Liquidnet, a fast-growing firm that anonymously joins buyers and sellers to negotiate trades without intermediaries, says that its average order size for large-cap stocks in the third quarter was 62, 000 shares.

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Freedom of payments is an extension of financial privacy and digital cash-like transactions without financial intermediaries become a critical piece of that foundation.

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Also, as the seller would not have to deal with shipping issues because the product can be transferred digitally without any intermediaries, the number of users interested in reselling their content would be larger than the number of active sellers on sites like eBay.

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Cantor acknowledges the importance of the goal, but says insurers need to do it themselves, without the help of intermediaries who might have enough market power to cross the line into antitrust.

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Intermediaries are understandably reluctant to ignore threats of litigation, yet without a legal safe harbour that protects them from liability, it is likely that the number of questionable defamation claims will continue to rise.

BBC: P2PNet screenshot

Martin Hoskins, a data-protection consultant, worries that intermediaries will encourage consumers to hand over large volumes of personal information without clear limits on its use.

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This means online intermediaries have generous leeway to determine what content and commerce travels over their systems without the fear that they will be overwhelmed by lawsuits if other parties object to some of that content.

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When other intermediaries such as Lehman and Refco went bust, most customer futures accounts were transferred to other firms without incident.

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