Agents and Peer-to-Peer Computing, Third International Workshop, AP2PC, 2004, New York, USA

In P2P systems, peer and web services in the role of resources become shared and combined to enable new capabilities greater than the sum of the parts. This means that services can be developed and treated as pools of methods that can be composed dynamically. The decentralized nature of P2P computing makes it also ideal for economic environments that foster knowledge sharing and collaboration as well as cooperative and non-cooperative behaviors in sharing resources. Business models are being developed, which rely on incentive mechanisms to supply contributions to the system and methods for controlling free riding. Clearly, the growth and the management of P2P networks must be regulated to ensure adequate compensation of content and/or service providers. At the same time, there is also a need to ensure equitable distribution of content and services. This workshop brings together researchers working on agent systems and P2P computing with the intention of strengthening this connection and cope with the above mentioned issues. http://p2p.ingce.unibo.it/2004