value of data

[wessman]

A Slashdot reader recently dropped this thought:

"I've heard of Everquest accounts sold for upwards of a thousand dollars... Considering that what is actually for sale is just an username and password, which generally comes up to less than 20 bytes in total, this amounts to over $50 per byte. What are the most expensive pieces of information that you have heard of, in dollars per byte? Perhaps satellite pictures? The Human genome?"

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/10/2150217

... I have to argue that while an Everquest account can only be used by one player, other bits of data info like satellite pics and genome maps can be shared freely now, thanks to P2P.

My question then is: Are there huge underground science-related P2P/file-sharing communities out there that are trading otherwise valueable data between labs, businesses, competitors, etc.?

It's an interesting application on P2P, if you ask me.

Thoughts?