commit 0287a8b97ed9fe0fd93b60915e42bf736f2b03c5
parent 1c5d5c156a36edfb19771da633736325c7c36d73
Author: Florian Dold <florian.dold@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 02:52:45 +0200
work in progress - ECRIM article
Diffstat:
| M | summary/taler.tex | | | 94 | ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------------------------------- |
1 file changed, 57 insertions(+), 37 deletions(-)
diff --git a/summary/taler.tex b/summary/taler.tex
@@ -5,8 +5,8 @@
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{url}
-\title{GNU Taler \\
- Ethical online payments for the Internet age}
+\title{GNU Taler: \\
+ Ethical Online Payments for the Internet Age}
\begin{document}
@@ -14,39 +14,57 @@
\maketitle
-GNU Taler is a Chaum-style digital payment system using RSA blind
-signatures~\cite{chaum1983blind} and specific Elliptic curves
-constructions that enables anonymous payments while ensuring that
-entities that receive payments are auditable and thus taxable.
-Designed to satisfy ethical requirements and implemented in free
-software, Taler simultaneously improves customer privacy, payment
-security and usability.
+% Teaser missing!
+% Too much crypto lingo
+% structure (context -> problem -> solution -> impact)
+% Advertisements, local currencies
+% mention that p2p systems lack payments
+% discuss bitcoin better
+% balance between privacy and taxability
+% we don't mention energy efficiency aspect
+% mention asymmetry
+% used to read too much like a manifesto
+% bring in the news distribution stuff
+
+\emph{Teaser:
+% FIXME
+The internet urgently needs a new payment system
+to supplant the crumbling ad industry.
+Our goal is to provide a secure digital payment system for contemporary
+liberal societies as balances the state's need for monetary control with
+the citizen's needs for private economic activity.
+}
+
+GNU Taler is a new digital payment system currently under development at INRIA.
+It aims to strike a balance between radically decentralized technologies such
+as Bitcoin and traditional payment methods while satisfying stricter ethical
+requirements such as customer privacy, taxation of merchants and environmental
+consciousness through efficiency. We also address micropayments, which are
+infeasable with currently used payment systems due to high transaction costs.
+
+Unlike many recent developments in the field of privacy-preserving payments,
+GNU Taler is not based on blockchain technology, but on Chaum-style digital
+payments with additional constructions based on elliptic curves. Our work
+addresses practical problems that previous incarnations of Chaum-style digital
+payments suffered from. The system is entirely composed of free software
+components, which facilitates easier adoption, standardization and community
+involvement.
\begin{center}
-\includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{anonymous.png}
+%\includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{anonymous.png}
\end{center}
-Our goal is to provide a secure digital payment system for modern
-liberal societies as it is a flexible, libre and efficient protocol
-that adequately balances the state's need for monetary control with
-the citizen's needs for private economic activity.
-
-Transactions on the Internet tend to be of smaller value than
-traditional transactions involving the exchange of physical goods.
-This creates the challenge of reducing the mental and technical
-overheads of existing payment systems to handle micropayments.
-Addressing this problem is urgent: ad-blocking technology is eroding
-advertising as a substitute for micropayments, and the Big Data
-business model where citizens pay with their private information
-hastens our society's regression towards
-post-democracy~\cite{rms2013democracy}.
+Addressing the problem of micropayments is urgent: ad-blocking technology is
+eroding advertising as a substitute for micropayments, and the Big Data
+business model where citizens pay with their private information hastens our
+society's regression towards post-democracy~\cite{rms2013democracy}.
In Taler, the customer who pays is not required to disclose private
information to make payments, while the merchant's income is visible
to the state and thus taxable. {\em Taxable} merely means that the
state can obtain the necessary information about the contract to levy
common forms of income, sales or value-added taxes, not that the
-system imposes any particular tax code. Basically, when a customer
+system imposes any particular tax code. When a customer
pays he uses unlinkable digital coins to sign a contract with the
merchant. The contract is proposed by the merchant and is supposed to
contain all of the information required for taxation -- which
@@ -74,22 +92,24 @@ simplify payments online. However, the dominant players mostly
simplify credit card transactions without actually improving privacy
or security for citizens. GNU Taler is privacy-preserving free
software and both technically and legally designed to protect the
-interests of its users. A key question for the future of our society
+interests of its users.
+% This is WAY, WAY too strong ...
+A key question for the future of our society
is thus whether digital wallets will serve citizens and respect their
sovereignty, or serve to reinforce the panopticon in the Reich of Big
Data corporations.
-GNU Taler was started at TU Munich in April 2014 and is now being
-coordinated by the TAMIS
-team\footnote{\url{https://www.inria.fr/en/teams/tamis}} at Inria
-Rennes, with contributions from the free software community at large
-and the GNUnet project\footnote{\url{https://gnunet.org/}} in
-particular. The initial research is being funded by ARED and the
-Renewable Freedom
-Foundation\footnote{\url{https://renewablefreedom.org/}}, but we plan
-to launch a startup to drive the commercial adaptation of the
-technology. We encourage readers to try our prototype for Taler
-at \url{https://demo.taler.net/}.
+One of our future research directions is to investigate Taler to facilitate
+censorship-resistant news distribution in decentralized social networks.
+
+GNU Taler was started at TU Munich in April 2014 and is now being coordinated
+by the TAMIS team\footnote{\url{https://www.inria.fr/en/teams/tamis}} at Inria
+Rennes, with contributions from the free software community at large and the
+GNUnet project\footnote{\url{https://gnunet.org/}} in particular. The initial
+research is being funded by ARED and the Renewable Freedom
+Foundation\footnote{\url{https://renewablefreedom.org/}}, but we plan to launch
+a startup to drive the commercial adaptation of the technology. We encourage
+readers to try our prototype for Taler at \url{https://demo.taler.net/}.
\bibliographystyle{alpha}
