Can we copy trust?

Ed Gerck edgerck at nma.com
Tue Jun 3 02:53:44 EDT 2008


Bill Soley wrote:
> I am thinking that trust is a relationship.  "A trusts B".  So if you 
> start with "A trusts B" and you do some operation that results in "C 
> trusts B" then you have not copied anything because "A trusts B" is not 
> equal to "C trusts B".  You can't call that operation a "copy". 

Trust is indeed expressed by relationships. And those relationships 
can be transmitted with proper consideration -- just not in your 
example. In the case of SSL certs, a simple file copy is enough.

Cheers,
Ed Gerck

Addendum:

Did you have a chance yet to read Kelly's paper? In that paper, he is 
looking for stuff that can't be copied -- because he hopes that such 
stuff is scarce and valuable. "When copies are free, you need to sell 
things which can not be copied."

Kelly says that we can't copy trust. So, if I have 100 servers for the 
domain example.com does this mean that I have to buy 100 trusted SSL 
certs from the CA? Or, is any copy of the SSL cert as trustworthy as 
the original?

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