The Economics of Censorship Resistance

We propose the first economic model of censorship resistance. Early peer-to-peer systems, such as the Eternity Service, sought to achieve censorshop resistance by distributing content randomly over the whole Internet. An alternative approach is to encourage nodes to serve resources they are interested in. Both architectures have been implemented but so far there has been no quantitative analysis of the protection they provide. We develop a model inspired by economics and conflict theory to analyse these systems. Under our assumptions, resource distribution according to nodes’ individual preferences provides better stability and resistance to censorship. Our results may have wider application too.