RE: [projectvrm] MaidSafe claims to deliver world's first 'safe' network

["Crosbie Fitch" < >]

From: Nathan Schor
        
>Form the article:  

>"So, instead of paying for digital services with privacy, 
>users on MaidSafe's network pay with hard drive capacity
>they're not even using. Which - frankly - sounds like a
> far fairer, more egalitarian 'client/server' relationship 
>than the one we have now."

Given privacy is inalienable, one cannot pay for anything with privacy.

Distributed systems do tend to be reciprocal as in the more resources you
provide, the greater the benefit you accrue. A bit of a stone soup
phenomenon.

>"Consider the problem content producers such as publishers
> have in getting people to pay for accessing their information.

Once upon a time, a publisher was someone who delivered information to the
public, a public who didn't have to pay to access that information. The only
payment was for copies (a reproduction monopoly typically being enjoyed by
the publisher for a 'limited' time).

The point about publication by a publisher, was that once information had
been published, it was then in the public domain (the public didn't have to
pay to access it).

Hence, universities publishing their research, for the benefit of the
public.

> Again, this network could offer a way to earn money from 
>readers without having to rely upon - or resort to - advertizing.

'Earn money from readers'?

One generally earns money from work.

But of course, an author could invite his readers to pay him for his work.

>This could very well be the micropayments dream that's long
>been talked about and hoped for, but not yet executed effectively in
practice." 

It's not so much the payment that needs to be small, but the exchange.

Instead of $1 for a paper copy (of a million printed). It's $1 for a
millionth of the author's labour - or a $1m fund stumped up by a million
readers to commission the author's labour.

Instead of one big exchange between author and publisher, there are a
million micro-exchanges between each of a million readers and the author.
But, in both cases, it's an exchange, a bargain, a business deal, a
publishing contract (whether singly or severally).