Re: [freehaven-dev] reason for trading

[Brian T Sniffen <brians@MIT.EDU>]

Roger Dingledine <arma@MIT.EDU> writes:

> Am I being naive, and we should just give up on getting useful work out
> of such people?

For anything like our current design, yes.  Running a server will take
time and effort.  Even if we could package it and make it a matter of
downloading an installer, hitting "Go" and just staying online, that's
still more effort than the average person who doesn't care about
strong privacy will put in.

I thought the reason for trading was to mask the trails of the traded
shares.  If I give you an Evil Share, but you're constantly trading, I
have to track you down and prosecute you for it before you give it
away.  If you have, I can't prove that you had it without your help.

To a certain extent, it provides a moving target for anyone trying to
get a document out of the system.  Even if such an adversary can find
all of the current holders of shares of the document, he's got to hit
all of them before they can trade their share away.  I wonder if it's
reasonable to want a share to trade itself away faster if it's "being
hunted"?  Perhaps shares without live buddies should provide more points
for being traded away, and less for being kept in one place?

-Brian