Network Working Group J. Bedell
Internet-Draft infoeng.org
Expires: August 16, 2005 February 12, 2005
Information Currency Systems
draft-jpbedell-information-currency-00
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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".
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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.
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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:
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---------- 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
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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
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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.
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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 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.
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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 ----------
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---------- 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
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receipt of the verification certificate, the third party can transmit
the verification certificate to the ICU issuer for verification of
validity.
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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.
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5. IANA Considerations
This document has no actions for IANA.
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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.
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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
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