Anonymous writes:

Let me explain it so simply you can't miss it. This system does not work, because by the time the content is in the hands of just a few people, they will be bidding against each other to sell it on the net. Such a state of competition will quickly drive the prices down to the cost of reproduction, which is effectively zero. Therefore you can't sell more than a dozen-odd copies of the software at a non-zero price.

If most of the people buying this software are doing so with the expectation of recouping their costs by re-selling, then no one will buy after the first few, since they will not be able to make any money selling at zero. But this means that even those first few buyers won't be able to sell at non-zero, since these second-wave potential buyers were their customers.

You're assuming that resellers add zero value to the content. They can make a profit by providing some service over and above the content itself. Take file sharing networks as an example. Current networks are flooded with bogus, incomplete or poor quality files. A nym could build a reputation as a validating service - a critic, if you like. Perhaps something like this: Alice the music critic buys copies of new content at relatively high prices from the creator, or close sources. When Bob requests a copy of a particular file, Alice encrypts it to Bob's public key and signs the encrypted copy, selling him this 'reviewed' copy for reproduction cost + profit. Bob can verify he's received a good copy, but he can't redistribute Alice's reviewed version without revealing his secret key. (Yeah, Mallory can create a one-shot key pair with the intention of revealing it and redistributing Alice's reviewed file. Alice can reduce her losses by refusing to deal with unknown buyers, or by demanding pre-payment for 100 copies up front, or something like that.) -- 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.."