I was looking for online storage providers last night... they all charge an insane amount if you want to store large amounts of data (most were more than $100/month for 1TB of data... what??). So I got to thinking, what about integrating Bitcoin into a distributed file storage system?
I believe I have heard of torrent-like file storage systems, where pieces of people's personal files (encrypted, of course) are stored across other users hard drives. What about taking that sort of system a step further?
Files would be distributed across other users computers, but each user could be paid for volunteering their extra HDD space and bandwidth for the purpose. They could set their own price (in Bitcoins) per GB of storage and per GB of bandwidth, and anyone needing to store files would automatically be given the best price for storage. Sort of like a GPUMax for online storage.
Of course, you'd want each piece of the files to be backed up in more that one location, so that they are accessible regardless of whether some of the hosting computers are turned off or not. Maybe people could pay extra for extra backups too. 2x copies would be standard, 3x copies could be paid for with 50% more on the price, 4x copies 100% more, etc. And any host falling below a specified amount of uptime during a given time period would be booted from providing and/or not get paid.
The main reason for the project is this: I think individual users are able to, and much more willing to, sell online storage space for much less than a hosting company would. For example, I'd be willing to rent out 100GB of space with 500GB of bandwidth for $5/month. Dropbox will do the same for $20/month. Add another user like me, who is willing to rent out 100GB of space for $5/month, and you have your two copies, but it only costs the user $10/month instead of $20/month with dropbox.
Thoughts? Would this be doable/practical/feasible/useful?
