Status of Cryptography Research in implementation of the EUCD

[Jeremy Scott-Joynt]

Sorry - only just noticed this gem from Owen in the midst of a thread I 
wasn't following:

On Thursday, August 15, 2002, at 07:30  pm, Owen Lewis wrote:
> 1. Markets are largely self balancing.
>
> 2. If the law is a bad tool to redress market balance, vigilantism is 
> surely
> worse.
>
>

I can't let that one go. I've spend the last two years sitting in a 
variety of newsrooms watching markets attempt to "self-balance" and in 
the process watching a huge amount of unnecessary damage being done to 
people and the economies in which they live. Markets may be 
self-balancing, but only in the imaginations of economists who believe 
that everyone has perfect information and perfect access to the market. 
Real world's just a little bit different. Go back to Ricardo and Smith 
(and Stiglitz!) and reread, mon ami... and while you're at it, consider 
that a genuinely free market would be akin to anarchy, And I guess we're 
all bright enough to know that in an anarchy, the biggest guns tend to 
rule all.

As regards relevance to crypto - well, monopolies encourage the 
production of bad code. And unregulated markets in a global economy 
produce monopolies. Bit of a figleaf for a rant, I know, but there you 
go...

______________
jeremy scott-joynt
t +44 (0)797 325 7380
e jeremysj@pobox.com