While the IPFS whitepaper and spec does utilize a lot of modern technology terms, it does not mean they were assembled without serious consideration and purpose. What gives you that impression?
All of those pieces have important properties which create the essence of what IPFS is. When you say Blockchain, Git, BitTorrent, I hear: Directed acyclic graphs (like git) with hashed hierarchical checkpoints (like a blockchain or merkle trees) distributed peer to peer (like bit torrent). This is literally what IPFS is, and using those terms is one way to describe it.
- ipfs-cluster - discussion on a tool we'll build to replicate archives to many nodes and have a RAID-like cluster configuration - https://github.com/ipfs/notes/issues/58
- ipfs-persistence-consortium - https://github.com/pipermerriam/ipfs-persistence-consortium
- pincoop - https://github.com/victorbjelkholm/pincoop
- http://filecoin.io (long term solution)
Authenticity over P2P is complex, that's the cost of having no server. But if such a cost can save you hardware and server hosting, it's worth it.
> What advantages does that give over just hosting the internet over static torrents?
No need for DNS. That is pretty huge.
The vast majority of this discussion is miles above my head, but this made my Spidey Sense tingle. Someone somewhere has to host the data, and seemingly in more than one place. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
My biggest concern is that in the end IPFS isn't even really "permanent" in the way I understand it. Objects added to IPFS still need someone to in a sense "seed" them for that content to be available. What advantages does that give over just hosting the internet over static torrents?