Review my startup - Plura Processing: Web Traffic = Grid Computer

I submitted our game page as the HN link, but www.pluraprocessing.com has more general information.

Take a look and tell me what you think. We've been paying our alpha affiliates for months now and are ready to take on a much larger pool of affiliates in our beta. "Affiliates" are the people that put Plura on their site, browser game, or other content (even download apps) and get paid for their user time.

nice indeed ;P

  There is no question there will be plenty of affiliates/CPU time (re)sellers.
  The real question is whether there is big enough demand from those who need grid computing. 

When I run any process I expect it to restrict all its actions to servicing direct functions related to that process. Plura is expressly unrelated to ANY process/game it is bundled with.

I would personally be annoyed/angry that a program I was using, web-based or not, was using my computer's resources to make money without my knowledge. In fact, you're not just using my computer's resources, you're also drawing more power from my electrical grid, because a processor doing more work consumes more electricity. That's something that directly costs me, the end user, more money. So I would absolutely classify this as theft of service unless the user explicitly agrees to have Plura running in the background.

If there is ample warning to the user, I am fine with this, and would consider it a good idea. Otherwise, it feels really sleazy and wrong.

Also privacy issues in the entire concept. I didn't notice any (note: I didn't go out of my way to find one either) way for the end users to directly go and see exactly what kind of materials were being processed and what data, if any, was being collected from the user's machine. That might also be a source of trouble in the long run.