ago, I wrote a short tech
note on why this claim doesn't hold water. I thought I might stretch
it into something longer, but other things have more urgently
grabbed my attention. It's available at:
http://www.communities.com/foo/noninf.txt
Also, I haven't had time to confirm it, but based on conversations with
and hints from Digicash people online, I'm pretty sure they are doing
something similar to this (possibly better) that they are hoping to
patent.
--doug
