Peer to Peer … Lending (?!)

Peer to Peer … Lending (?!)

Serendipity led me to some sites today which deal with (the, to my mind boggling in its possibilities, idea of) peer to peer lending.   The concept seems to be, rather than give your money to a bank, who gives it to someone else and makes a profit, returning a little bit to you, a p2p lending site matches you up with someone who you give your money to, giving you the profit, returning a little bit to the lending site.  This means that you are taking on more risk, and also sharing more in the rewards.  On the borrowers’ side, it can mean access to capital at a reduced rate, or on more favourable terms (eg if you have a reputation for being a good payer/some other good reason to receive the money, but would be ruled out by a banks’ bureaucracy).

Are banks the next music industry?

P2P Started with Porn in 1973?!

Saw a post by Tom Koltai on Link, followed it to http://www.perceptric.com/ where he has an interesting article on the cost of P2P DVDs (perhaps more on this later – I have always wondered by people would use p2p to distribute when sneakernet would be cheaper (and, if batched, faster and easier)).  In passing he mentions that, apparently, the first digitised photo sent between peers was of (a head-and-shoulders crop of a photo of) Playboy Centerfold Lena Sjööblom [sic].  The rest is history…