when you think about it maidsafe is like a bot net, except you knowing install the bot net, and it pays you to do it.
It is a distributed storage network. Unless you are a farmer, then you don't participate in providing storage. Just like a person with a bitcoin wallet doesn't participate in mining.
From the point of view of a user, it is like dropbox but isn't owned by a single company.
Unlike the BitTorrent P2P network, storage nodes get paid coins.