Good points (except that DRM is not going to work… I may for the initial copy (the original posted by the owner), but later…).
I hope later on the Project (should they be inclined to provide that functionality) or “interested parties” can create a MaidSAFE plugin that could be used to provide hints as to the original ownership or User ID-origin of files. It wouldn’t be enforceable, but it could to some extent assist those who want to reward the original authors.
Keep in mind original uploader ≠ original creator.
True dat.
One more layer to consider.
Bandwidth caps going to affect the core architecture? Or rather have affected them? Such a straight jacket. Can that be reversed? That will affect the way people get paid right and economic balance?
How big of a improvement without them?
Throttling, caps, kill switch… increasing prices in some places, more spam.
Wouldn’t a meshnet circumvent this? If maidsafe can form a mesh then the more people adopt and mesh with each other the less telco restrictions apply.
Yes it would but even as it becomes more widely available, its throughput will remain pathetic for years to come.
This hopefully highlights the need to at some point start paying for bandwidth (throughput) as a legit contribution to the network.
I thought that was already the case. But that to me makes more sense when the end users own all the hardware in the system. Farming bandwidth etc. because its all on an end user owned mesh. Hopefully it will compel it. I know it takes away from knocking it out of park with an original Skype type score that melts a system around it. I know that some businesses are saying things like we tried this (Skype model) and it didn’t work. Of course it was meant to kill their business. Now as they try to clamp down on bits its crucial that we pull the plug. Their toll road has been paid for many times over and they are being cash out.
Skype can be so cheap because the network is subsidized by all-you-can eat users who don’t eat all they can, while Skype (and other) users eat the remainder without paying for it.
I am surprised that the telcos still aren’t allowed to allocate costs according to very sophisticated usage metrics they can track.
And what’s more, “net neutrality” proponents claim it’s evil to throttle down power users (which is the only way to do it if you can’t charge more for extreme resource consumption) and that “neutrality” somehow makes everything fairer while it actually makes those who use resources sparingly subsidize those who abuse them in worst possible ways 
To your question about bandwidth - in System Docs it says that the intermediate nodes (those located between User and Farmer(s)) just pass the data and don’t get paid for that.
If we could just get the ideal node specs the Project SAFE team has outlined into a phone with a soft radio that could overcome the commercial radio mesh limits and make it dirt cheap then with Project Safe there might be a ready internet replacement.
Nvidia Tegra K1 is a shocker. Its like the got a Titan to run on a couple watts. Maybe Tegra K1 tables with the radio improvements, is they were left on would be a suitable lego block.
This is actually the norm, its nature. What is not natural is someone setting up barriers and charging for crossing them. We’ve become so accustomed to it that it appears natural, but both approaches are valid. In some cases it serves to charge (providing it benefits the whole) and in other cases it serves to allow free use (providing it benefits the whole). Both schemes have benefits, flaws and abuses. One of SAFE’s aims is to level the playing field to reduce the scope for abuses. Whether it succeeds I don’t know.
This might sound like a stupid question but why? And doesn’t the safenetwork harnes the collective processor power (bandwidth) of the network?
I don’t follow meshnets very closely (I occasionally check them out) so I may be missing something, but I am not aware of any breakthrough on the 3-4 year horizon.