-- According to Microsoft, http://crypto.stanford.edu/DRM2002/darknet5.doc Darknet is being undermined by free riders. : : Peer-to-peer file sharing assumes that a : : significant fraction of users adhere to the : : somewhat post-capitalist idea of sacrificing their : : own resources for the "common good" of the network. : : Most free-riders do not seem to adopt this idea. : : For example, with 56 kbps modems still being the : : network connection for most users, allowing uploads : : constitutes a tangible bandwidth sacrifice. One : : approach is to make collaboration mandatory. For : : example, Freenet [6] clients are required to : : contribute some disk space. However, enforcing such : : requirements without a central infrastructure is : : difficult. The obvious solution is to monetize the darknet services, with very small payments, payments that would typically ad up to five dollars a month for heavy users or heavy servers -- that is to say, a half a gram of gold a month. Mojo was intended to do this but it failed, I think it failed because they failed to monetize mojo before it was introduced as service management mechanism. We should get an anonymous micropayment system working, interconvertible to real money, or real e-gold, then apply it to such applications as mixmasters and darknet. Allegedly yodel is such a system, but yodel is connected to e-rand, which is connected to some people who fail to inspire me with confidence. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG beO567eji82JoZMjbN1JCWL6vQBr301pkVztKIR+ 4HzLNwHtW3q5fJqUcxtmJZ0gjqfcEJvGFfMRkWY0c