[deckar01]

The difference is encryption is usually associated with obscuring data with a key that you keep secret. In this system you broadcast out all the pieces needed to reconstruct the data. No secrets, just inconvenience due to distribution. It is not very inconvenient for an adversary that is already collecting all of your communications.

[drdeca]

I would assume that one could just use asymmetric crypto to send the parts of the data to the different parties?