I know it costs SAFEcoins to store stuff. But what about visiting webpages? And sending messages to friends?
(For the record: I think it should cost some SAFEcoin to do, as I believe this technology has the potential to finally unite money with value once and for all)
This is free and always will be.
Will cost a tiny amount
The aim is to allow storing of data and always allow anyone to get any data any time. There is also the possibility of being rewarded if you store valuable data (valuable being the debate here, but there are simple ways to do this).
will hosting a static site be free as well?
no backend like github pages
There will be a cost to upload data. Small but still there. Its a once off cost, so hosting a static site only incurs the initial cost to upload the pages.
Storing data and supplying that data back to the network allows people to earn safecoin too.
Yes, I get the basics: it costs to upload data, and one is paid for storing someone’s uploaded data, etc.
Anyway …
Wow, a response from David Irvine. I’ve looked about your blog, glad to find such a kindred spirit behind such an inspiring project.
But I disagree: in one way or another, basic internet will be paid for in SAFEcoins, as I believe these coins have the potential to become preeminently valuable. I think the ultimate promise of your work is in creating a positive economy (my term) where people pay for knowledge and truth as opposed to our negative economy where people pay for survival and mobility.
I think all of you will find the following quote from a permaculture activist worth-reading:
[[ What is more revolutionary than the knowledge of healthy water management? Viktor Schauberger said, “Capitalism rests on keeping the knowledge about water secret.” He knew that once we have fresh water in abundance, food production becomes so cheap that speculating with it is rendered useless. ]]
wait till you live in asia even developed asian countries 
Care to elaborate? Cmon 20 chars
Funny enough, I just read a comment under your “Project SAFE – Is this the fair business model at last?” that expressed the same concern I had when creating that topic today. I agree with his micro-payment suggestion. What is your response?
[[ This is what I’m getting at. It’s not backed by data unless it is required to access the data. Something only has intrinsic value if it is an essential component of something. Since access to Maidsafe will be free, safecoin isn’t intrinsically linked with it. It is merely a currency used to reward the server providers.
Safecoin is only backed by its value as a crypto-currency, i.e as a payment mechanism – it has USPs over bitcoin with speed and anonymity and may gain market share as a result but this is far from a given. Maidsafe is backed by people who offer their resources. Unless the two are intrinsically linked however, Maidsafe is dependent on the success of safecoin as a currency (as it must have value to reward farmers).
Make it that one requires tiny, almost zero micropayments to access the distributed internet services and everything changes. Then safecoins have intrinsic value backed by data. Then the system is autonomous and Maidsafe succeeds or fails on the basis of the quality of its service, not its token. ]]
My goal is free access to all the worlds data, at the moment this data is paid for by people who upload it, either via privacy (in free services), resources (run a federated service) or hard cash. If safecoin were already everywhere and anyone could easily get hold of it then it’s more an argument for the above, but it’s not there yet.
So for adoption people probably need to at least see what this is all about and those in very poor areas are at a huge disparity with some of the rest of us. So at least initially we have an obligation to help out.
So there are 2 points really, adoption and affordability/access to data. I really want all the worlds people to be able to contribute, first they need to consume though. So consumption is free, then to contribute it costs a tiny amount of safecoin. This is the current position.
As this all develops there could be differences, perhaps people can contribute free of charge on a loan type basis and possibly be paid fro that contribution, maybe folks can even provide free space for contributions on their blogs/sites/message app to help out. I think these kinds of apps can tell us what we need to know to help us as a community to select the right way forward. There will always be people hurt, I just really want to minimise that as much as possible whilst staving off the people who can afford things but prefer to “get it for nothing at all costs”. I think we all want that really.
I am sure as the story develops we will all have a much clearer picture, but initially to block people (essentially) it perhaps is a step that would cost in the long run.
That’s my view or questions 
The other side of course is that this is how we have planned the network and raised money for so we should at the least implement it in this manner now, unless we found a huge obvious issue and I am not sure this is. What I mean is there is not an overwhelming desire to take this path right now.
It could be worth to see if you can charge to surf your website or something like that. I want to be able to see if can charge for visiting my website on safe net. This way I don’t put advertisement but you have to pay to be there and can show a message that you must deposit maidsafecoins to visit the site.
I’m pretty sure you already get paid safe coins by network for being visited. Extremely popular sites will be served faster and faster (in contrast to crashing a server) via opportunistic caching though when delivered exclusively from cached nodes no network reward will be awarded to you. It’s been awhile since I’ve visited some of these ideas so you may want to fact check this, I’ll look it up as well.
@marko Here is an interesting comment as well. Searching this forum about “rewards” or “popular content” can result in some good threads. Also check out pay the producer (PtP).
Interesting @Nigel I think that people are gonna make a big profits early on same as steem and then die off.
Steem and the safe network are two entirely different animals. The fact that the safe network is a resource based economy and has network balancing algos etc I think this is less likely as well as even distribution of data, which makes this quite game changing, as this has never been a usable feature in our legacy internet. Correct me if I’m wrong but don’t upvoted articles get paid more on steem? I also believe I heard the currency was inflationary, I’ll have to read up more I suppose but these are totally different economic models and steem seems to be quite susceptible to abuse just like Reddit 
only with an extra incentive to abuse. Not a great combo
But there must be a way to withhold payment to sites visted or the sites themselves become ads. It should always be subject to the end user’s after the fact assessment.
I had an idea about decoupling the payment for an upload from the upload itself. Basically, one would pay, get a receipt (proof of payment), and then use that receipt together with a PUT.
This way, a customer could pay for the storage, give the receipt to the producer, who in turn would use it to upload the actual data. I’m not sure it’s a huge improvement, but it may help producers from poorer areas who can’t afford risking loss on storage cost; this may be exacerbated if they operated automated services, where abuse of the service could quickly add up.
This separation of payment and storage could also be used for refunds: one could revoke a receipt, and they would be credited all or some of the original amount. If the block had no more active receipts to it, it could be garbage collected. Or, the receipt could be changed to point to another block, and then there’s no need for refund, but it’s still more flexible than the once-paid-always-paid model.
i’m kind of wondering… if safecoin is not going to be divisible, isnt that going to make it really hard for trade? unless of course if the value per coin is really low.
While the exact mechanism is not yet agreed upon, it was always going to be divisible.
oh okay. i was under the impression that it was never going to be divisible. Thanks for the clarification.
I wondering if this (or something other) will make it possible for me to upload to the network (am I correct in understanding that e.g. sending an email or commenting on a forum discussion is considered “uploads”, i.e. every single bit of data is being charged for?) me being in the position that I will not use money – ostensibly. This is a principle which is connected to my religious (as it were) views. (In fact, I have not used money since 2002, (I wrote a little about it in the first posts I made on this forum  and received some flack for it, never mind…) What I’m wondering is whether me participating a forum like this one is something that can be considered a service to the community and thus would “earn” me some micro-credits, or if that would necessarily be charged as “uploads”? Or what other types of service could I possibly perform to earn these necessary credits? The computers I use are all library or public terminals.