[kbenson]

Even with physical goods, what type of agent would hold the trust of both the criminal and law-abiding elements of the deal? A criminal agent cannot be trusted by a law abiding party, and a law-abiding agent cannot be trusted by a criminal party (they can just give everything back to the rightful owner).

[lawik]

I think this sort of thing could be done using Etherium. Allowing exchange in a mechanical way with code that the parties can verify on their own. A programmed agent being quite impartial. Not sure how hard it would be.

Of course, you can never verify that they will not release the code or keep using it maliciously.

[kbenson]

I think ethereal just hides the problem slightly. If it's information, as you say there's nothing preventing future use of it. If it's physical, there needs to be some holder of the item, and we're back at how can both sides trust the escrow agent?

[lawik]

Indeed. Hard to avoid an element of trust.