Solar wrote:
The central point is that there is no such thing, can be no such thing, and should be no such thing as a "global user account" or "global user ID". And that right there means that a medium that's not going "user A to user B, do you copy?" (point-to-point, like FTP / SFTP), but instead "user A to whom it may concern" (generic USB sticks, HTTP, hardcopy printouts, ...), cannot be supporting strong ownership.
Of course there _could_ be such a thing, doesn't mean there should though. We could easily setup an LDAP and make all devices use it.
I don't understand how ownership is related to "user A to whom it may concern", if user A is publishing something, then clearly it becomes public. User A may still retain some rights in terms of law, but once published it pretty much stays public. DRM could possibly help, but even that would have it's limit.
If I'm transferring files via USB stick, then why should I lose ownership? Either I'm transferring them between systems for myself, or I'm transferring ownership to someone else, both cases work with encryption. I don't really get what the problem here is.
You want to publish it, decrypt it. You want to retain ownership, keep it encrypted.
As for the OP, I'm not sure why he/she wants to use password hashes instead of actually encrypting the data.