[freehaven-cvs] clearer intro

[arma@seul.org (Roger Dingledine)]

Update of /home/freehaven/cvsroot/doc/econp2p03
In directory moria.mit.edu:/home/arma/work/freehaven/doc/econp2p03

Modified Files:
	econp2p03.tex 
Log Message:
clearer intro


Index: econp2p03.tex
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/freehaven/cvsroot/doc/econp2p03/econp2p03.tex,v
retrieving revision 1.5
retrieving revision 1.6
diff -u -d -r1.5 -r1.6
--- econp2p03.tex	2 Apr 2003 00:55:24 -0000	1.5
+++ econp2p03.tex	2 Apr 2003 01:21:21 -0000	1.6
@@ -41,15 +41,15 @@
  
 \begin{abstract}
 
-Decentralized anonymity systems tend to be unreliable. Users must choose
-paths through the network without knowing enough about the state of the
-network. Reputation systems can improve reliability by predicting the
-state of the network. Here we focus on anonymous remailers and anonymous
-publishing, explain why the systems can benefit from reputation, and
-describe our experiences designing reputation systems for them while still
-providing anonymity. Maintaining anonymity while integrating reputation
-is tricky, and in each example we had to redesign the underlying anonymity
-system to support reputation.
+Decentralized anonymity systems tend to be unreliable, because users
+must choose paths through the network without knowing the entire state
+of the network. Reputation systems can improve reliability by predicting
+the state of the network. In this paper we focus on anonymous remailers
+and anonymous publishing, explain why the systems can benefit from
+reputation, and describe our experiences designing reputation systems
+for them while still ensuring anonymity. We find that in each example we
+first must redesign the underlying anonymity system to support verifiable
+transactions.
 
 \end{abstract}
 
@@ -63,16 +63,16 @@
 repeated interactions between participants can become
 infrequent, and so individuals cannot rely on their own past
 experience to recognize those who behave badly.  Under these
-circumstances, reputation is one of few workable means to keep hostile
+circumstances, reputation is one of few workable mechanisms to keep hostile
 and freeloading nodes from damaging the system.
 
-But when the network's very purpose is to provide anonymity,
-reputation itself becomes problematic.  On the one hand, anonymity
-enables an attacker or freeloader to acquire a bad reputation for as
-many pseudonymous identities as he likes, throwing each one away at no
-real cost.  But on the other hand, any reputation information that the
-system {\it does} manage to gather could be used by an adversary to
-attempt to analyze and subvert the anonymity provided.  
+But when the network's very purpose is to provide anonymity, reputation
+itself becomes problematic. Firstly, location protection enables an
+attacker or freeloader to cheaply throw away a pseudonym that has acquired
+a bad reputation. Secondly, it is hard to detect or verify whether a
+participant is behaving correctly while at the same time maintaining
+his anonymity. And thirdly, reputation information can be exploited by
+an adversary to better analyze and subvert the anonymity provided.
 
 So we are left with a conundrum: if the networks's stability relies
 on the good performance of individual nodes, reputation may be the

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