title: Why is p2p web hosting not widely used?
body: <p>We can see the growth of systems using peer to peer principles.
  But there is an area where peer to peer is not (yet) widely used: web hosting.</p>
  
  <p>Several projects are already launched, but there is no big solution which would permit users to use and to contribute to a peer to peer webhosting.</p>
  
  <p>I don't mean not-open projects (like Google Web Hosting, which use Google resources, not users'), but open projects, where each user contribute to the hosting of the global web hosting by letting its resources (cpu, bandwidth) be available.</p>
  
  <p>I can think of several assets of such systems:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>automatic load balancing</li>
  <li>better locality</li>
  <li>no storage limits</li>
  <li>free</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>So, why such a system is not yet widely used ?</p>
  
  <h2>Edit</h2>
  
  <p>I think that the "97.2%, plz seed!!" problem occurs because all users do not seed all the files. But if a system where all users equally contribute to all the content is built, this problem does not occur any more. Peer to peer storage systems (like Wuala) are reliable, thanks to that.</p>
  
  <p>The problem of proprietary code is pertinent, as well of the fact that an user might not know which content (possibly "bad") he is hosting.</p>
  
  <p>I add another problem: the latency which may be higher than with a dedicated server.</p>
  
  <h2>Edit 2</h2>
  
  <p>The confidentiality of code and data can be achieved by encryption. For example, with Wuala, all files are encrypted, and I think there is no known security breach in this system (but I might be wrong).</p>
  
  <p>It's true that seeders would not have many benefits, or few. But it would prevent people from being dependent of web hosting companies. And such a decentralized way to host websites is closer of the original idea of the internet, I think.</p>