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Perhaps the worst violater of sending unsolicited SMS messages is the company SMS.ac out of San Diego, California.

They've got a track record of trcking users into giving up their passwords to AOL and Hotmail accounts and then using the addresses those accounts contain to send messages to your friends and family that appear to have been sent by the unsuspecting victim. In one case Joi Ito was compromised and when he pubilshed his troubles on his blog they threatened him with legal action!

A search on Technorati http://technorati.com/search/sms.ac%20complaints will reveal an astonishing number of people that have been victimized by this company.

If you haven't heard about this, you really should take a few minutes to check out the scam. The lure is free sms messages...they claim 5 per day, but what happens is shortly after you sign up you begin receiving "friend requests" not dozens, but four or five a day. This doesn't seem like much but if your premium sms charge is 0.50 and you get 5 per day times 30 days per month well...most people on /. can handle that math.

I signed up to do an investigation for my blog and discovered some support for the complaint that these "friend requests" are company originated. Over the course of 3 months I had probably at least half a dozen requests by different screen names with the same photos as well as multiple requests by the same screen name.

Now if there are the millions of members they claim, what are the odds of two people scraping the same images? And of course two different people with the same screen name is an impossibility.

Adding insult to injury (I mean besides the couple hundred bucks I shelled out to verify this) the company actually had the audacity to post a "Cellular Bill of Rights" in my opinion, this is like the fox being left to guard the chickens.

Of course unlike Voice Spammers that are paying to place and terminate their calls, the folks at SMS.ac obviously aren't paying much if anything. Complicit in this, though to what degree they're aware of the issue is Qpass http://qpass.com/ and their m-Qube system for non-operator originated mobile wallet billing.

Personally, I believe enough complaints to Qpass would put a dent in SMS.ac's evil ways. Believe me, they are evil. People lose their phones over this, and it's the one's that can't afford it...kids that didn't know any better who get hurt. Read the complaints for a while and you'll be as indignant as I was when I wrote about their Cellular Bill of Rights http://technorati.com/search/sms.ac%20complaints

Rob, if you want to sell subscriptions, I will pay. I even suggest taking a look at Qpass to see if they might be a solution. They offer support for subscriptions.

-Vercingetorix

What you're really concerned with is a usability issue. Fairtunes has pretty crappy usability, it's true, but the underlying idea is good.

There's nothing to prevent individual bands from setting up paypal accounts, but this is a clunky method -- probably, people would only tip bands they really like, since it takes effort to go to a band's website, find their paypal email address, and then paypal the money over.

However, something like Qpass would be super, especially if it were integrated with gnutella or winamp & there were a match-as-you-type interface. You type in the artist name the server gives you feedback to make sure you enter the artist's name correctly, then tip with as little or as much as you want. your whole qpass account gets charged to your credit card at the end of the month, so you could pay britney spears $0.01 (probably more than she's worth) for your mp3 of "Baby One More Time".

In fact, every website should hook up with qpass to allow for microtips, particularly super ones like slashdot.

Check out Qpass. They're the system that drives the likes of NY Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal Interactive, Corbis, etc. They've been successfully handling micropayments for three years now.

-Vercingetorix

Joseph Elwell.

A large number of utilities are moving toward power brokerage in their business focus, and away from power generation.

As the industry is being deregulated, there is more money to be made buying surplus power (really, the RIGHTS to power, at a time when there is a surplus) and then re-selling it on the spot-priced market (at a time when there is a defecit of power). Think: Electricity day-trading; Power arbitrage.

Existing power utilities are dropping expensive upkeep on older generating plants, and just letting the plant run down until they officially "sunset" it. Actually, many of them are for sale right now! As the CNET article mentioned, they aren't building new generating plants.

And just as we are seeing with telcos, there are more and more 3rd parties and middle-men moving in to make money on "market inefficiencies". They aren't creating new power, only buying existing power at a lower cost and re-selling it at a higher cost. If the consumer and the broker are the ones reaping the financial reward of this more efficient market, then the generating utilities are the ones who are paying for it. In this case, it IS a zero-sum game.

Here is where a comparison to telcos falls apart. Ameritech likes brokers because if demand increases, they can just build new facilities to meet the demand. Brokers help them sell MORE service. (Don't even get me into a discussion about the quality of service 3rd parties typically provide.) People don't protest the construction of a new phone switching station in their neighborhood. Hell, most folks don't even KNOW what that boxy building with no windows behind the supermarket IS. Not so with coal/oil/trash-burning power plants. Or a new dam on the river that will make a lake out of a couple of small towns. Or a nuke plant.

Virginia Power doesn't like brokers. They want to BE a broker. The costs of being a generator are just too great, especialy now in a broker's market where wholesale power margins are too tight. Better to slowly abandon the facilities and make money from pushing paper.

July, 1998 was hot summer. A number of power companies had plants out of service for maintenance (and Y2K remediation). Demand shot up with the temperature. Electricity that had been previously trading on the spot market at around $0.03 to $0.05 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) soared to $7.00 per kWh. That's an increase of greater than 14,000 percent! Illinova Power (Illinois) lost an entire year's worth of profits in one week. FirstEnergy (an energy trader with no generators of their own) was also harmed because other power-generation companies defaulted on their delivery contracts. (Source: New York Times, July 7, 1998 "Demand Surge Costs Utilities Huge Loses on Open Market". Archived article for $2.50)

Here's a fictional example to show how unregulated markets can hurt consumers:

PowerCo operates two 500MW plants (Alpha and Beta) near the City of Ciudad. There is a transmission line into Ciudad; it has a 100MW capacity. Ciudad can use it to import power from elsewhere on the grid to supplement what it can buy from PowerCo. This helps out on hot summers. Ciudad has a fairly consistent demand for 1000MW.

The current price for elextricity is $0.05 per kWh. Both plants are operating at capacity; Ciudad isn't importing any power over the transmission line. Each plant costs $20,000/hour to run at maximum capacity, but at $0.05/kWh, they are each pulling in $25,000, so PowerCo is making $10,000/hour profit. So far, things are hunky-dory.

Beta plant breaks down. Ciudad is now buying 500MW from PowerCo (getting it from Alpha), and supplementing that with 100MW from the transmission line. Ciudad is still 400MW short, and will probably send kids home from school and give city workers the day off, plus a few regional brown-outs to conserve power. It costs PowerCo $5,000/hour to pay the interest and salaries for Beta, even when it is broken. The shortage of available power raises demand for electricity and with it, the price.

Here is a quick table of power prices and the amount of profit PowerCo makes with Beta shut down:
Price - $/kWh Profit - $/hour
$ 0.05 $ 0
$ 0.075 $ 12,500
$ 0.10 $ 25,000
How soon do you think PowerCo is going to repair the broken Beta plant? Anyone with an MBA will tell you that the goal is to maximize profits, not sales.

This kind of scenario was prevented when power utilities were regulated for the public good. PUCO's required that utilities supply all the power that the public demands, fixing sales volume. They also fixed price and profit levels. Not so in this (admittedly simplistic) completely open-market model.

All of that was a long-winded way for asserting this:

In the current climate, there is little business incentive to increase the supply of power. It is too expensive to build and run generators. They are dirty, and people do not want them built near them. The expense to make them cleaner is far too great to appeal to most power companies in an unregulated industry. The demand is increasing; there is no question about that. With supply and demand out of balance, prices (and profits) will increase. Power brokerage is where the money is. Existing power companies' move away from generation toward brokerage will decrease the supply.

Watch for more blackouts!

Qpass already offers a wallet serice that can be used on *any* merchant site.