| Ethical/moral interest in the content, for one (wolfgang42 gave an example of that). That's a pretty small market though. The other content could be academic and an alternative to information akin to the old Usenet (pre binaries) and things like Gopher and BBS. The major demand for a system like this, I'd wager, is pirated content. That is, if its better than the current models. The two big models currently being used for piracy are: 1) Usenet/NZB * Centralized. Only a handful large networks with long retention. Rest are resellers. * Usenet servers adhere to DMCA; indexers generally don't * Pseudonymous, potentially anonymous * Doesn't require upload; provided quick download speeds * Based on open source and open standards * Pretty much requires payment for payserver & indexer * Little bit rougher on resources due to PAR2 and quick downloading/unpacking of large files has I/O impact. Nothing huge on recent desktop systems. * Requires a bit more software for everything to work though nowadays there are all in one packages doing the dirty work for you. 2) BitTorrent * Decentralized. * Not anonymous. Requires at least VPN, who likely log, even though they claim they don't. * Free as in beer * Requires upload * Based on open source and open standards * Self-hosted. Some indexers adhere to DMCA; generally
they don't * Private indexers ("trackers") have a reputation system requiring more than 1:1 download/upload. * Doesn't work at all with DSLite (native IPv6 + IPv4 behind NAT). * BitTorrent, like Usenet, also has abstraction software (full stack) to make life easier. BitTorrent is far better known among the general public but I regard BitTorrent as a poor man's Usenet. If it ain't on Highwinds, it ain't anywhere (of course not completely true given DMCA but still, they got 3,3k days retention). With Usenet you pay for a sub to a payserver & indexer, with BitTorrent you pay by uploading and VPN. Now, my question is, where does IPFS belong in this list? Can it compete with these 2 technologies? |