[Gzz-commits] manuscripts/bookburnings techreport.rst

[Benja Fallenstein]

CVSROOT:        /cvsroot/gzz
Module name:    manuscripts
Branch:         
Changes by:     Benja Fallenstein <address@hidden>      03/07/16 11:51:58

Modified files:
        bookburnings   : techreport.rst 

Log message:
        start writing actual text

CVSWeb URLs:
http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/gzz/manuscripts/bookburnings/techreport.rst.diff?tr1=1.1&tr2=1.2&r1=text&r2=text

Patches:
Index: manuscripts/bookburnings/techreport.rst
diff -u manuscripts/bookburnings/techreport.rst:1.1 
manuscripts/bookburnings/techreport.rst:1.2
--- manuscripts/bookburnings/techreport.rst:1.1 Wed Jul 16 11:13:19 2003
+++ manuscripts/bookburnings/techreport.rst     Wed Jul 16 11:51:58 2003
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@
 
 :Author:       Benja Fallenstein <address@hidden>
 :Created:      2003-07-13
-:Modified:     $Date: 2003/07/16 15:13:19 $
+:Modified:     $Date: 2003/07/16 15:51:58 $
 
 (the beginning of a summary of the stuff I developed
 while thinking about Storm pointers; need to publish
@@ -18,11 +18,45 @@
 Introduction
 ============
 
-- Documents on the Web transient
-- A long-term storage system where past versions
-  remain accessible as long as someone wants to
-  access them
-- Digital signatures for updateable documents
+.. Documents on the Web transient
+
+Documents on the Web are transient: They exist only as long
+as their publisher cares to maintain them. Often enough,
+a link from a 1999 mailing list archive will not be
+retrievable today, only a few years later.
+
+.. A long-term storage system where past versions
+   remain accessible as long as someone wants to
+   access them
+
+We envision a long-term storage system, in which documents
+can be found as long as a copy exists *anywhere* in the
+system, i.e., as long as *someone* still cares to
+maintain a copy. After a document is updated, it should
+still be possible to access its previous versions--
+provided that somebody has kept a copy.
+
+It should not be possible for a publisher-- or for the
+publisher's government-- to remove a document version
+from the system, as long as someone-- possibly in a
+different legislative domain-- holds a copy.
+
+In such a system, document identifiers must be
+self-verifying; that is, having downloaded an
+alleged copy of a document from some server in the network,
+it must be possible to verify that this is a 'real'
+copy of the document, not a forged version.
+
+For individual versions of documents, a cryptographic hash
+of the version can be used as a self-verifying identifier.
+In this document, we consider the more difficult problem
+of providing self-verifying identifiers for documents
+that can change over time.
+
+.. Digital signatures for updateable documents
+
+A simple approach would be to use 
+
 - Keys expire and are revoked
 - The usual approach: Certificate Authorities (CAs)
   plus Time Stamping Services (TSSs)