Why would Bob be unable to strip off all signatures, process the sound file to whiten off any watermarking and re-sell it without authentication signatures under another nym with it's own reputation?

What would stop Bob from turning the sound file into a plain .ogg or .mp3 with no signatures and reselling millions of copies for 1/1000th the cost, or even for free. Or have Bob be the front of a pool of purchasers who couldn't pay Alice her fees on their own, so they each chip in 1/100th of the cost?

Why would Bob's "clients" care if the cost was low enough, or just casually traded?

Spam. The reason clients pay Alice or Bob to receive their approval ratings is to avoid downloading bogus files - incomplete, poorly encoded, misnamed, or deliberately spoofed files (cf Madonna's "what the fuck?" example). Bandwidth isn't free. Time and effort isn't free. If it's cheaper for someone to pay Alice the Editor to tell them which files meet a particular standard, rather than spend their own time and bandwidth downloading and listening to half a dozen potential copies, then Alice makes a profit. People aren't paying Alice for the content - they can get that anywhere. They're paying for Alice's opinions. The reason Alice's opinions are worth something is that they are backed by Alice's reputation. That's why Bob can't merely strip off Alice's signature, resign and redistribute: the thing he is redistributing is no longer backed by Alice's reputation, it's backed by Bob's reputation. It's no longer Alice's opinion, it's Bob's. Process is the same for other domains, not just mp3 sharing. Think anti-spam services, search engines. People aren't paying to receive more content - they're paying to receive _less_. There's a good reason why Google is able to resell its opinions to other search engines, even though those opinions are effectively freely available from other sources. -- mailto:zem@vigilant.tv F289 2BDB 1DA0 F4C4 DC87 EC36 B2E3 4E75 C853 FD93 http://vigilant.tv/ "..I'm invisible, I'm invisible, I'm invisible.."