5 ms·

Well than this at least makes it decentralized and cheap (though of course that central entity could provide that as well in theory...)

PeterisP 7y ago
Yes, it makes it decentralized, but so what? The whole point of this discussion asked by the OP above is to question why (and IF) decentralization is an advantage - what practical benefits does it achieve for this particular use case? Decentralization is a trade-off; it almost always incurs an efficiency cost compared to an equivalent centralized solution, so the question is if it brings some specific benefits that justify the drawbacks. Regarding costs, as I mentioned above, the verification in court (which is the whole point of this service) would be much more expensive for the decentralized scenario and the timestamping services are trivially cheap already, so if we look purely at costs then decentralization does not provide any advantage.
- anotheryou 7y ago
  I agree. > timestamping services are trivially cheap already what does it cost, where can I do it right now?
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Have the Internet Archive archive a document and it’s hash. Courts have accepted Internet Archive snapshots as evidence. More costly services would be something like DocuSign.
    - BrandoElFollito 7y ago
      How can I have the Internet Archive archive a specific file (pointed to by an URL - one for the document, one for its hash)?
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        https://github.com/pastpages/savepagenow https://github.com/pastpages/savepagenow Please be mindful about request rate and content size, we don’t want to abuse the Archive.
        BrandoElFollito 7y ago
        Thanks a lot! I was not even expecting a CLI, I just could not find the possibility on web.archive.org to request a page to be saved. Now that I scrolled down it is so obvious I do not know how I could have missed it. Thanks again!
        toomuchtodo 7y ago
        Happy to help!
  - PeterisP 7y ago
    This depends on where you live (i.e. for which legal system that assertion is intended) and what type of identity/signing process you're using, as that timestamping is usually not a separate, isolated service but as an extra add-on to the ordinary digital signing/verification of e-documents. For signing e-documents as an individual with the gov't ID chipcard I get the timestamping services for free (there's probably some limit to quantity, but it's large enough). But that, of course, depends on the national infrastructure - so it's simple and cheap for me, but I have no idea if you can do it right now easily - there are a bunch of companies that offer digital timestamping for something like $10 per a bundle of signatures, but I have no particular recommendations as I haven't tried them. For larger companies the general practice seems to be that providers of document flow/recordkeeping management software also bundle the digital signature process, integrating the timestamping services there along with other stuff such as verification of digital signatures on incoming documents, and charge some trivial monthly fee for that integration; I believe my employer is paying something like 50 eur/month for that, which is a bunch of money for an individual (but it's free for individuals) but it's tiny compared to, for example, the cost of drafting and filing a court document explaining how you made and published your document hash in some unconventional way. In any case, that means that the company has a pre-existing solution that works reasonably well and has no obvious benefit that a change to blockchain might bring. And to preempt a suggestion that this nation-specificness is a failure of centralized solutions and a decentralized solution can be global, this is not really the case - since the key purpose of e-signatures (and timestamps) is to integrate with national legal systems, a decentralized solution with no integrations doesn't work anywhere. E.g. here's a EU list of trusted providers https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/tl-browser/#/ https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/tl-browser/#/ - it's decentralized in some manner (there are many providers providing very different services in very different ways), but it's centralized in the sense that the law acts as a gatekeeper of what signing providers are considered trustworthy. You can have a "we'll put this stuff on the blockchain" signing provider, but doing the exact same thing yourself won't be as trusted, you'll need to (expensively) demonstrate how you're doing that and prove that it's actually the exact same thing.

PeterisP 7y ago

Yes, it makes it decentralized, but so what? The whole point of this discussion asked by the OP above is to question why (and IF) decentralization is an advantage - what practical benefits does it achieve for this particular use case? Decentralization is a trade-off; it almost always incurs an efficiency cost compared to an equivalent centralized solution, so the question is if it brings some specific benefits that justify the drawbacks. Regarding costs, as I mentioned above, the verification in court (which is the whole point of this service) would be much more expensive for the decentralized scenario and the timestamping services are trivially cheap already, so if we look purely at costs then decentralization does not provide any advantage.

anotheryou 7y ago
I agree. > timestamping services are trivially cheap already what does it cost, where can I do it right now?
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Have the Internet Archive archive a document and it’s hash. Courts have accepted Internet Archive snapshots as evidence. More costly services would be something like DocuSign.
  - BrandoElFollito 7y ago
    How can I have the Internet Archive archive a specific file (pointed to by an URL - one for the document, one for its hash)?
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      https://github.com/pastpages/savepagenow https://github.com/pastpages/savepagenow Please be mindful about request rate and content size, we don’t want to abuse the Archive.
      - BrandoElFollito 7y ago
        Thanks a lot! I was not even expecting a CLI, I just could not find the possibility on web.archive.org to request a page to be saved. Now that I scrolled down it is so obvious I do not know how I could have missed it. Thanks again!
        toomuchtodo 7y ago
        Happy to help!
- PeterisP 7y ago
  This depends on where you live (i.e. for which legal system that assertion is intended) and what type of identity/signing process you're using, as that timestamping is usually not a separate, isolated service but as an extra add-on to the ordinary digital signing/verification of e-documents. For signing e-documents as an individual with the gov't ID chipcard I get the timestamping services for free (there's probably some limit to quantity, but it's large enough). But that, of course, depends on the national infrastructure - so it's simple and cheap for me, but I have no idea if you can do it right now easily - there are a bunch of companies that offer digital timestamping for something like $10 per a bundle of signatures, but I have no particular recommendations as I haven't tried them. For larger companies the general practice seems to be that providers of document flow/recordkeeping management software also bundle the digital signature process, integrating the timestamping services there along with other stuff such as verification of digital signatures on incoming documents, and charge some trivial monthly fee for that integration; I believe my employer is paying something like 50 eur/month for that, which is a bunch of money for an individual (but it's free for individuals) but it's tiny compared to, for example, the cost of drafting and filing a court document explaining how you made and published your document hash in some unconventional way. In any case, that means that the company has a pre-existing solution that works reasonably well and has no obvious benefit that a change to blockchain might bring. And to preempt a suggestion that this nation-specificness is a failure of centralized solutions and a decentralized solution can be global, this is not really the case - since the key purpose of e-signatures (and timestamps) is to integrate with national legal systems, a decentralized solution with no integrations doesn't work anywhere. E.g. here's a EU list of trusted providers https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/tl-browser/#/ https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/tl-browser/#/ - it's decentralized in some manner (there are many providers providing very different services in very different ways), but it's centralized in the sense that the law acts as a gatekeeper of what signing providers are considered trustworthy. You can have a "we'll put this stuff on the blockchain" signing provider, but doing the exact same thing yourself won't be as trusted, you'll need to (expensively) demonstrate how you're doing that and prove that it's actually the exact same thing.