fwd: Re: [h2o-discuss] Re: Electronic publishing

[Alex Chudnovsky <b9678050@wlv.ac.uk>]

On Mon, 6 Sep 1999 18:13:29 -0400 Jon Garfunkel 
<garf@look.boston.ma.us> wrote:


*agreed with snipped parts*

> Come to think of it, another key point of publishing is that you can get a
> person/company to notarize that you wrote a manuscript at a certain point in
> time. I assume Fatbrain can do this now. You should expect digital

True, but imagine a writer was writing a book, someone hackied into his 
computer and promptly submitted it to Fatbrain thus claming the 
ownership, what would the real owner say? Not that the whole world will 
blow up of that, but I would be curious how would a person prove that 
he had written a book when he used a PC, and had no manually written 
drafts whatsoever.

> certificate-based notarization services someday... like echecks, they are
> dependent on a large-scale Public Key Infrastructure.

PK-infrastructure now depends on the US Gov, or more correctly to say 
it's policies towards strong crypto. 

> So the component technologies are all on the horizon; one day we shall be
> able to mix and match without tying ourselves to one particular vendor's
> system.

Amin!


- Alex