Title
Escrow services and incentives in peer-to-peer networks
Abstract
Distribution of content, such as music, remains one of the main drivers of P2P development. Subscription-based services are currently receiving a lot of attention from the content industry as a viable business model for P2P content distribution. One of the main problems that such services face is that users may choose to redistribute content outside the community of subscribers, thereby facilitating large-scale piracy. Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems typically employ tamper resistance techniques to control this risk. We propose a system architecture that uses economic incentives instead of tamper resistance to motivate users to keep the content within the subscription community. The key technical contribution we make is to integrate a P2P file sharing service with an escrow service that reliably "pays" the party that is serving up the content. The payment itself can be realized in a number of ways, using "actual" money or bonus points such as frequent flyer miles.Moreover, our architecture facilitates trust between two unacquainted parties by offloading risk to a trusted third party, which can acquire a revenue stream by assuming this risk. To implement the escrow service securely we use cryptographic techniques, such as encryption, hashing, and error correcting codes. Our system motivates users to serve up content of high quality and verifies that users only share legitimate content and not spam, viruses or content that is not part of the subscription. We thereby address other important security concerns in P2P systems and problems like the free-rider phenomenon.
Year
DOI
Venue
2001
10.1145/501158.501168
EC
Keywords
Field
DocType
trusted third party,error correction code,approximation,system architecture,accuracy,p2p,file sharing,tamper resistance,business model
Escrow,Trusted third party,Internet privacy,Computer science,Computer security,Encryption,Content management,Revenue stream,File sharing,Tamper resistance,Digital rights management
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
1-58113-387-1
31
7.56
References 
Authors
13
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Bill G. Horne133433.87
Benny Pinkas26470444.33
Tomas Sander3317.56