Proceedings of CRYPTO 84 on Advances in cryptology
Applied cryptography (2nd ed.): protocols, algorithms, and source code in C
Applied cryptography (2nd ed.): protocols, algorithms, and source code in C
Secure communications over insecure channels
Communications of the ACM
All-or-Nothing Encryption and the Package Transform
FSE '97 Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Fast Software Encryption
Constructing fair-exchange protocols for E-commerce via distributed computation of RSA signatures
Proceedings of the twenty-second annual symposium on Principles of distributed computing
Time-lock Puzzles and Timed-release Crypto
Time-lock Puzzles and Timed-release Crypto
Digital Ownership: From Content Consumers to Owners and Traders
IEEE MultiMedia
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Offline trading allows users to trade rights associated with digital content or any other digital asset without immediate access to a central authority. To conduct an offline trade all involved parties sign a contract describing the transaction. Later this contract may then be submitted to a central authority (e.g., a digital content repository or a bank) to conduct the actual change of ownership as specified in the contract. In this paper we show that there is a crucial problem when using offline trading: whoever signs the contract first is providing the other parties with an option to unilaterally control the contract. The other parties may sign the contract later and submit it to complete the transaction. Or they may simply discard it. If the value of the involved goods change over time, this option may have a significant value. We introduce an approach to limit the value of options granted through offline contract signing and discuss its impact, design alternatives as well as related aspects.