Information Valuation - The Most Buck for the Bits?

Rational asks: "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?"

Comments

Headlines.

[blair1q]

"We win" -- VE Day, 5/8/1945

Calculate the cost of that.

--Blair
"Hint: don't just count $."

Glib reasoning

[SirSlud]

> 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.

Well, the money is being paid (presumably) for the stats and inventory of that user. So saying the 'value per byte' based on the metrics of the key is like saying that paying 1000$ for a key to a safety deposit box with 1000$ in it works out to (1000/metrics-of-key)$

So the real cost-per-byte number for these EQ accounts relates to how many bytes are in a full player record for an EQ account.

Anyhow, I'm sure some company out there has paid in the thousands for a few lines of code.

This does make me think about my 'Guiness Book of World Records That We'll Never Know' book I wish I could have. Whats the furthest a rental cars keys have ever been from its associated car, and is there an interesting story about it? You get the idea ...