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Meh... Flattr has been around since 2010.

enter Flattr:

You know that concept already exists and has existed for years, right? It's Flattr. (Founded by Peter Sunde. If you don't know who that is, look it up.)

Dear Google,

Why didn't you just buy Flattr instead? https://flattr.com/

(And pay off Brokep's debt while at it)

What ever happened to micropayments?

It's been almost 20 years now and the banks STILL refuse to get out of the way.

With Flattr, that problem has mostly been solved. You transfer a relatively large sum to them (compared to the value of each donation), use it to reward a bunch of recipients over time, and the recipients pull money out of the system once enough has accumulated.

By doing it like this, the bank transaction fees do not apply to the individual microdonations, only to getting money into and out of the system. Of course they charge their own 10% fee, but imo that's tolerable and no longer the prohibitive overhead that used to haunt microdonations.

I agree with this, sites set their subscriptions way too high. I think something like Flattr, attached to something everyone already had money in (Paypal? iTunes? Google something? Amazon? Facebook credits?) might work on an okay scale.

Are you familiar with Flattr? It's structurally quite similar to what you're discussing, so might be worth a look. One difference is that you don't pick how much you want to pay each site. Instead, you decide how much you want to spend per month total, and then you just flag sites with "pay this guy". Your monthly payment is divided equally among all flagged sites. So e.g. if you pay $1/month and click the button on 20 sites, they each get $0.05.

Some pros/cons to that model, but one aspect that I think is a good idea in that approach is that it consolidates the "hump" of laying out expenditures to one decision, that of signing up for Flattr to begin with. Clicking on sites during the month doesn't cost you more, but just redistributes the money you already paid, so there may be less mental resistance to doing so. On the other hand, it also means there's no real way to signal that you liked both Things A and B, but A a lot more.

Have you teried/seen Flattr?

I'm not affiliated with them or anything, I stumbled across that while reading a blog post and I liked the idea. I have yet to find a page that I would give a Flattr to, but the idea is compelling.

Most of the proposals are based on aggregating the "give this person 3 cents" indicators through some kind of intermediary platform, not processing them all on the spot. For example, with Flattr you pay Flattr once per month, and then you indicate how you want the money distributed by clicking on various things. The money isn't sent immediately then either, but accumulates in the recipient's acocunt, and is paid out when they reach a threshold. So on both the pay-in and pay-out sides the transactions are fewer and bigger.

The trick is getting enough people to sign up for such a thing for it to be at all viable.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Flattr which was made to address this exact problem. Of course, the issue with Flattr remains that it is opt-in so only those that really care will use it, and a low user base will mean content creators don't put Flattr buttons on their websites.

This is exactly the problem Flattr was invented to solve. Users simply tip for content they like - and since each user has set the max size of their monthly tipping jar themselves they'll never tip more than they can afford.

http://flattr.com/

Disclaimer: While not associated with Flattr in any way, I know several of the people on the team. They really are out to make the world a better place for content authors.

Seen Flattr? Sign up for a flat monthly payment of your choice, click the Flattr button on sites you like, at the end of the month your payment is divided equally among all the sites you Flattred. It's a fantastic idea and makes it easy for folks to decide how much they can budget for website payments. I really wish it'd actually take off.

I honestly wish there was some sort of scheme where you could have some sort of microtransaction way to give $$$ to websites you use.

Forgot to add this in my other post, but you might be interested in Flattr, a product from one of the PirateBay guys. I've seen it pop up in a few places.

You may be interested in Flattr.

I honestly wish there was some sort of scheme where you could have some sort of microtransaction way to give $$$ to websites you use. Say you like /. a lot, you could decide that every time you visit, you'd pay $0.01 with a maximum of $0.25/day, say you don't like as much another site but you don't want to completely freeload, you could decide you still give them $0.01 but only with a maximum of $0.01/day.

You mean something like Flattr ?

I can't speak for the GP, but I'm a member of Flattr, which means I put at least 2 Euros / month in the tip jar.

Or... I would, if more sites had a Flattr button so I could tip them. Most months, my 2 Euros are just transferred automatically to charity.

Lets wipe out copyright and find some way to keep the artists creating new works.

Flattr! ;-)
It's funny, because one of the other Pirate Bay convicts came up with that, presumably as an answer to your question.

It's not only a problem from the privacy standpoint, but also in terms of what kind of behaviour it encourages, from online services to journalism.

The paywalled model is utterly ridiculous for the internet and the ad/privacy supported model is utterly destructive. What we need is a honors system like paying for deadtree newspapers (except with user selectable amounts). It does not eliminate ads, but generates enough revenue to act as a counterweight, that makes it easier for the business owner to care about the readers / users of it's product.

The honors system needs to consist of fine grained enough micropayments so that different aspects of a service / product can be rewarded, I want to click a button on the page of a Guardian / Economist article if I thought it was any good, to create an incentive to write further good articles.

There are some micropayment providers that accomplish something similar already, but not nearly in a wide enough scope yet. One that I'm using (and won't name apart from this link) allows micropayments to almost any url, github projects, twitter users, individual tweets and other stuff, that is a good first step. It is still in infancy, but I'm using it because I want to vote with my wallet.

"If you're not paying for something, you're the product" is the mantra, but the often forgotten corollary to this statement is that whoever pays has the influence. I want to actively push the worldview of an open, honors system based internet so that we can have good content and freedom at the same time.

http://flattr.com/

Been done already. Also namely how wikileaks still can get funding.

Flattr is still open for donations to WikiLeaks.

https://flattr.com/profile/WikiLeaks

http://flattr.com/ seems to have it about right. You add money to your flattr account, then you can pay in small amounts and it all gets totaled up and distributed at the end of the month, where they take a flat 10%.

One, very limited, alternative to PayPal is Flattr. It is however only an alternative when it comes to donations, as the whole service is build around making anonymous micro-donations and not build as a payment service. Thus for donating to your favorite blog, podcast or Free Software project, it can be quite useful, for paying at your favorite retailer, not so much. Flattr also has the problem that it is not very well known outside of Germany, so while you can find it at a lot of German sites, you can hardly find it on any English ones.

Your links makes me sad they are just short telegram notices, so I guess I shouldn't feel that bad for missing it even though I get the paper every morning. :-/ Paying so much just to beable to discuss and keep current while getting so little content feels bad, maybe I should spend that money on flattr.com instead.

Really? From the Flattr FAQ at https://flattr.com/support/faq

How do I get money in and out of the Flattr system?
- [...] To get money out of the system, we currently support PayPal only.

While I like the work that GeoHot has done and have been a beneficiary of his work this seems a little contradictory.

It is great that GeoHot is fighting for free speech but seems odd that he is using Paypal, a company that refused to process payments for Wikileaks. Wikileaks were publishing the same information as both The Guardian and The New York Times. It seems quite clear that Paypal is no friend of free speech.

Maybe he ought to use a payment system that allows micropayments from thousands to achieve his goal such as http://flattr.com/ ?

It seems that some wise compromise is necessary for the case. Perhaps a mixture of very conservative model of advertising with some micropayment system like Flattr. This will solve two problems - make donating easier and diversify income sources. The more so as the Flattr users are already willing to pay for Wikipedia - https://flattr.com/wishlist

How do I get money in and out of the Flattr system?

- Currently, Flattr supports most credit cards and direct banking. We're using Moneybookers and PayPal to achieve this. To get money out of the system, we currently support PayPal only.

Wikileaks user profile contains news tidbits that link to wikileaks.org and are redirected to wikileaks.info, a site Spamhaus recently wrote about. I'll wait and see until I have some evidence that the money sent throught this account does really reach Wikileaks and not some clever Russian.

https://flattr.com/profile/wikileaks

Really editors, was that so hard?

Holy Crap, how did you do that?

I imagine you probably had to open the page, take a screenshot of it, paste it in a word document, attach it to an email and send it to some link extraction service!

That's a lot of work just to post the link man, you expect editors to just find this kind of time?

As opposed to posting a link to another board that has am IMAGE of the url; (madness!!)

here ya go:

https://flattr.com/profile/wikileaks

Really editors, was that so hard? My new-years resolution? Find a site that is as good as Slashdot used to be.

Examples:
http://flattr.com/

More?

Flattr is on it... http://flattr.com/ From their blog http://blog.flattr.net/2010/12/claiming-content/: "Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Flattr could figure out that you own a piece of content and automatically let others flattr it, without you doing anything? "

I don't know anything about PayPal or Xipwire, but flattr is one open channel to donate money to wikileaks. flattr don't have a bank insurance, but it's only a payment service, not somewhere you put all your savings.

I'm kind of split in this matter. On one hand, it is absolutely awful that different financial service providers(*) refuse people to donate money to wikileaks and I would like to show my support by donating money to wikileaks. On the other hand, guilty or not, I don't like how Julian Assange broke his word to the Swedish prosecutor and I also believe he is guilty as charged, even though I don't yet know for sure what crime he is charged of (there is just no reason for the women to accuse him of anything unless he was guilty, but several reasons they shouldn't, given that they even before this happened was public figures and how important their good name is for their political carriers and that some of Julians Assange followers are fanatic nuts that could try to hurt them (their carriers have indeed already been damaged and there have also been ugly and illegal attacks committed by Assange-supporters, as of today only property has been damaged)). If I where to donate money to wikileaks, I want assurance that non of it is spent on Julian Assanges private mess.

(*) I'm not even sure that it is legal here in Sweden. Similar refusals from banks to forward money to legitimate organisations, have in a not so distant past, lead to banks loosing their bank permit in Sweden. Swedish banks are not allowed to force feed their opinions to their customers and are obliged to treat everyone and every (legal) organisation equal.

On a side note, I'd suggest we start organizing "Wikileaks fundraiser parties". Seeing as (nearly) all other ways of funding them has been blocked by the oh-so-press-friendly US govt. & friends, we'll simply need to collect the money the old-fashioned way and have organizers do the actual fund transfers. (Using Western Union or similar, I guess). Oh, and 'till these things get up and running, I just signed up for Flattr. Limited to $2 a month, but hey, every little helps.

Take a look at http://flattr.com/. I think micropayment methods like this might become the way of supporting content that you really care for on the web.

Just make a http://flattr.com/ button so people can donate easily.

You can get piles of cool stuff for free. Or you can be an honorable, ethical being. You don't get both.

Why not?

Seems perfect for Flattr.

We really need a wider adoption of a system like Flattr. We could download music, and still pay the artists (and only them).

Great pilot episode. I will definitely continue watching. I just wish they had a Flattr button. I like to set myself a limit on my monthly donations to free culture projects. I would donate to them this way.

buying cultural works is so passé.
Financing an artist is.

It is a paradigm shift :
http://flattr.com/

Pirating has reached social acceptance, but hey, so has pot smoking. Social acceptance hasn't changed the fact that your government can throw you in jail at any minute.

Not that the rest of your post isn't on target — I think it is — but, dude, have you been paying attention?

This part is still technically true, but in a growing number of places only technically, and that not for very much longer. We all know the drug warriors are lying and have been lying all along (or rather, largely, to be fair, loyally repeating unexamined falsehoods), every bit as much and for the same reasons as the tobacco industry: because what they do gets them paid, and once they got that working for them they degenerated to raw tribalism, where everyone outside the tribe is, to choose the correct words, fair game.

And this correction is a ray of hope, perhaps an answer: OSS and its relatives can be grown at home, too, and the (if you listen to the tribalists) idealistic unworkable ways of running an economy are repeatedly being shown to work. Even if we ignore the playthings, a large majority of the products of free culture are crap, but have you checked the startup business (i.e. the businesses that got beyond plaything status) failure rate lately? Strangely enough, a large majority of them are crap, too. What's good, lasts. It's almost a tautology.

So support flattr, empty though it is at the moment. Get yourself on the beta invite list, and when you get in drop a euro a week into it, help put enough money in the pool to make it worth indie projects' time to put their products on it. Try to imagine what happens the first time one of the standouts hits.

I'm serious: flattr is the foundation of the right way to do it, it's pay what you want made so easy you can easily ask even kiddies "are you serious? you can't afford a nickel a day?" and not just shame them, but entice them into contributing. Because they can reward their friends, too.

Yes, there are legal issues to work out: how to avoid flattr getting sucked into lawsuits over who has the right to flattr'd material just for starters, so it'll have its ugly spots. Flattr will have to keep records of every transaction going back many years. I think they'll need ways of going back to correct flattrs that haven't yet been paid, so you can redirect or cancel the ones you've found to be plagiarized, or to just not stand up on reflection.

But imagine it again: you're contributing generally exactly as much as you're happy to contribute anyway, and here's something you like. There's the button. Imagine that button on every site you've had the impulse to reward. Imagine what happens when one of the big projects hits a release, or someone posts a genuinely entertaining video or beautiful photograph. Or you go back and reread a favorite article and find it's still worth a bump.

For example, what should professional musicians do, only record advertisements?

I am sure that, like me, you know many music fans who buy CDs "for the artist" but never even open the case : they have all of it in MP3s. Sell goodies, sell concert tickets and even send simple $30 bricks saying "I gave $30 dollars to artist X" to put on display and people will buy them if they like your music. I think that systems a la flattr should have been tried by majors at least once, as they are probably the antidote to the current situation. There are other models, like the so-called 'ransom model' : "I'll release a new album if the donations reach $15,000, I'll give back if they don't". Commercial use of a work includes the use of a song in a party where there is an entrance fee, on a radio where there are advertisements, on a website that tries to sell something.

I know that all these models seem risky, but really, relying on the scarcity of copies to pay back artists seems safer to you ?

Or computer games - I can't imagine a business model that would work for them if non-commercial sharing was allowed.

The problem is, I can't imagine a situation where it would be possible to technically enforce a copy interdiction and still have freedom on internet. Dwarf Fortress has a business model that works (donation based, the game is free, awesome and obscure), World of Warcraft has a business model that works and would work even if you were able to share copies. What is certain is that the current model of Doom wouldn't work, does this mean they are condemned ? Well they are condemned to change, that is for sure. I could easily see them sponsored by ATI or NVidia.