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The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

lil.law.harvard.edu

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Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#71

Post by portent »

nostrademons wrote: post #48
Kiro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fairly straightforward I've read a lot about ICOs and I still don't understand what's going on. I can't even tell what people are actually buying (like EOS, where it explicitly says the tokens are worthless and not convertible). An even bigger question is why people are throwing so much money on them when it's so unclear what you're getting.

It probably makes more sense when you realize that many ICO buyers are "whales", big cryptocurrency holders who bought in when the currencies were much cheaper and amassed large amounts. When the news headline says an ICO raised $180M, that doesn't actually mean people spent $180M on tokens. Rather, they converted $180M of Ethereum, at its current valuation, which they may have purchased for say $1M collectively. The…

I agree with you where you say that currencies are worth only what peoples' expectations of its future valuation will be, but that is basically a mechanism for valuing anything - not a description of a pyramid scheme.

A pyramid scheme is one where there is a continued and ongoing transfer of wealth from new scheme joiners to earlier scheme joiners, which works great until the supply of new joiners dries up - then the thing collapses.

A new currency could work (in theory) absolutely fine with no further issuance, and no new joiners beyond the first round of adopters - not at all the same as a pyramid scheme.

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#72

Post by komali2 »

enthdegree wrote: post #44
brosky117 wrote: post #4

I just heard about the "Million Dollar Homepage" for the first time last week. Would this idea (or one like it) work today? Making a million dollars for something so bizarre, fun, and straightforward sounds amazing. Can anyone reference other attempts at similar ideas?

The Yo app was valued at +5m usd less than 3 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_(app)

Wow I thought that was just a silicon valley joke haha

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#74

Post by Animats »

Houshalter wrote: post #37

Gwern has a good summary of the research in this: https://www.gwern.net/Archiving%20URLs >In a 2003 experiment, Fetterly et al. discovered that about one link out of every 200 disappeared each week from the Internet. McCown et al 2005 discovered that half of the URLs cited in D-Lib Magazine articles were no longer accessible 10 years after publication [the irony!], and other studies have shown link rot in academic li…

There's an automatic system on Wikipedia now which attempts to rescue dead links by finding the page in the Internet Archive and updating the Wikipedia page accordingly.

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#75

Post by [deleted] »

gcb0 wrote: post #70
twblalock wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how the article suggests that. The article is using the Million Dollar Homepage as an example to draw attention to interesting things about internet history, including the complexity of archiving internet content. The page itself isn't being attacked, but rather used to exemplify a broader concern. The article uses the Million Dollar Home Page as an example of an interesting historical artifact that tells…

that's beautiful and all, but nothing works like that. a page is lots of things. the html and js can be preserved like an artifact in a museum, ok. but the rest, the server hosting it, its connection to the internet, it being http only, etc... has to be preserved like architectural works. yes, some building facade migth still look like it was build in the 1800, but everything in it is updated to conform to fire code,…

[deleted]

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#76

Post by portent »

CryptoFascist wrote: post #62
nostrademons wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably makes more sense when you realize that many ICO buyers are "whales", big cryptocurrency holders who bought in when the currencies were much cheaper and amassed large amounts. When the news headline says an ICO raised $180M, that doesn't actually mean people spent $180M on tokens. Rather, they converted $180M of Ethereum, at its current valuation, which they may have purchased for say $1M collectively. The…

I keep seeing the fallacy that all currency value is based on future expectations. Here's a thought experiment... in the US, work full time while getting paid in Bitcoin. Make all transactions in Bitcoin. At the end of the year you'll need to file a tax return. Your final options are: 1. Buy some USD to pay your taxes. 2. Go to jail. Demand for fiat currencies is ultimately underpinned by them being the only instrume…

Here you describe a good reason why people need USD - indeed another currency or asset class cannot be used to pay US taxes. But its not clear to me why this means valuing currencies on future expectations is a fallacy? It just means that US taxpayers will need US dollars at tax payment time.

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#77

Post by Pulcinella »

nostrademons wrote: post #66
CryptoFascist wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing the fallacy that all currency value is based on future expectations. Here's a thought experiment... in the US, work full time while getting paid in Bitcoin. Make all transactions in Bitcoin. At the end of the year you'll need to file a tax return. Your final options are: 1. Buy some USD to pay your taxes. 2. Go to jail. Demand for fiat currencies is ultimately underpinned by them being the only instrume…

You have a third option: 3. Don't pay taxes. Live like an outlaw. Shoot the tax collector. You're driving at an important point that I want to take a bit further. Ultimately, the "backing" of a fiat currency comes from the barrel of a gun. People continue to use U.S. dollars because the U.S. has the strongest military on earth right now. Same throughout history - the backing of the British pound came from the British…

If the US and other national governments collapsed then every cryptocurrency would become worthless (Gas Town isn't going to accept your "money") or less than worthless (Thunderdome is going to eliminate you because your mining rig wastes valuable electricity).

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#78

Post by Pulcinella »

peter303 wrote: post #51

I wonder what the "rot factor" is for scientific citations? Some professional societies I am in mandate URLs for bibliographical references. Most of the time these are peer-reviewed articles. But they can be softer references like Wiki reviews, data repositories, etc.

DOIs are "suppose" to help solve this problem.

I've often encountered a sort of "reverse link rot" where a cited article is in another language or obscure journal or reference material that was never digitized and is inaccessible.

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#79

Post by Deimorz »

peter303 wrote: post #51

I wonder what the "rot factor" is for scientific citations? Some professional societies I am in mandate URLs for bibliographical references. Most of the time these are peer-reviewed articles. But they can be softer references like Wiki reviews, data repositories, etc.

There are some info/studies about it linked here that show it's fairly high: https://perma.cc/#landing-problem

Perma.cc was created by the Harvard Law School Library specifically to try to solve that issue, since so many citation links were becoming useless.

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#80

Post by nostrademons »

Pulcinella wrote: post #77
nostrademons wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a third option: 3. Don't pay taxes. Live like an outlaw. Shoot the tax collector. You're driving at an important point that I want to take a bit further. Ultimately, the "backing" of a fiat currency comes from the barrel of a gun. People continue to use U.S. dollars because the U.S. has the strongest military on earth right now. Same throughout history - the backing of the British pound came from the British…

If the US and other national governments collapsed then every cryptocurrency would become worthless (Gas Town isn't going to accept your "money") or less than worthless (Thunderdome is going to eliminate you because your mining rig wastes valuable electricity).

Maybe. My bet is that economic activity wouldn't cease in the absence of nation-states, but rather some other institution(s) would arise that currently perform the function of nation-states: physical security, dispute resolution, identity symbolism, monetary authority, etc. Cryptocurrencies have the advantage of already existing here, but there's certainly the possibility that it could be some yet-to-be-invented institution.
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