Design Goals

Nine design goals were important in shaping the design of Publius.

Censorship resistant

Our system should make it extremely difficult for a third party to make changes to or force the deletion of published materials.

Tamper evident

Our system should be able to detect unauthorized changes made to published materials.

Source anonymous

There should be no way to tell who published the material once it is published on the web. (This requires an anonymous transport mechanism between publishers and web servers.)

Updateble

Our system should allow publishers to make changes to their own materials or delete their own materials should they so choose.

Deniable

Since our system relies on parties in addition to the publisher (as do most publishing systems, online and offline), those third parties should be able to deny knowledge of the content of what is published.

Fault tolerant

Our system should still work even if some of the third parties involved are malicious or faulty.

Persistent

Publishers should be able to publish materials indefinitely without setting an upfront expiration date.

Extensible

Our system should be able to support the addition of new features as well as new participants.

Freely available

All software required for our system should be freely available.