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Richard Stallman: Online Publishers Should Let Readers Pay Anonymously

theguardian.com

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Re: Richard Stallman: Online Publishers Should Let Readers Pay Anonymously

#71

Post by paulddraper »

knowtheory wrote: post #62
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #57

I've thought before about online commerce, and wish we could find some way to adopt a Vending Machine model. A vending machine is autonomous. It neither tracks nor engages the customer. It takes your money, and dispenses product. Since cash is untraceable, it keeps no record of what was bought and by whom. I feel at peace knowing I will give a vending machine a dollar, and I will receive a Coke, without fearing that…

Are vending machines really that analogous? Vending machines are all about placement & location, and the ability of a vendor to find high traffic locations to put machines. Machines get placed based on info about locations whether it's demographics, or a kind of business or whatever. Individual transactions may not have identity tied to them, but it's not like the business is devoid of information about users, or hyp…

Vending machines certainly track purchases. They just don't track the people making the purchases.

The Internet can be the same. Lots of people buy X. Let's offer more if that. Y is a high traffic location (L as in URL). Etc.

Re: Richard Stallman: Online Publishers Should Let Readers Pay Anonymously

#72

Post by ldjb »

mrfusion wrote: post #47

I'm still appalled when an ebook accepts Bitcoin but still asks for your "billing address".

I don't know about other countries, but here in the EU businesses are often required to collect customers' billing address to comply with EU regulation, such as the VAT MOSS.

Re: Richard Stallman: Online Publishers Should Let Readers Pay Anonymously

#73

Post by upofadown »

mirimir wrote: post #23
lumberjack wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's plugging GNU Taler which was specifically designed to be government friendly (allows collection of taxes and AML compliance and not easy to implement black markets). He's not talking about other kind cryptocurrencies. Stallman isn't a "down with the government" type of person despite being sceptical of surveillance.

So the title of his article is a lie, then. > Publishers must let online readers pay for news anonymously It's not anonymous if GNU Taler knows user identity.

You seem to be claiming that Taler doesn't work without providing any actual arguments.

Re: Richard Stallman: Online Publishers Should Let Readers Pay Anonymously

#74

Post by dhimes »

andwur wrote: post #33
blfr wrote: post #14

Is this really the reason people block ads? I don't actually mind tracking as part of a useful service (like Google Maps). I block ads because they're 1) annoying 2) funding mass media. Depriving Bezos' WaPo or Slim's NYT of revenue is definitely a feature. If billionaires want to push propaganda, the least they can do is foot the bill. Tracking is a distant third. If an outlet I cared about ran ads, I'd white-list t…

1) security 2) annoyance 3) disagree with tracking 4) speed (rural internet yay!) I find it particularly annoying when clients demand adverts on paid-product sites, i.e. they have a site which is fully funded by their sales but they want that tiny bit extra at a huge cost to site appearance and load times.

Yup. I pay for the WaPo subscription. I don't mind banner ads, but I don't allow tracking.

Re: Richard Stallman: Online Publishers Should Let Readers Pay Anonymously

#75

Post by z3t4 »

mjevans wrote: post #8

That is a nice and lovely idea... Only every government everywhere hates it. If it is possible to pay for something anonymously, then there is no following the money of others paying anonymously for other reasons. Including paying for products or services that are illegal or even with money from such sales. Yes, you might compare this to cash. Cash that everyone used to carry around. It the higher denominations are m…

With Bitcoin you get the best of both worlds, it's possible to be anonymous, but it's also possible to follow the money.

Re: Richard Stallman: Online Publishers Should Let Readers Pay Anonymously

#76

Post by benologist »

blakeyrat wrote: post #69
TelmoMenezes wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.h... http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targe... http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/09/23/attveri... http://gawker.com/5669316/is-facebook-outing-gay-users-to-ad... http://americablog.com/2013/03/facebook-might-know-youre-gay... http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/why-go... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parall…

Ok well I'm not going to read like 500 links posted with no context. The first one doesn't say anything about harm that I can see from my skimming, and the second one is the government paying the phone companies directly, which is concerning but it has nothing to do with tracking cookies or combining data sets. That's as far down as I went.

Egyptian police use gay dating apps to identify 'criminals', tax dodgers are being identified by their lavish lifestyles on instagram.

I don't think there was ever much doubt information can be used against you.

Re: Richard Stallman: Online Publishers Should Let Readers Pay Anonymously

#77

Post by blakeyrat »

benologist wrote: post #76
blakeyrat wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok well I'm not going to read like 500 links posted with no context. The first one doesn't say anything about harm that I can see from my skimming, and the second one is the government paying the phone companies directly, which is concerning but it has nothing to do with tracking cookies or combining data sets. That's as far down as I went.

Egyptian police use gay dating apps to identify 'criminals', tax dodgers are being identified by their lavish lifestyles on instagram. I don't think there was ever much doubt information can be used against you.

And Egyptian police are getting that data via. tracking cookies tied together? Or just going to the dating app companies directly?

If you're trying to convince people, saying, "it makes it easier to catch tax dodgers" is unlikely to be very effective. Also, catching tax dodgers on Instagram doesn't require tying together cookie data, does it? I mean tell me if I'm wrong and it does.

Re: Richard Stallman: Online Publishers Should Let Readers Pay Anonymously

#78

Post by mirimir »

p4bl0 wrote: post #50
mirimir wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I know that stuff. What I don't know is how Taler exchanges would handle customer information. The reliance on bank transfers and card payments is troubling. I've read https://taler.net/ with some care, and I'm still not clear. At https://taler.net/governments I see: > Taler is an electronic payment system that was built with the goal of supporting taxation. With Taler, the receiver of any form of payment is kno…

If I understand correctly, the reliance on bank transfers and card payments is only to put money in your wallet, which is a distinct (and asynchronous) operation from anonymous purchase. Kind of like a cash withdrawal irl (except it is not as obvious as looking at the bill's serial number to track where you spent the money). For more information you can take a look at https://gnunet.org/sites/default/files/taler2016s…

Thanks :)

> The focus of this paper is GNU Taler, a new free software payment system designed to meet certain key ethical considerations from a social liberalism perspective. In Taler, the paying customer remains anonymous while the merchant is easily identified and thus taxable. Here, anonymous simply means that the payment process does not require any personal information from the customer, and that different transactions by the same customer are unlinkable. Naturally, the specifics of the transaction|such as delivery of goods to a shipping address, or the use of non-anonymous IP-based communication|may still leak information about the customer's identity.

That sounds pretty good, except for merchants ;)

But exchanges would clearly know customer identity, and they also handle payment to merchants, so there's the need to trust a single party. Real anonymity is impossible under those circumstances.

Have I missed something?

Re: Richard Stallman: Online Publishers Should Let Readers Pay Anonymously

#79

Post by mirimir »

acdha wrote: post #54
mirimir wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the title of his article is a lie, then. > Publishers must let online readers pay for news anonymously It's not anonymous if GNU Taler knows user identity.

Lying is a strong, loaded term to toss around for a difference in opinion. From the context, it's immediately clear that Stallman was referring to the relationship between the reader and the publisher. That still counts as anonymous from their perspective even if the reader also has other relationships with different parties (ISP, bank, government, etc.) on different terms.

It's disingenuous, at best, to style a system as "anonymous" when it's providing only a very limited sort of anonymity. Consider the dispute between the FBI etc and Apple over backdooring iPhone encryption. By the logic that you propose here, Apple could claim secure device encryption even with backdoors.

Indeed, claims about anonymity are a red flag for bullshit. Because it's so nontrivial. And because failure tends to be calamitous.

Re: Richard Stallman: Online Publishers Should Let Readers Pay Anonymously

#80

Post by mirimir »

upofadown wrote: post #73
mirimir wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the title of his article is a lie, then. > Publishers must let online readers pay for news anonymously It's not anonymous if GNU Taler knows user identity.

You seem to be claiming that Taler doesn't work without providing any actual arguments.

I've read the website and whitepaper carefully. I see no language about partition of trust between users' deposit accounts and payment systems. Yes, payments are blind-signed. But it's a single entity that's handling the entire process.
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