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I use Kagi to sell my games. There are many other alternatives besides PayPal, Google, Worldpay, etc., and I'd recommend all small digital-distribution studios compare all of them and their reputations instead of just going with PayPal because they've heard of it.

http://www.kagi.com/sell.php

I can't speak as a seller, but as a buyer I was impressed with the security and policies from Kagi (the first online payment processor I used to pay someone, many years ago). I did get their seller contract to look at and it seemed straightforward and very specific. http://www.kagi.com/

Anyone have any good, bad, or indifferent experiences with 'em to relate?

As to eBay's new Paypal requirement, I think this is solely a move to ensure that eBay ALWAYS gets a cut from the payment processing. If some people lack the required resources, or prefer to use other payment methods, oh well, they weren't profitable to us anyway!!

No moderation please, I just want this to be on record for google to find.

Display Eater (Software that maliciously deletes user data on entry of banned
registration key)

Just in case someone needs to subpoena him and to forestall him taking down his
site trying to make it harder to track him down here are his details:

His domain is reversecode.com and to this date he has a www.kagi.com
shop at http://order.kagi.com/cgi-bin/store.cgi?storeID=6F BBG&&

and his domain record for reversecode.com follows.

Registration Service Provided By: NameCheap.com
Contact: support@NameCheap.com

Domain name: reversecode.com

Registrant Contact:
      WhoisGuard
      WhoisGuard Protected (575e59eacfa44540b56fee1b6f116b63.protect@whoisgua rd.com
)
      +1.6613102107
      Fax: +1.6613102107
      8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd
      8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd
      Westchester, CA 90045
      US

Administrative Contact:
      WhoisGuard
      WhoisGuard Protected (575e59eacfa44540b56fee1b6f116b63.protect@whoisgua rd.com
)
      +1.6613102107
      Fax: +1.6613102107
      8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd
      8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd
      Westchester, CA 90045
      US

Technical Contact:
      WhoisGuard
      WhoisGuard Protected (575e59eacfa44540b56fee1b6f116b63.protect@whoisgua rd.com
)
      +1.6613102107
      Fax: +1.6613102107
      8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd
      8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd
      Westchester, CA 90045
      US

Status: Locked

Name Servers:
      ns1.networkredux.net
      ns2.networkredux.net

Creation date: 26 May 2004 23:51:49
Expiration date: 26 May 2007 23:51:49

kagi.com is an online payment service used by many shareware authors. They don't handle the tax and other corporate aspects of the business, but they do online payments, send out license keys, etc.

--Paul

I suppose I should read the whole thread to see if someone else mentioned it, but kagi is another alternative in many cases.

It's not as complete a solution as paypal tries to be, but it does allow people to sell on-line without having to become full on-line vendors.

PayPal isn't the only service on the block. Nor is it the first.

Just use Kagi.com

Sooner or later, the music industry will realize that the old ways are dead.

If the old ways are dead, why are you buying a CD in the first place?

If a band wants to impress me with how hip they are, they should include pre-ripped high bitrate MP3s or .oggs on their discs. Or, better yet, just sell me the mp3s off a web site using a service like Kagi.

Yes. I sell some images online, and I use a quite serious external payment system that makes several additional checks. All the orders I get from strange countries (Afghanistan, anywhere in Africa...) never get confirmed.

Perhaps we should start designing a system to get voluntary payments from users to hackers?

You mean like sharware? There's already a model in place. Most people use Kagi http://www2.kagi.com/

It's a good point that he runs the site with no advertising revenue. Of course, aside from buying the book, there's ways you can help him to keep doing that: personal check, PayPal, Amazon, or Kagi.

I would suggest:

1) Buy the Japanese-only authentic non-pirate DVD
2) Download the timed fansub
3) Rip the DVD at some horrendously high-quality filesize
4) Sync it up
5) (if applicable) Burn yourself a DVDR and throw it in your player

Oh yeah, don't share it. You don't even have to register the apps you use to sub it or sync it or whatever, although a donation might be nice.

Kagi has a lot of experience with this. Check them out.

-John

A while ago, I was using an audio editing program with a nagware system that would lock the program for a minute at a time while displaying its please-pay message. Eventually, I decided I wanted to get rid of the nag, but as it turned out, the program required you to print out and snail-mail an order form to get your precious registration number.

I decided that if I were going to pay for the program, I might as well get the latest version. But while searching VersionTracker, I found another editor with more features, more frequent upgrades -- and an online registration account. I had the program and an unlock code within a few hours.

My check is on the way too.

To save you some searching, here's the info from the dyndns.org pages:

Donations can be sent to:

Dynamic DNS Network Services
210 Park Ave. #267
Worcester, MA, 01609 USA

Please make any checks payable to:

Dynamic DNS Network Services, LLC

They also accept PayPal and Kagi.

I noticed some similarities between the new imac and the "i" in the Pixar logo. Hrm... ;-)

Another thing I like about Kagi is that unless I sell something, I don't get charged anything. And when I do, it's a flat rate, and very reasonable for the ability to take checks, credit cards, and foreign currency.

I'm not affiliated with them, but I am a satisified customer. If you're looking for a way to safely process a small number of payments online, look no further.

This is arguably better than having the FSF and others manage funds, from several perspectives:

• You get to deploy your money to the efforts you favor.

  Multiply this 100,000 ways to have 100,000 agents acting in favor of their interests and you should get some interesting outcomes.

• Having a centralized fund means adding in considerable bureaucracy as the managers will be legally responsible for the disposition of funds.
• Having a centralized fund manager means that the results are likely to be affected by the manager's own biases.

  Thus, while you might want to see some of your money go to (oh, say) KDE, a FSF fund is likely to "bias" in favor of GNOME.

  In contrast, if you send $5 to KDE yourself, or perhaps to a specific KDE developer, nobody else gets to gainsay you on that.

  Other issues like "licensing biases" also get resolved by this.

• Big organizations wind up having to add further bureaucracy to deal with the tax deductibility of contributions.

  If you decide to send some developer $5, you may get no tax deduction, but that may be offset if the developer doesn't need to declare it as income for tax purposes because it's a gift...

I see plenty of direct-action "break the codes and set them free" type talk on /., talk about fighting for the digital future and our rights. Wholly absent from the debate seems to be a coherent vision of what the future should be, how corporations can survive in the digital age and still make money from their efforts.

Thank you!! An intelligent, incisive question, one worthy of conspicuous, public debate.

Speaking entirely on behalf of myself, you are correct that a cohesive vision of How Things Should Be has been absent from my rants. This is because I believe designing a successful, durable, workable, just system would require the efforts of a group of incredibly talented, wise people, the likes of which have not been gathered since the framing of the Constitution. I don't believe I possess such gifts.

I do have a few vague, disconnected ideas. To fully appreciate them, however, you need to understand the framework in which I developed them:

Axiom: When the ability to copy is ubiquitous, and when the incremental cost of copying is effectively zero, the effective value of any given copy -- including the "original" copy -- is zero. (I state this as axiomatic, but I'm willing to discuss its merits. And please note that this assertion says nothing about the effort/resources required to create the original in the first place.)

As a supporting argument, consider the universe presented in the TV show Star Trek. (This may seem silly, but Star Trek is a useful framework for comparison, as everyone's familiar with it.) In a world where everything, including physical objects, can be replicated at zero cost, what is the economic impact? I argue that the market-based economy collapses completely, since its fundamental supports (scarcity and inconvenience) have been eliminated.

I also believe that the social impact will be that casual copying will be seen as perfectly okay, and that the desire to not share copies will be seen as childish. After all, if anyone anywhere -- including artisans -- can copy anything at any time for nothing, then what, fundamentally, will be wrong with copying anything?

So, in a universe where copying everything is seen as perfectly okay, is there anything an artisan should still have control over? I contend that the most crucial aspect of creativity still needing strict controls is the artisan's reputation.

Consider: On a visit to the Enterprise, you see an object you quite like. Naturally, you ask, "Wow! Who made that?" Both you and the object's creator would like to be certain you receive an accurate answer. Note that the question of whether the object you saw was an original or a copy is irrelevant. You no longer care if an object is "genuine;" you want to know who did it. In other words, you want to know about their reputation. (After all, maybe they did other cool stuff, too.)

...Okay, so we don't live on the Enterprise (yet), and we all still have to pay the rent. However, I strongly believe the concept of reputation will be central to a re-design of economics and the concept of intellectual "property" in the digital universe. Reputation will become a chief scarce resource in the digital universe, because it is an artist's reputation that will guide you to their other scarce resource: their time. And it is their time that you will be paying for (no more doing stuff "on spec").

In terms of more immediate, concrete proposals, I've heard the following ideas floated:

• Mass-Market Buskware, or the "tipping jar" model. Many question whether such a system can work on a large scale. So far, author Stephen King seems to be doing rather well by it with his free offering, The Plant. However, it's probably worth noting the primary reason he's doing so well is largely due to -- drumroll, please -- his reputation.
• Pre-Release Mass Auction (preBay?). This is a system whereby software/music/whatever is made available for a flat price, and bidders can contribute whatever amount they wish toward that price.

  For example, let's say John Carmack creates his latest game, qDuOaOkMe, and decides that, for all his efforts and that of his company, he wants to see $50 million. So he posts it to the site: "qDuOaOkMe: $50,000,000". People the world over pledge $25, $50, $100, whatever they feel it's worth toward the final price. When the price is reached, Carmack gets the money, and the game is released free to all. The entry is also kept open on the site so people who didn't bid can continue to throw tips. If the price is not met after a pre-set time, all pledges are returned to the bidders, and the game isn't released.

• Shareware. This model has met with mixed success in the past, mostly due to the relative inconvenience of sending in the requested fees. "Impulse" buying, until recently, hasn't been easy. Fortunately, services like Kagi and PayPal may well rejuvenate this idea.
• Automatic Micropayments. This is certainly an idea worthy of exploration, but I have concerns about the implications for privacy.

Other ideas are likely out there, and worthy of attention.

Also for immediate consideration, there should be some study into the use of digital watermarks for identifying the artist of a given work. Right now, all the discussion surrounding watermarks has been with an eye toward controlling proliferation of copies, which is unworkable. However, I believe even the most virulent opponent of copy protection would support using digital watermarks to identify the artist, thereby preserving -- wait for it -- their reputation.

Like I said, I don't think I have what it takes to completely design the new system. I've also completely avoided rather sticky issues, such Moral Rights (e.g. should an artist be able to enforce the declaration, "No, you can't use my painting in the background of a porno video"). But I do know that the current system will ultimately prove to be fundamentally unworkable, if for no other reason than the sheer numbers involved (how many copyrighted works will you need to test against to make sure you're not infringing?).

So, yes, you're right. We need to think about this, and it needs to be done rationally and publicly. Too bad the entertainment industry's using all that bandwidth to paint us all as criminals.

Schwab

Kaleidoscope is made by Greg Landweber and Arlo Rose, and kicks ass.

I currently live in South America. I buy development software from American companies. I publish shareware over the web and have the fees collected by Kagi. If a (say) German user pays me US$15, this goes from his bank to the credit card company, to Kagi, to their bank, to my US bank account, and then (possibly) to my local bank account.

At every step there are federal, state and city governments lurking to get their percentage - not to mention the percentage owned to the middlemen, who at least demonstrably did some usefulwork to help me finally get a certain fraction of the $15. However, in most instances - after considering all direct and indirect fees and taxes - I may get $5 profit, or even less. Under certain circumstances I may even end up in the red on this transaction.

Unfortunately governments are both slow and relatively powerless to work out an equitable international tax structure suitable for Internet trade. IMHO we're looking forward to a very rocky 40 or 50 years, while mechanisms for handling this will evolve. In the past, geographical isolation and the high costs, long delays and physical barriers to traveling and shipping put all the power in government's hands - but there's no going back. Notice that in my shareware example there's just information transfer involved, up until the point where I physically get cash from my ATM to pay for my groceries - and one of my grocers now lets me pay with my ATM card!

My point here is that the Internet and cryptography will always allow alternative pathways for information transfer. In the end this means that the current government and tax structure is doomed, they will either fade away to be replaced by a multiple private-enterprise structure or (less probably) evolve to a more adapted form. Metaphorically, governments are like T.Rex - yes, they were big and powerful, but today only their small descendants are around (birds) and better forms (mammals) are dominant.