12.11.1. This has been a brewing topic for the past couple of years.
In 1994 thing heated up on several fronts:
- DigiCash announcement
- NetMarket announcement
- various other systems, including Visa Electronic Purse
12.11.2. I have no idea which ones will succeed...
12.11.3. NetMarket
- Mosaic connections, using PGP
+ "The NetMarket Company is now offering PGP-encrypted Mosaic
sessions for securely transmitting credit card information
over the Internet. Peter Lewis wrote an article on
NetMarket on page D1 of today's New York Times (8/12/94).
For more information on NetMarket, connect to
http://www.netmarket.com/ or, telnet netmarket.com." [
Guy H. T. Haskin <guy@netmarket.com>, 1994-08-12]
- Uses PGP. Hailed by the NYT as the first major use of
crypto for some form of digital money, but this is not
correct.
12.11.4. CommerceNet
- allows Internet users to buy and sell goods.
- "I read in yesterday's L.A. Times about something called
CommerceNet, where sellers and buyers of workstation level
equipment can meet and conduct busniess....Near the end of
the article, they talked about a proposed method for
exchanging "digital signatures" via Moasic (so that buyers
and sellers could _know_ that they were who they said they
were) and that they were going to "submit it to the
Internet Standards body"" [Cypher1@aol.com, 1994-06-23]
12.11.5. EDI, purchase orders, paperwork reduction, etc.
- Nick Szabo is a fan of this approach
12.11.6. approaches
- send VISA numbers in ordinary mail....obviously insecure
- send VISA numbers in encrypted mail
+ establish two-way clearing protocols
- better ensures that recipient will fulfill service...like
a receipt that customer signs (instead of the "sig taken
over the phone" approach)
- various forms of digital money
12.11.7. lightweight vs. heavyweight processes for Internet commerce
- Chris Hibbert
- and the recurring issue of centralized vs. decentralized
authentication and certification
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind