Brands is alive! (fwd)

[R. A. Hettinga]

--- begin forwarded text


Status:  U
Sender: <dbs at philodox.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 15:52:38 -0500
From: Ian Grigg <iang at systemics.com>
Reply-To: iang at systemics.com
To: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs at philodox.com>
Subject: Re: Brands is alive!  (fwd)
List-Subscribe: <mailto:dbs-on at philodox.com>

After receiving permission, here is another email on the
subject and person of the Brands.

iang

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Brands is alive!  (Was Re: [Tsg] Micropayments & VISA?
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 16:40:49 -0500
From: Ian Grigg <iang at systemics.com>
Reply-To: iang at systemics.com
To: Paul Holman <pablos at shmoo.com>
References: <167B8C93-4037-11D6-800D-003065F58F88 at shmoo.com>

Paul Holman wrote:

> Ian, thanks for telling me this.  I'm happy to hear it.

Brands is good people, and he tries hard.  Problem is, it
is a lot of work to licence patents.  It took me 4 trips
to Europe and 4 barrels of beer to do it.  It's just a
costly business, as well as unhealthy the morning after ;-)

> > Secondly, in my experience, patents have nothing to do with
> > digital cash, or, so little that discussion of patents is a
> > red flag from a business perspective.  I.e., don't invest in
> > any scheme that talks about patents.  As a programmer, if you
> > wanted to do a blinded token scheme, just use Wagner.  Switch
> > to Brands (within very minor technical terms, Brands is far
> > superior) when you've shown that you can do something valuable
> > with Wagner.
>
> I fully agree that this would be a wise approach.  However, depending on
> how it is played out, you'd be increasing the value of those patents if
> you made something that worked and later go shopping for them.  This can
> be a disincentive that keeps businesses from getting started.

Well, that is true at the margin.  But, in practice, the market
cares not one jot what patent you are using, if at all.  In
practice, if you continued to use Wagner blinding for ever, you
would have a 99.9% equivalent offering for the market place,
which is less than noise in the overall marketing equation.
So, whilst I don't dispute that a potential improvement could
occur that would leave the price going up, I really doubt in
practice that you would notice this.

> I'm glad to hear you're so enthusiastic about the Brands approach.  It
> seems more flexible than Chaumian blinding, but possibly more difficult
> to implement/manage.

We did a lot of work investigating it during the DigiGold days,
and both teams put on the job concurred that Brands was the
best, independantly.  I'm not a cryptographer, and can barely
count, let alone read a Brands formula, which is why I contracted
some real crypto people to prepare opinions.

Hmm, I notice you replied privately.  Do you mind if I put your
reply onto the DBS list?  It's not really an issue either way,
just a chance to boost the intelligent traffic.

-- 
iang

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA

The IBUC Symposium on Geodesic Capital
April 3-4, 2002, The Downtown Harvard Club, Boston
<mailto: rah at ibuc.com> for details...

"... 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'

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