some prior art pointers (Re: [p2p-hackers] Altnet goes after p2p networks with obvious patent)

[Adam Back]

I released the version 0.01 of the "eternity server" 1st May 1997 [1].
It uses SHA1 hashes of URLs (rather than bodies) because eternity URLs
are intended to be persistent.  The bodies are signed and the
signature involves a hash and the first publication includes a
signature and the author's key.

Not having read the altnet patent I don't know if this helps or not.

But I think Eric Hughes (cypherpunks co-founder) had thought of
document or URL hash based routing as he described it to me (in email)
after I released the eternity server alpha.

I believe he gave some talks on his "Universal Piracy Service" around
1996/1997.  This had similar observations to eternity (anonymity +
censor-resistant broadcast channel = censor resistant publishing
system).

Zooko mentioned in [2] Eric did in fact file a patent (#6,122,372) in
1997 that included the idea of using a hash of a message as an ID of
that message.  This matches my recollection of what Eric told me of
his plans back in 97.

Also there is WAX and related work on secure online electronic books
for healthcare which involves document hashes, and sigantures for
secured hypertext links to non-mutable content [3]

I believe wax itself was published 1996 or earlier.

Anyway should give those who care about patents some things to dig
into :-)

Adam

[1] sci.crypt announce http://groups-beta.google.com/group/sci.crypt/browse_thread/thread/fc99cc9e62a17b80/9d31aebfcff358c6?q=eternity+service&_done=%2Fgroups%3Fq%3Deternity+service%26qt_s%3DSearch+Groups%26&_doneTitle=Back+to+Search&&d#9d31aebfcff358c6

[2] http://zgp.org/pipermail/p2p-hackers/2004-March/001754.html

[3] http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/7494.html

Secure Books: Protecting the Distribution of Knowledge (Make
Corrections) (4 citations) Ross J. Anderson, Václav Matyás Jr., Fabien
A. P. Petitcolas, Iain E. Buchan, Rudolf Hanka IWSP: International
Workshop on Security Protocols, LNCS

On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 07:17:05PM +0000, Ian Clarke wrote:
> http://p2pnet.net/story/3512
> 
> It seems that Altnet is finally going after file sharing networks with 
> its laughably obvious patent on requesting files by a hash of the 
> file's contents (fortunately Freenet's developers are predominantly 
> European, and thus are largely immune to this).
> 
> IIRC this patent was filed in 1997.  I think it is very important that 
> those attacked challenge this patent head-on, either by claiming it is 
> invalid due to being obvious, or finding prior art.
> 
> I vaguely recall the last time I researched this that there was prior 
> art from as early as 1990, I think it was Project Xanadu 
> (http://xanadu.com/).
> 
> Can anyone provide specific pointers to good examples of prior art?  If 
> Altnet succeeds in extorting any money out of these P2P companies it 
> will only serve to encourage them to attack others.
> 
> Ian.
> 
> --
> Founder, The Freenet Project	http://freenetproject.org/
> CEO, Cematics Ltd				http://cematics.com/
> Personal Blog					http://locut.us/~ian/blog/
> 
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