[Tccc] The flower st...
Joe Touch
touchatisi.edu
Sat Dec 8 00:32:23 EST 2012
On Dec 6, 2012, at 10:03 PM, Pars Mutaf wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 10:51 PM, Joe Touch <to... at isi.edu> wrote:
> FWIW, this concept is already known and does not require a new standard or
> proof about social networking or other electronic sites.
>
> A non-spoofable solution is to publish the hash of your publication in any
> archived newspaper (i.e., in the personal ads in the back).
>
> See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_timestamping
>
>
> Thanks for your feedback. What the flower standard adds is:
>
> 1. Freedom to put your idea anywhere you like.
Linked timestamping already provides that. Once you publish your stamp, you can
post your paper anywhere.
> There are many possible solutions. Flower standard allows to use all of them.
So does linked timestamping.
> 2. The flower sign on a file indicates to the public that a document is
> original and protected using this method.
You can do this with a simple sentence in a footnote. Yes, you can create a
cute logo, but ultimately you need that sentence anyway because you need to
explain the logo anyway. If you have the sentence, you don't need the logo.
> If I see a document and there is no flower sign on it, I can pretend that it
> is mine or try to steal it.
It's trivial to steal things anyway. You just need to change enough that people
who read the stolen version won't trace it back to the original. For the hash
that's easy - changing one word ought to be enough. For ideas, it's not all
that hard to say the same thing in a slightly different way.
So unless someone else matches the stolen idea to the original, nothing is
caught or stopped.
I.e., it's easy to create a hash of a rendition of an idea, but it's impossible
to hash an "idea".
> ps: The newspaper solution is not really feasible. You can't find such
> newspaper and this is probably a slow solution.
Find a newspaper = New York Times, or frankly any major newspaper in a major
city. Even those that have gone out of print are still archived.
As to speed, it requires the time it takes between applying for a personal ad
and seeing it in print. That's typically a few days at most.
Note that this sort of "once it's in print it's done" method has been used for
a very long time in legal circles. It's the common way that businesses fulfill
the requirement to post notices - "doing business as..." (DBA) in particular.
Joe
_______________________________________________
IEEE Communications Society Tech. Committee on Computer Communications
(TCCC) - for discussions on computer networking and communication.
Tccc at lists.cs.columbia.edu
https://lists.cs.columbia.edu/cucslists/listinfo/tccc
More information about the Tccc
mailing list