Mar 5,1997
Steve Glassman, Digital Equipment Corporation Millicent: Inexpensive Internet Commerce

Speaker: Steve Glassman

Title: Millicent: Inexpensive Internet Commerce

Comment: This talk was presented by videotape. It was originally presented February 28, 1996 in EE380. The speaker originally scheduled for this slot, Carl Anderson of the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center had to be rescheduled at the last minute. We hope this did not cause any inconvenience.

Abstract

Millicent is a lightweight and secure protocol for electronic commerce over the Internet. It is designed to support purchases costing less than a cent. It is based on decentralized validation of electronic cash at the vendor's server without any additional communication, expensive encryption, or off-line processing.

The key innovations of Millicent are its use of brokers and of scrip. Brokers take care of account management, billing, connection maintenance, and establishing accounts with vendors. Scrip is digital cash that is only valid for a specific vendor. The vendor locally validates the scrip to prevent customer fraud, such as double spending.

For details see the Millicent Electronic Commerce Project Web Page.

Biography

Steve Glassman works in Digital Equipment Corporations's Systems Research Center in Palo Alto. His current interests are electronic commerce and caching on the World Wide Web. In the past, he has worked for Xerox, Gavilan, Acorn, and Olivetti.

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