Billing for internet usage

[koontz@MasPar.COM (David G. Koontz)]

From time to time there is noise about billing for information transfer 
on the internet.  Historically, it cost more to do the billing calculations
then it was worth, yet you still hear about people wanting to figure out
how.

One way would be to perform cooperative billing balances between nodes,
and allow each node to 'bill upward'.   This means that any two machines
are more interested in their relative balance than how much money they
are really spending.   There are some interesting problems of trust and
reliability, that might be solved through the use of digital money.

Then there is the wiley programmer (or machine) that applies expert
solutions to the problem trying to 'route' around billing imbalances.

With sophisticated enough algorithms such machines would be basically
trading on billing futures, perhaps demonstrating that computers could
be better capitalists than people.

Imagine a communications network that collapses because of an economic
crash.

Would the internet require the equivalent of suspension of programmed
trading (routing) and a FTC?