Network Working Group J. Bedell Internet-Draft infoeng.org Expires: August 16, 2005 February 12, 2005 Information Currency Systems draft-jpbedell-information-currency-00 Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions of Section 3 of RFC 3667. By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she become aware will be disclosed, in accordance with RFC 3668. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on August 16, 2005. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005). Abstract Networked information systems enable the creation of new instruments to apply economic models and mechanisms to the management of digital information. This document describes the message formats and operations used in the first such implementation of "information currency". Bedell Expires August 16, 2005 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Information Currency Systems February 2005 1. Introduction Economics deals with the allocation of scarce goods and services [1]. Monetary systems, used by humans since prehistoric times, provide instruments that serve as a store of economic value and the medium of exchange in economic transactions. Networked computer systems present the opportunity to create new instruments of economic scarcity which are based solely on arbitrary units of information that can be exchanged and uniquely identified as being part of a limited series. These instruments of economic scarcity can be used in market-based processes to aggregate individual estimates of value into a collective valuation of the underlying information, and will enable the application of modern economic engineering principles to the management of information. By analogy with existing currency systems, information currency is the name given to instruments of economic scarcity which are based solely on information and the operation of information systems, instead of physical assets such as gold or silver, or other assets underlying the value of modern currencies. This approach is targeted, in particular, to enabling new economic incentives for the creation of information that is freely shared, such as open-source software code[2] and open-access scientific information[3][4]. In such a case, while the underlying information is freely available on the global Internet, the instruments of economic scarcity representing the open-source content can be held by the creators and traded in mutually beneficial exchanges. It is expected that the value of information currencies representing widely available and highly useful information will appreciate over time, providing a quantitative representation of the significance of the underlying information as well as a new motivation for the creators of freely-available information. This document describes the initial realization of information currency systems as implemented in the Information Currency Web Services (ICWS) system[5], with the goal of enabling interoperable implementations of economic information management systems. While the principles underlying the implementation of information currency systems are quite general, the discussion that follows will focus on their specific realization within the ICWS system. Bedell Expires August 16, 2005 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Information Currency Systems February 2005 2. Information Currency Systems The basic principle behind the concept of information currency systems is the representation of an underlying unit of information by economically scarce instruments that can be traded between individuals. This 'unit' of underlying information can take a variety of forms, including direct representations (e.g. a person's name and/or email address), uniform resource locators (URLs) of network-available resources such as web pages, or any combination of these or other representations. An authoritative server can issue a number of instruments of economic scarcity to represent its perception of the underlying information. The recipients of the instruments can then use those instruments in trades with other individuals to establish a valuation for the underlying information in a manner similar to the means by which currently existing economic instruments are valued. In addition, the twin premises of economic scarcity and lasting value for the issued instruments provide a motivation for the issuer to maintain system security, and will enable the ready evaluation of the issuer's credibility and integrity by potential customers. This is a mechanism by which the security of information systems may be quantitatively assessed, and will enable the ongoing comparative valuation of information security services provided by networked service providers. Information currency systems are based on documents presented using XML [6] for interoperability between implementations. In the following, we describe the documents used to represent information currency systems and the documents used to create and manage information currency systems. 2.1 Information Currency Units The fundamental instrument of economic scarcity is the information currency unit. In the current implementation, this is an XML-formatted document which provides the secret information which is the basis for the currency unit, a cryptographic signature of the secret information, and an identifier for the series from which the information currency unit is derived. An example of an information currency unit follows: Bedell Expires August 16, 2005 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Information Currency Systems February 2005 ---------- BEGIN INFORMATION CURRENCY UNIT ---------- https://example.com:8443/icws/seriesInfo?seriesID=36d5231ac2a1c367af54ab68f4b711e7680bb79e LFqi63EufASEu7Sx7BjeWLpT3CELp6DwUcOyYfSTz2KObHHw8c0K3z4ls17mwz9kLsoF/FSARnjs E07jKvb5YiMNX3+HFFIvbpA8LDHvtc9cDwezxWQiYbODFuKL1DdOAyUH10eBOFU06VzYDc6OlhQp jUpwSQCIDrPbtRjjLoM= MC0CFQCGH4rdS9PWTb5AUGlQFELl3keOcwIUH4s6Cp0URpu1p0p/oENmJmbp6b4= ---------- END INFORMATION CURRENCY UNIT ---------- The element contains the certification information that uniquely identifies the information currency unit. This information is presented using Base64[7] encoding of the bytes that provide the underlying value. The element contains the signature of the certification information that is generated using the public/private cryptographic keypair associated with the information currency system. This provides a mechanism for verifying that a particular information currency unit is part of the series associated with the cryptographic keys. The element is the uniform resource locator which serves as a string to identify the series and a pointer to the series information document which provides the parameters of the series. 2.2 Series Information Document An example of a series information document is the following: ---------- BEGIN INFORMATION CURRENCY SERIES INFORMATION ---------- https://infoeng.org:8443/icws/seriesInfo?seriesID=36d5231ac2a1c367af54ab68f4b711e7680bb79e Contribution of John Smith to the sample resource. http://example.com/sampleResource 225804242120f941e8196a548025fb0e3b9e761c Bedell Expires August 16, 2005 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Information Currency Systems February 2005 John Smith c8bf8edc67aff55e95b17782e4dfbba14a31f3ef https://example.com:8443/icws/services/ICWS 10 128 2005-02-05 09:35:34.071444 2006-02-05 09:35:34.071444 DSA 5421644057436475141609648488325705128047428394380474376834667300766108262613900542681289080713724597310673074119355136085795982097390670890367185141189796 13232376895198612407547930718267435757728527029623408872245156039757713029036368719146452186041204237350521785240337048752071462798273003935646236777459223 857393771208094202104259627990318636601332086981 ---------- END INFORMATION CURRENCY SERIES INFORMATION ---------- In the document above, the series indentifier is within the element, and provides a resource locator for the series information document as well as providing a unique string for identifying the series. The element provides, in the current implementation, the network location for SOAP[8] messages, as described below, to perform currency operations. The series title element, with the tag, contains the description of the series, and in this case provides a verbal description of the information underlying the information currency Bedell Expires August 16, 2005 [Page 5] Internet-Draft Information Currency Systems February 2005 series. In this case, the title describes the intention of the issuer that the series represents the portion of the value of the resource contributed by the work of 'John Smith '. The element provides the total number of certificates in the series. The initial implementation of information currency systems allows only for series with a fixed number of units within the series, although systems for ongoing issuance of information currency are possible. The element provides the number of bytes in each information currency unit that comprises the information currency series. The and elements provide the times at which the information currency series was created and at which it expires. By convention, this time is specified in the universal coordinated time scale (UTC). The element provides the cryptographic key information for the signatures within the information currency system. In the example, the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA)[9] is used to create the signatures of the individual information currency units, and the DSA generator, prime, and subprime values. The element contains the that the series is based on. For information currency systems that are based on publicly available information, elements provide identifiers for the underlying information. In the case of a network resource, such as a web page, this is a uniform resource locator for the underlying information and the digest value associated with the processing of the information. In the current implementation, there is no transform of the underlying information, as in the XML-Signature specification[12], and the digest value is simply generated from the bytes received by querying the network resource. Bedell Expires August 16, 2005 [Page 6] Internet-Draft Information Currency Systems February 2005 3. Currency Operations The first implementation of information currency systems provides a SOAP interface to the issuance of information currency. The most important operations, described here, are currency issuance, currency exchange, and currency verification. 3.1 Currency Issuance Currency issuance is the process of generating and returning new information currency units based on information submitted by a user. In the ICWS system, the certification operation is performed by the processing of a document delivered over a SOAP connection. A certification request for the series above is shown here: ---------- BEGIN CERTIFICATION REQUEST ---------- https://www.example.com/sampleResource 225804242120f941e8196a548025fb0e3b9e761c John Smith c8bf8edc67aff55e95b17782e4dfbba14a31f3ef Contribution of John Smith <jsmith@example.com> to the sample resource. (userCertificateText) ---------- END CERTIFICATION REQUEST ---------- In the request above, the (userCertificateText) is replaced by the content of a cryptographic certificate (such as a X.509[10] or SDSI/SPKI[11] certificate) providing authentication, with authorization for issuance having been previously associated with the cryptographic key used for authentication. The number of information currency units returned after processing the certification request is determined by the settings of the issuer. The issuer will, in general, reserve a certain number of information currency units from the issued series as 'payment' for the issuance. Bedell Expires August 16, 2005 [Page 7] Internet-Draft Information Currency Systems February 2005 3.2 Currency Exchange The sole possession of information currency units is equivalent to their secrecy, and the value of information currencies is based on their scarcity. Therefore, when information currency units have been exchanged between individuals in a market trade, it is necessary to exchange those information currency units with the issuer so that the original ICUs can be invalidated and new ones can be issued in their place. The current implementation of information currency (ICWS) uses a SOAP message to exchange information currency units, with one SOAP field used for the information currency unit, and the second SOAP field used for the certificate authorizing the exchange and attributing ownership. In the current implementation, the user authentication is unnecessary and an information currency unit can be exchanged and returned with the authentication field empty. The result of the certificate exchange operation, starting with the information currency unit above, is shown below: ---------- BEGIN ORIGINAL INFORMATION CURRENCY UNIT ---------- https://example.com:8443/icws/seriesInfo?seriesID=36d5231ac2a1c367af54ab68f4b711e7680bb79e LFqi63EufASEu7Sx7BjeWLpT3CELp6DwUcOyYfSTz2KObHHw8c0K3z4ls17mwz9kLsoF/FSARnjs E07jKvb5YiMNX3+HFFIvbpA8LDHvtc9cDwezxWQiYbODFuKL1DdOAyUH10eBOFU06VzYDc6OlhQp jUpwSQCIDrPbtRjjLoM= MC0CFQCGH4rdS9PWTb5AUGlQFELl3keOcwIUH4s6Cp0URpu1p0p/oENmJmbp6b4= ---------- END ORIGINAL INFORMATION CURRENCY UNIT ---------- Bedell Expires August 16, 2005 [Page 8] Internet-Draft Information Currency Systems February 2005 ---------- BEGIN NEWLY ISSUED INFORMATION CURRENCY UNIT ---------- https://example.com:8443/icws/seriesInfo?seriesID=36d5231ac2a1c367af54ab68f4b711e7680bb79e w3Q+b7lY9xl5quQlK/bnYZY5whTkXnNezsXyRcK4ezcd43Gd6etMwLEJBcpqyWmvacszqaNi/9HG lwj1LMBJH4KpBIxG+JNpMVEQyCz4jb6Lwu8NtPik3lpmjC4f3gXmI4n2cg98YCn0ngRe+jGSCg1P yNaPYYj0Op7gjusvbz4= MC0CFD2L6doX6P1c8QQKxcQZkw0vSUDZAhUAjkzd4AiWQLZ5+lL0W5Bm2fk9/QI= ---------- END NEWLY ISSUED INFORMATION CURRENCY UNIT ---------- The newly issued information currency unit is recognized by the issuer as valid, while the previous information currency unit is no longer accepted as valid by the issuer. 3.3 Currency Verification In order to verify with the issuer of an information currency series that an information currency unit is valid, a verification certificate is prepared based on the content of the information currency unit. The certification information from the information currency unit is digested and placed in a element, and the series ID is placed in a element, for a document with a root element of , as shown here: ---------- BEGIN VERIFICATION CERTIFICATE ---------- https://www.example.com:8443/icws/seriesInfo?seriesID=3e0e420f7960e54bda67e443d964d0196882b00a yemGW612d6SCLEtC34JzQLKm+KI= ---------- END VERIFICATION CERTIFICATE ---------- The issuer of the series, upon receipt of the verification certificate, can respond with a boolean indication of the certificate's validity. The fact that the verification certificate uses a digest value means that a holder of an ICU can provide a third party with a verification certificate to demonstrate that they possess a valid ICU. Upon Bedell Expires August 16, 2005 [Page 9] Internet-Draft Information Currency Systems February 2005 receipt of the verification certificate, the third party can transmit the verification certificate to the ICU issuer for verification of validity. Bedell Expires August 16, 2005 [Page 10] Internet-Draft Information Currency Systems February 2005 4. Security Considerations This work is directed, in part, toward the application of economic incentives and assessment mechanisms to the creation of information security. However, security issues related to the documents and operations presented here are not discussed. Bedell Expires August 16, 2005 [Page 11] Internet-Draft Information Currency Systems February 2005 5. IANA Considerations This document has no actions for IANA. Bedell Expires August 16, 2005 [Page 12] Internet-Draft Information Currency Systems February 2005 6. Acknowledgements This work is dedicated to those who have made economic progress possible. 7. References [1] "Library of Economics and Liberty". http://www.econlib.org [2] "SourceForge.net". http://sourceforge.net [3] "BioMed Central". http://www.biomedcentral.com [4] "Public Library of Science". http://www.plos.org [5] "Information Currency Web Services (ICWS) software". http://infoeng.sourceforge.net [6] Bray, T., Paoli, J., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Maler, E., Yergeau, F. and J. Cowan, "Extensible Markup Language". http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xml11-20040204/ [7] Josefsson, S., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data Encodings", RFC 3548, July 2003. [8] Gudgin, M., Ed., Hadley, M., Ed., Mendelsohn, N., Ed., Moreau, J., Ed. and H. Nielsen, Ed., "SOAP Version 1.2". http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12 [9] US National Institute of Standards and Technology, "Digital Signature Standard (DSS)", FIPS 186-2, January 2000. [10] Adams, C. and S. Farrell, "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate Management Protocols", RFC 2510, March 1999. [11] Ellison, C., Frantz, B., Lampson, B., Rivest, R., Thomas, B. Bedell Expires August 16, 2005 [Page 13] Internet-Draft Information Currency Systems February 2005 and T. Ylonen, "SPKI Certificate Theory", RFC 2693, September 1999. [12] Eastlake, D., Reagle, J. and D. Solo, "(Extensible Markup Language) XML-Signature Syntax and Processing", RFC 3275, March 2002. Author's Address J. Patrick Bedell http://infoeng.org Bedell Expires August 16, 2005 [Page 14] Internet-Draft Information Currency Systems February 2005 Intellectual Property Statement The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. 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