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Paying For Content In The Future
Kyobu writes: "Ars linked to Put a Dime in the Heavenly Jukebox, a proposal for making information free as in speech without preventing producers from receiving money, by charging ISPs based on the number of tagged files they transferred, and then transferring the charge to users in the aggregate. Although maybe not perfect, it's a pretty interesting idea, and well-argued." There's several really good points in here, and while it probably isn't going to say anything you haven't thought of (and in many cases, rejected long ago as impractical), it's worth your time. Something is going to have to change -- the question is, will it be better or worse.
I don't see how this scheme would prevent some kind of encrypted napster/gnutella/freenet service. If the copyright tags are garbled then you can transfer copyrighted works between peers without them being clocked by the ISP. Charges for duplication of content between peers would not be logged.
If enough consumers knew about it they'd all use it and drive their subscription charges down.
+++++
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The harder you look the less you see. That's what we're up against.
Does this mean that GPL will be contraviened if I am charged per byte, and all I am doing is an apt-get dist-upgrade?
I propose that if there is a solution to this. Abolish all forms of MPEG format.
This could be a good thing for free software. Two words: Ogg Vorbis. Even the early beta encoders beat MP3 in quality at the same bitrate, and it's only going to get better. Recent LAME builds support encoding to both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
If all the Britney Spears and Smashmouth fans strip the tags off their files in hopes of decreasing the aggregate tariff, I pay less for legitimate copies of Beatles' songs, and Paul Mcartney gets a larger percentage of the pool than Britney does.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Well this is true.. there would be a lot of protest to such a system and untagging would be a good way to do it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There's also something nice about not having 30 cubic feet of space in a dorm room taken up by VHS tapes, cds, encyclopedia volumes, DVDs and other so called meatspace products. I doubt that you can accurately say that everyone or at least a critical number of people value a jewel case that's 5x the thickness of a cd taking up so much room. Trying to reduce the bulk of meatspace products?
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
And if I'm downloading Free Software? Or by the way, I set up a web-page with things I want to give away for free? I don't want any ISP to collect per-MB-charges on my free stuff and hand it to Madonna or whoever, and I don't want to recieve any paychecks myself either! This system requires that there is no such thing as gratis information. But there is... And btw, not only does it inhibit free information - it enfoirces the price of all information to be the same.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I think this is a very important point. I didn't help build the Internet these last 15 years so that some asshole could come along, trademark his way into my domain name, and get rich off it. I miss the old days.
Sigh.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Well and good...do what you love. But how much should you pay for the priviledge? Check out what happened at http://www.combatsim.com. Combatsim is probably the best resource on the 'net for hard core military simulation fans. The guy who runs the site was shelling out many thousands of dollars a month for the bandwidth to server umpty million page views. He couldn't sell banner ads profitably enough to continue, so he went to a subscription model. While I think that $3.95/mo is pretty steep, I am not opposed in principle to paying for high quality information.
In other words, doing it out of love gets expensive, if you do it well.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
If you want to get a philosophical point from the article it should be that middle are needed for artists to get paid.
I've never seen a formal proof that middle were necessary. If they add value, they aren't middlemen. Its when the historical reason for the value they add has changed and they add no value and they *still* get rich that we call them "middlemen".
but it would be lots of fun !
Think of all the meta-games that can be played with that: The piracy game, the spamming game, the trojan traffic game, the advertising game .. .
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Never. Ever. Not even one. For real.
There's something nice about having a real book in my hands. Something about having the proper CD with the liner notes printed on paper. I reckon people will still buy that stuff, no matter what.
There's also something nice about not having 30 cubic feet of space in a dorm room taken up by VHS tapes, cds, encyclopedia volumes, DVDs and other so called meatspace products. I doubt that you can accurately say that everyone or at least a critical number of people value a jewel case that's 5x the thickness of a cd taking up so much room. I'd rather that album take up .5% of some huge hard drive.
It might become a little bit more of a luxury item, and perhaps sales will drop some, but it's probably cheaper than all those lawyers they're hiring at the moment :)
Also, if downloading stuff aint illegal anymore, and a lot of it's freely available, people won't really be able to have those 'my dick's bigger than yours cos I've got more ripped MP3s that you' competitions. Hell, they might go back to having 'My dick's bigger than yours because I've got a bigger real CD collection than you' competitions, restimulating the market.
You can't be serious. I don't think I've ever heard people arguing over having more mp3s than someone else. Maybe on IRC somewhere in history, but even if this were true, it has no bearing of how right or wrong any of this is. Because there will be less childish arguing over the size of a collection isn't going to make or break a solution, in anyone's eyes.
Not to mention all the 'I'd never have bought that if I'd not heard it for free first' arguments....
Yeah, I think that's a real cop out, trying to justify it like that. Just because it's effort effective to get it now more than before doesn't make it ok to not pay for what you download.
--xantho
I'm the author of the article. Thanks for reading it and for the spirited debate. The only way to improve the model is through discussions like this. To reply to several of your points: Re "scrambling the tags": you're right, this is a possible exploit against the model, but since the checks have to be MAILED somewhere, there is a target available for civil or criminal legal action. This exploit can be combatted. As far as "fairness" goes, the idea is that it would be an open system -- any content creator could simply register their content with the copyright office, tag it, and distribute it, and the money will roll in. It benefits startups maybe more than anyone else. You do raise an important point though with respect to the value of information. A BIG problem with the model is that it requires a stautory rate scheme, where content owners can't set their own prices for their material. I'd like to fix that but I haven't figured out how yet. Anyway, thanks for your attention - Pinky
If you give away your stuff for free, the per-MB charges for users are proportionally lower, since the ISP won't have to collect any licensing fees on your behalf.
P
You know, one of those 'pool' type systems where one person grubs and d/l's everything s/he can get their hands on and pays only a fraction of the cost, being subsidized by someone else who grabs an ocassional clip and ends up paying way more than s/he gets?
Like being in a health care group where the substance abuser gets lots of free health care paid for by those who make an effort to remain healthy?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
This plan replaces the tyranny of ASCAP, RIAA, et al. with a new tyranny of ISPs. The author fails to deal with the problem of unwilling creators. Under this scheme, I pay as much to download a Debian CD set as I do to download a Metallica CD set. Not only that, but Lars has to pay just as much to download that Metallica CD as I do.
That opens up an even larger problem: I pay the surcharge even on bandwidth used to transfer my own data around. The obvious solution to this -- count already-owned bits differently from newly-purchased bits -- opens up the original can of worms. The next solution requires me to pay my ISP a bandwidth surcharge, then get some fraction of it back for being a content provider.
Better, I think, to leave bandwidth unmetered.
-- Brian T. Sniffen
Its unusual to see someone on slashdot who actually understands the base reality that programmers, (and artists, and musicians) need to EAT in order to go on doing what they love best. I know that the average slashdot reader is either very rich, or living off their parents/ student loan or whatever, but they must realise that by taking others intellectual property they are doing much the same thing as the loggers who deforest south america, or the pollutors who dump nuclear waste in the sea. It will have a LONG TER M effect far in excess of its immediate impact.
So think twice the next time you download that Metallica mp3, how would you like it if Dave Mustaine came round your house and stole your stereo ?
Content providers need to get over themselves and wipe the dollar signs from their eyes.
For the most part, the content providers need to stop thinking of getting rich from simply starting any ol' website. It's a real shame, because I've seen some pretty good sites come and go because they've decided that they need some VC funding and tried to become millionaires from pretty basic ideas.
Now, it does cost money to run a website. But if it's going to be treated like a business, standard practices should be followed. For one, don't assume starting a website today is going to give you profit tomorrow. Another, don't assume that somebody is going to pay you for nothing. For example, starting a company in January and trying to sell it by July. Starting a company is a long-term prospect.
Things are getting weeded out right now. It's not just the companies with bad ideas. It's the companies being run by greedy little pricks only out to make a quick buck for themselves. They're the ones that only want to run the company for the sake of saying that they run a company. Those types are not needed.
Companies also need to stop jumping at VC funding. Starting a company is long-term. Don't expect to start off at full speed.
why not? Let's say that the system is based on some crypto signature. Every tcp/ip stream is monitored for a signature packet that identifys the creator of the content (checking the signature would be hard, but if transparent proxying is feasible then this should be). Once the metering service has verfied the signature on the stream it looks at the certificate that it is signed with, get the number of the artist/producer and increases a counter. The stream is deleted and the next stream is processed. So why can't anyone get a certificate from, say, verisign or some other authority and sign any work they want. People downloading that work will increase his counter and his counter compared to everyone else's counter determines what percentage of all the money that is collected he gets. As for your cross subsidy argument, well every time you eat in a restraunt that has live music you are paying money for a song you probably didn't even listen to. For example, if the restraunt you patroned happened to be playing only classical music then it's likely that the money that the restraunt collected from you to pay the music industry collection agency's royalties was probably given to Billy Joel because his songs are way more popular than classical. It's not like you see on your bill "live music charge $4.00" but it's there.
How we know is more important than what we know.
My vote for this is NOT IT. The cost should be incurred directly by the user.
-Omar
yes.. he made a fortune and then dicked around his readers. The guy is a bozo. "Oh.. here's the first chapter, it's not that great but if I get paid a lot I'll put more effort into the next chapter. But hell, I might not even finish it, so you'll have to take your chances." Lame..
How we know is more important than what we know.
Trains and Automobiles put Pony Express out of business. Why do we worry about this?
Technology is eliminating the middleman, not the musician. If musicians don't get paid, they won't make good music. The market will solve the problem on its own if we let it work rather than trying to find a way to make the square peg solutions forced on us by old technologies fit into the the round hole of post-internet intellectual property.
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
I see several points:
/., java.sun.com and alphaworks.ibm.com and some internet gaming.
a) you would need to show up that content is some worthy content before you get a tag
b) you could hack the system by removing tags, so you can distribute in a napsta style without benefit for the TRUE artist
c) how to guarantee a ISP in a different country called via a toll free number honors the system?
d) I would not cooperate! I would boycott it.
Sorry for d) BUT SO FAR I NEVER DOWNLOADED ANY MUSIC FROM THE NET. And I do not intend to do so.
Furthermore 99% of the music distributed by such a system would not interest me, but I pay it by downloading MEGABYTES.
The remaining 1%, I order in a mail order shop, and I do not download it.
This means for me, frankly speaking: I pay and have no benefit.
For me internet is mail, news and www where it extends mail and news, I'm realy not interested in any new medias distributed via it, I hang around at software download sites, software support sites,
I think every content should simply be digital signed and encrypted. ISPs can monitor the site where it comes from and this site should pay for distribution.
Removing digital signs can be recognized by content analysis. A lot of stuff exists to "recognize" a song even if it is poorly converted into an mp3.
And further, (I don't say anything about publishers and their wierd attitude or the wierd copyright system in the US) anybody who removes digital signs for further distributing, anybody who NOW distributes digital copies of copyrighted material should understand that this is easy, yes it is.
But this does not make it legal or moral right. Its wrong. Its evil, and in my opinion you should get the same punishment you get by stealing 15$ CD in a shop.
And just shifting the weight to the end customers is a kind of TAX and this is wrong.
People should get educated that EVERYBODY can provide content, and EVERYBODY can earn money with it, and its a HONOR to citate one and to get citated and its NO HABIT at all to steal ideas and work of somebody else.
To get me right here, I don't say anything against free or open source, its the sole right of the creator to distribute how he self likes it and if one likes to get payed its up to him and if one likes to give it away its also up to him.
Regards,
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Markets deal with goods whose supply is limited.
What is the scarcity here? The scarcity of information. The problem with information is that once information is created it is readily reproduced, which means once the information is distributed it is hard to compensate the creators.
The way this is dealt with is to create a kind of proxy good whose supply can be controlled. Historically this was the "fixed, tangible" form of expression, which served well because the means of reproduction (typesetting, recording) were either expensive or unsatisfactory for the average consumer.
Digital media don't have these limitations. A CD-R is just as good as the original CD-ROM, and no large costs, fixed or variable, are required to produce a copy.
So, you have two options; trying to continue the control of reproduction so that markets can work on these proxy goods (copy protection), or to find some non-market way of paying for content.
This guy is trying to on one hand compensate artists, and on the other hand, to free information from market constraints (or more precisely, free people from the kind of self rationing behavior being a consumer in a market entails). At first glance, this looks like a non-market technique, but he's actually using bandwidth as a proxy good. The problem is that you end up moving the self rationing behavior away from information onto the proxy good. Thus, if for a poor person who needs Internet access for e-mail or to do school research has to underwrite somebody's video collection, then he'll probably forgo using the Internet altogether.
Ironically, this method of "freeing" information makes it even more inaccessible to people of less means.
I think the download monitoring idea might have some merit, but I think a media tax would work better than a bandwidth tax. Media is purchasable in smaller increments (so it doesn't price out smaller users and scales with your actual usage of materials). Like in the article's proposal, there would still be no incentive to opt out. Sure, you could download an MP3 track in an encrypted (thus untraceable) form, but that just means that when you buy the CD-R some other artist will get the revenues.
It might not be so bad a thing to pay maybe a buck or two per CD-R or per GB for hard disk, and never have to pay for music again, and still have my favorite artists compensated. Sure, I do use CD-Rs for archival backup and sofware distribution, but it wouldn't affect my usage that much.
And I'd envision that you could return an old CD (or a coaster) for a tax rebate.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Then we could argue that it only worked because S.King is already well-known (which would be probably true...).
I'm pretty sure that would be the case. All that means is that for a good but unknown writer, it will be necessary to give the first one away, set a very low price, or come up with some other incentive. Of course, the current route doesn't make things any easier for an unknown artist, especially one that's not mainstream material.
This idea will probably never work, since limiting the access at the base (ISP) could never always be monitored and controled.
For sites like this a better idea might be to form a partnership with similar sites (in both content and quality) and charge 3.95/mo or some other fee for open access to them all. An even smarter idea might be to form a co-operative web hosting site. Add up the bandwidth, support and administrative fees each month, take a little slice for future expansion and charge to the members of the co-operative. Maybe this has already been done someplace (I'd actually be interested).
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Dumb ones too.
Who pays these morons to thinks this shit up?
"how can I make money on the Internet Robby?, you know all about that Internet stuff with your windows 97, and you play the games so well!"
"Jealous cowards try to control!"
-B F
> they like getting stuff for free, and the creators be damned
I think this is true for a lot of content, but not necessarily for all content. For example, I pay something like $22 a year for an online subscription to Consumer Reports. For me, this is much better than getting the dead tree version, which contains a lot of crap I'm not interested in. With the online version, I just hit the website whenever I'm reasearching an upcoming purchase.
I would also be willing to pay for a news feed. I cancelled my newspaper subscription long ago. Portland's The Oregonian sucks, and the main stories are always about something I read about on the net the day before. Instead, I read cnn.com daily for up-to-the minute news. and, frankly, I'd be willing to pay the same price as a newspaper for the privilege.
Gasp! Oh my god, hardly anyone is making money from content?! What good is this whole web thingy if people can't make money with it?!
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seumas.com
This sounds like Jakob Nielsen's idea of micropayments. I'm not sure if Jakob ever considered aggregate charges, though.
Basically, ISP's already do what the author is suggesting as the charge users for the aggregate of the bandwidth they use. To pay for content, ISP's would most likely have to double the charge to the user. Obviously that is not going to happen any time soon.
It is a fundamentally good idea, but there are several logistical and economic issues which make it extremely difficult to implement.
--
Well, Mustaine was with Metallica in 1982 and 1983. And he has song writing credits on songs on both Kill 'Em All and Ride the Lightning.
"That fat, dumb, and bald guy sure plays a mean hardball."
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
Seriously though, there's nothing saying you have to charge for content, just that you could. Not charging means lower bandwidth costs for everybody. OTOH, if you put up a piece of Free (Libre, not Gratis) software you could collect the fees from it yourself and still be complying with the GPL (there are no restrictions on transfer, just earmarking of metered bandwidth), or you could donate your fees to the FSF, EFF or any other cause that strikes your fancy.
Everything's been downhill since the TRS-80
I personally enjoy getting all the copyrighted material I want now for free.
Ok, so ISPs pass the cost to the consumers (as a whole). Makes sense sorta. (and despite the worries of the Ars editor, I don't think it matters if the content creator and ISP are one in the same - if so, they are *still* beholden to the market...people just won't use their service if they gouge for the content).
;)
:)
But in light of the previous article on this worldwide "grid" concept...let's take this out to it's natural conclusion - the internet is seen more and more as a publicly-owned entity, governance migrates to the public sector and is state funded (a lot of it is already state funded, either directly, or indirectly via the major backbones coincidentally being major educational institutions). Now, your ISP is more or less your government, and you pay for the media you consume in taxes. What does this equal? State funded arts
(P.S. which IMNSHO is a Good Thing
(P.P.S the only scary part is that the government is your ISP; although theoretically the government should be the *one* thing you have control over...probably the system needs to be fixed)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
People are making money from the web.
The real trick is to come up with a fairly original idea, gain a large user base, and then sell everything to a larger company for tons of money.
We can all think of some examples of this I'm sure...
Personally I think that's what Jeff Bezos et al. are waiting to do with amazon.com, and that may be the only way it will ever turn an actual profit.
Devil Ducky
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
This because hackers could try to avoid tagging files. On the other hand, okay they still do use bandwidth, .. so there is no incentive .. until the ISPs start to charge you the number of tagged files you transfer, that is.
Also, how to you keep people from breaking up their stuff into several pages to produce more tags .. How do you keep the users from compressing .. And the producers from bloating the distribution ( much like it is done with CD games for copy protection ).
But, as a service, like gnutella/napster, I think it might be an interesting project.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I dunno...people are starting to realize that the Internet is being used to LOSE money at a pretty staggering rate.
How do you make a small fortune on the Internet? Same way you do with auto racing...start with a large fortune.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
This is one of those statements that can be uttered on its own without any further commentary -- the idiocy speaks for itself.
Aside from the matter of various points of access (some from public libraries or other community terminals, others from schools, others from work, others from free dial-up services), you have the rediculous idea that if I use the internet for nothing but sending a few emails back and forth with friends, playing a little Quake3 and maybe visiting my friends' personal websites and downloading some public domain literature from Gutenburg, I should be made to contribute toward the cost of the other guy down the street downloading porn and Dr. Dre.
Plus, this only helps the big money-makers. Universal Records, Touchstone, Doubleday and NBC will be able to levy fees through this system, but there's little chance of Joe Blow getting paid for people reading his articles on his website or using his cross-indexed horror movie database.
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seumas.com
The only workable soulution (unpalatable though it is to many) would be a scheme like the blank casette tax levy they have in California. A tax on all kinds of computer media, hard-drives, zip drives, cd-rw etc, with a percentage going to the content producers.
I've always wondered, why do "content producers" get to charge computer owners money? Surely, the fine authors of computer software should get the money instead, not these Hollywood bozos. I'm all in favour of a "GNU tax" instead.
Does my bum look big in this?
Honestly, this guy is nuts. CD-RW sales have increased, and prices have decreased, since the price was introduced.
They're still pricey vis a vis American disks, though. A write-only CD is about $50CDN/40, or about $0.90US/CD, which is far more costly than it is in the US.
Go Kathryn Thurber!
They can't do it to everyone. If you attack your customers eventually they will catch on and go somewhere else.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Can an Internet model be developed to leverage a similar, existing system by which radio stations pay artists for playing their copyrighted material WITHOUT charging the listener?
Radio stations are required to turn in playlists and pay set royalties to a couple of organizations who distribute payments to the artists. The money comes from radio stations advertising revenues, not directly from the consumer. But the more songs (copyrighted material) a radio station plays, the more it throws into this "pot", and the more the artist is monetarily rewarded in the end if his/her song is played more. (Analagous to "he/she whose stuff is downloaded more, gets more.)
I'm not saying this exact system can be used without some tweaking, but my point is that there are already precedents, tracking organizations, and methods of distributing copyrighted material that compensate the author without burdening the consumer. (Can you imagine if we had to check the "I Agree" box before listening to a song on the raido? Get real....)
At the risk of heresy, could such a system be implemented wherein neither the ISP or the consumer is directly billed, but the website host? (OK, I'm putting my absestos kevlar vest on now.)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "I don't know what's wrong with you, but I'm quite sure it's hard to pronounce."
Or, the media people could just let all the content be free, and charge people not for the information, but for meatspace goods.
:)
Don't know about the rest of you, but if I had full access to all the books ever published & all the music ever played, I'd _still_ go out and buy the 'officially released' meatspace versions.
Hell, how many times have you taped a movie off the TV and then gone out and bought it on video as well? More than a few I bet. And not just for the quality increase either.
There's something nice about having a real book in my hands. Something about having the proper CD with the liner notes printed on paper. I reckon people will still buy that stuff, no matter what.
It might become a little bit more of a luxury item, and perhaps sales will drop some, but it's probably cheaper than all those lawyers they're hiring at the moment
Also, if downloading stuff aint illegal anymore, and a lot of it's freely available, people won't really be able to have those 'my dick's bigger than yours cos I've got more ripped MP3s that you' competitions. Hell, they might go back to having 'My dick's bigger than yours because I've got a bigger real CD collection than you' competitions, restimulating the market.
Not to mention all the 'I'd never have bought that if I'd not heard it for free first' arguments....
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
the article takes the long way to say ISP's should charge more than they do now and give the difference to an agency which distributes the cash to artists based on popularity.. like they currently do with music.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Just a thought, but will the method of paying for content really even matter much until the bandwidth available to the average person gets to be such that they will WANT to try and download all their music, books, movies, etc. over the net? There's a reason people download at work and copy it to take it home. The record companies and the movie industry obviously want to have a method in place before this happens, but which occurence will drive the other: content distribution or bandwidth availability?
Scott Plumlee
... you pay a tiny tax on blank cqsette tapes in the US as well. Its figured into the priec yo uare charged and paid back to ASCAP by the tape manufacturer.
I know ASCAP was pushing for that 20 years ago. I assume they got it since we havent ehard anything about it since then.
How very very American-- to assume anything you think is assinine only ocurrs somewhere else.
This all sounds to me alot like the Salshdot version of NIMBY. (Not in my back yard.) The tendancy to fele that solutions to social problems should occur somewhere they won't effect you.
NFMW (not from my wallet) which is the feeling that payment is fine as long as someone else does the paying.
I am the author of the article ...
Please reread it before you go with the knee-jerk "anything can be hacked" reaction. Of COURSE anyhing can be hacked. I AGREE with you. That's one of the premises the model is based on. The idea is that we need to REMOVE THE INCENTIVE to hack the system. I think my model does so.
P
It is wonderfully humane to have good intentions. But when it is clear that the solution presented won't bring the desired results, all the good intentions in the world are still wrong. I actually sat in a horribly crowded emergency room several months ago with someone very dear to me. I'm glad her condition didn't take a turn for the worse. There is a chronic shortage of nursing staff in our area, as in many places.
When a third party pays for something, it artificially lowers the price for the person making the purchasing decision. When something costs less to the buyer, more will be demanded, regardless of the true cost. The problem is that the cost has not gone down. Hospitals still have to pay the overhead for medical staff, equipment, electricity and heat, cleaning and numerous other things.
I don't want to see people die because they can't afford medical care. That is heartless. But it is even more heartless to overburden the medical facilities with non-critical patients, and there were quite a few that night. If a patient who needs emergency care, and is both able and willing to pay for it, but can't get it because the emergency rooms are overburdened with non-paying, non-critical patients, I call the people who created the problem heartless.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I found this sentence from the article interesting:
"Why won't hackers undermine the metering technology, as they have undermined copy protection in the past? Because there will be no incentive to do so. "
One of the best reasons I have ever hacked something is "because it can be done"
Metering technology can be hacked. Because of this, it will be hacked.
1) What's to keep somebody from grabbing another artists' material, re-tagging it with thier own tag, and thereby "stealing" the revenue?
2) What's to keep an artist from getting an account on an ISP, and setting up a robot to continuously download the artists' tagged content, thereby generating money for nothing? 3) Tags can easily be defeated by cryptographic or steganographic techniques.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The concept that I should be charged a fee because I have the _ability_ to access copyrighted materials is asinine. Very much on par with Canada's practice of charging a tax on all blank digital media to pay artists who might be getting ripped off. Both of these ideas are so absoultely stupid, that it defies explanation...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
If this was a real problem, we'd hear about the Great Content Shortage. There would only be a few web sites with anything interesting on them. Are we seeing that? No. So it's not a problem.
There is simply no valid point that can be made which asserts that it's OK to steal. While it's good for you if web services continue to be free (case in point, the recent action by Yahoo to begin charging tiny fees on posting auctions), these companies can't continue to exist if there isn't a profit. What does this mean for you? You have to pay for what you want when you're used to getting it for free. So stop freeloading off these web sites, and mooch a little more money from your parents. These sites can't stay in business if there isn't enough money to pay the bills. Do it for love? Fine. Think how the quality of content and services will go drastically down. Corporate America is evil and greedy? Fine. Hundreds of thousands of people can simply go on unemployment because you're arrogant enough to think if enough "angry voices" pipe up, these places will see the light and keep their content/services free. The sad point is, you've either never been out in the "real" world, or you don't value your own job enough to realize why things cost money -- intellectual property or otherwise.
:::: Mike Snyder
:::: Mike Snyder
"We're at a very early stage of deployment of a new revenue model for musicians, artists, and creators. We believe that culture in its essence is always a potlatch - a gift festival, in which those who are "gifted" with talent and vision offer these gifts to the world - and the world, in turn celebrates and supports them. The rise of the internet resembles a potlatch in this sense - both in the free software that provides much of its technical underpinnings, and in the free dissemination of cultural products that drives its growth and popularity."
the basic idea is very simple, but we'll need a lot of input on what people want, directions we may wish to go. More info on the site...
"...by charging ISPs based on the number of tagged files they transferred, and then transferring the charge to users in the aggregate"
Is it just me, or is this among the stupidest ideas ever? I think that I might be just a bit opposed to paying even more money for my connection because little Johnny next door decides to download the entire Sony music catalog, burning the songs he likes and immediately deleting the rest.
What's to prevent just any site from putting these tags in their pages, or POPUPS? It's bad enough now with sites using popups, now we'll have to deal with popups that you have to pay for.
And even if the user has some way of preventing surreptitious loading of said "tagged" popups, that doesn't mean his neighbor will when he goes surfing through all of those porn/warez pages.
Some sites could find themselves in a catch-22. Banner ads don't pay the bills and can't generate enough funds to pay employees (if any), provide hosting and bandwidth, etc. Visitation is high because the site is free, yet to recoup costs (even to break even) might require small fees. This causes a revolt among the user base (I read several angry messages on ZDNet's new board about Yahoo charging for auctions now). This is just the way it is. If a site can charge - must charge - to remain open, then it has every right to do so. We charge for Lunatix Online, which is a web-based game. If we didn't, we couldn't continue to run the game (banner ads are a scam unless you're Yahoo or some huge site). What I'm anxious to see is what happens when sites begin to realize they have no alternative -- either devise some membership/fee scheme, or go out of business. What will be a tremendous slap to reality for the "free the web" moochers of the world will be when they wake up and realize that all the GOOD content is gone, and they're left with nothing more than hobbiest, amateur sites because those are the only ones that can continue to operate with no income.
:::: Mike Snyder
:::: Mike Snyder
It's been 2 years, and not many people seem to have read Schneier's excellent "Street Performer Protocol". Read it at http://www.counterpane.com/street_performer.html IMHO, things won't change until it is realized that the Internet is a pipe between users, and nothing more. At that point, we can start focusing on HUMAN protocols to agree how to pay artists (where recording companies can't get their greedy little fingers in) -- Schneier's suggestion is a step in the right direction. Until then, it's pointless. Unless we want to start a war on user control and the right for consumers to dispose as they like of the devices that are placed in their hands -- and this includes applications running on their computers, their DVD drivers, and any other form of doomed user-side content control.
However, when you have an opinion that differs from the 'slashdot party line' (e.g. pro-copyright for example) you will be marked as 'troll' by slashdot readers who are unable to distinguish a fake post from a genuine opinion. They even have a website with an faq, and for a while a hidden sid where they discussed their tactics.
Its a bit sad that a controverial opinion has become drowned by Andovers greedy page-hit-grabbing techniques.
Content isn't doomed. But the ridiculous pipe dream of getting rich off a web site is.
Do your web site out of love, because you have things to share that will enrich the world - not because you expect the world to enrich you. Anybody thinking that way deserves to fail. You'll get rich in other ways that are hard to measure - in appreciation from your fellow man, in a spreading reputation that might someday turn into a Ship Coming In(TM); if you do good work, in living in a world all the more interesting for your efforts.
The hippies were right. Share the love, baby! It comes back around.
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
This sounds pretty much like the good old Minitel [?] pricing system. : you access some service/content, the ISP charges you some price and gives back a part of it to the service/content provider.
:o)
This "redistribution" model has been around for decades (the minitel system being only the most prominent application of it).
The only question is whether such a thing is possible in a business landscape where zillions of players coexist. Since the Internet relies on open standards, anybody with a computer and a communication line can become an ISP. The minitel system was, on the other hand, a proprietary system, so its owner (France Telecom) could control anything that went through it.
Have a nice time trying to apply such a model to the internet jungle, lads
It's lame to post twice in the same group, but...this scheme would require an extra level of security to prevent someone from logging on a free ISP (which would quickly go broke) and having a bot repeatedly download their own tagged material.
----------------------
I didn't read (or pay) for it, so I don't know. I also don't know why S.King did that half-assed attempt at using the Street performer protocol. Not only he failed to provide a full product, but he based continuation on a percentage of people paying, instead of total money earned and, worst of all, stopped in the middle. I wonder if he did this just to prove that the Street P.P. does not work....
I'm quite positive that if he had done things properly (offering a complete work, basing creation of next one on received money >= prefixed goal) it would have worked just fine. Then we could argue that it only worked because S.King is already well-known (which would be probably true...).
The global library is a wonderful thing to work towards: every scientific and creative work at the finger tips of every person: way cool. ;). On the producer-side, only the most commodified mediums might be wiling to give up their freedom to set their own prices, etc.
I don't think this particular idea has much to offer though, there are some major problems with it.
The idea seems to be an odd amalgamation of small-scale socialism on the consumer-side and highly-regulated capitalism on the producer-side. I believe small-scale socialism can be very effective within tight-knit communities - my isp does not qualify as such
The author insists that the only way to make this system affordable is to make it all you can eat. His assumption seems to be that every system is hackable and if an individual cannot profit directly by hacking, it won't happen on any substantial scale. Dubious. This is also the only argument he gives against constructing a similar system that charges based on individual usage - it will be hacked. Sorry, but if we can't figure out good ways to make data transactions, the future looks pretty bleak. What happens when low-income persons are priced off their ISP? Will they join low-bandwitdth ISPs that limit their intake? What's to prevent groups of content-providers from bilking the system by downloading tons of their own spurious content?
This all being said, i'd still prefer this system to what we have today; i just think we can find a better starting place.
how would that work exactly? Do you understand the system or not? The ISP charges you per megabyte at a fixed rate, regardless of what you download (a lot of ISP's do this now, although some have unlimited plans etc). They use the tags to gain and idea of popularity of content. That is, they want to be able to say 12% of the money that we have collected should go to artist X and 6% should go to artist Y. Then they give all their measurements and the money that they have collected to some collection agency and they send out the cheques.
Here's about the only way I can think of "hacking" this system for any sort of sane reason. I go and apply for a "tag" and then sign a lot of bullshit content and hand it out to people. They think they are getting some song by their favourite band and I get money for the download. The hacker would be caught in a week. Someone would complain, they'd check the logs, the tag would be recalled and they would follow the money to the hacker.
What else? You could scramble the tags before you gave it to your mates. This would just result in the percentages not being right. So some artist would get 15% instead of 16% of the pie. If the content that you are passing around is obviously good, so why would you want to deprive the artist of money? You're paying the money anyway, don't you want it to go to the people that you like?
There's nothing to hack here. I don't think you read the article.
How we know is more important than what we know.
>>1. Unless it's 100% "fire & forget" then the ISP's will bitch & moan about setting it up
Well, let them bitch and moan. It will be the law to comply. (That said, I'd like to figure out a way to get the government out of the model -- I'm working on an idea for it but I don't quite have it yet.)
If they bitch & moan, the odds are that they'll coordinate well enough and get sufficient leverage so the law is changed/dumped. Look at the Communications Decency Act in the USA, the Criminal Justice Bill in the UK and Australia's own "implementation of site filtering" law. Sufficient people bitching & moaning about unfair/unenforceable/hard to implement laws/actions meant either the law got vetoed or was ignored/watered down when it did get in.
"2. Unless it's 100% easy and centralised with automation, it benefits the big boys and not the basement recorders."
That is exactly the idea, that it would be 100% easy. Any random schmuck could get a "tag" for their work simply by registering with the US Copyright Office.
OK - this is good that it's for anyone. Now, it needs international coordination (someone's bound to object to the US copyright office
"3. Packaging the files together into a compressed archive will avoid the TAG searches"
Still working out the details, but my first pass is that the tags would be implemented as part of the IP header and tracked by routing software
Erm - tricky. First up, getting it into IP headers raises issues like:
- Roll out across the 'net (how many nodes are IPv6 compliant? It's taking a while...)
- The tag will be in EVERY packet, not just those with paid content.
- What if I put a copy on my hard disk for use on my various MP3 players. I can still then ZIP it and send it as now the IP headers are no longer around (they're headers for the packets sending my ZIP file around, not the content file).
Still a bit of work required on this one"4. Why should I pay for some lame-o who just slurps TAG'd files?"
This is the biggest argument against the model. It is to some degree unjust that users of minimal copyrighted content subsidize those who consume more. But I believe that this small evil is outweighed by the greater good of providing a simple, equitible way for creators to be paid for internet distribution of their work.
If we're only talking a few cents a month, I'd agree. If, however, we're talking about larger amounts (eg dollars per month or more-bang-per-buck bandwidth, etc) then you'll get people complaining. I've seen ISP's convert their congested links to well loaded, high speed pipes simply by implementing a charge-by use format (typically, $x per month for y hours & z Mb with a charge for every hour/Mb used over the limit). People paying $x per month for "all-you-can-eat" and then sitting there d/l'ing warez, watching videos and listening to web-radio take bandwidth that I could be using to do my research faster, etc. Watch this issue - as you noted, it's the biggest problem.
"5. What about "self-promotion" - I produce a TAG'd file and stick it up somewhere. I then go to what-ever places I can and start d/l'ing the file. It costs me stuff-all (free if I can "borrow" other people's accounts, etc) but it drives up the amount I get paid."
Another valid point. "Gaming" of the system will be possible. But unlike users of Freenet, people who game this system will NOT be anonymous since the checks have to be mailed somewhere! These people can be targeted with civil or criminal legal action to prevent this sort of behavior.
Hmmmm - yes, I would get a check mailed to me, but how would there be a link between my "content producer" alias and my multiple, fake me's that do the downloading? Imagine if I used a virus/worm to install something similar to a DDOS client which background downloaded a copy of my works every half hour
Again, thanks for your interest
No problems - I see this as an interesting concept but there are definitely some details to be straightened out and pushed through. If you can work them out, it could be a winner.
Given the current technical infrastructure and what I've learned of human nature to date, I'd say there'll be more success with a "subscription" model. Make it so cheap to get all the music you want that there's no need to pirate, etc. New business models are likely to be the solution rather than hacking existing models to work online. It's what we're trying to do on our projects - fingers crossed we can figure it out
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
I see a few arguments against this approach:
Every ISP in the world would have to cooperate. You'll never be able to enforce this. ISP's in third world countries, in countries which don't honor copyrights on physical items even now, countries which have quarrels with other countries...
Also, it would force quite an administrative load on the ISP's, I don't think they'd like that. How about the small ISP's, set up by a single nerd, for him/herself and a few friends?
And: no way are people willing to pay for the things other people download. Can you imagine receiving a letter from your ISP that you'll have to pay more, because other people are continually downloading things? You'd think it very unfair if you never download material for which payment is necessary. (As I, and a lot of my friends do.) People don't like to pay for their anonymous fellow-users.
Inez.
I am the author of the article ...
You and Karma Sink are right, this is a valid objection to the model. But I don't think it makes the suggestion invalid, when you consider the alternatives. And this kind of a subsidy exists elsewhere.
Consider health care. Since sick patients cost a great deal of money to treat, we group everyone together and allow the premiums from healthy patients to offset the incurred by sick ones. We as a society have made the decision that this little injustice is justified by the greater good of making sure sick people don't die.
I would argue, similarly, that causing users of minimal copyrighted content to subsidize users of lots of content is a lesser evil than allowing creators to go completely uncompensated. But I respect that you disagree with this judgement.
P
....leaving you with amateur and hobbiest sites, or sites related to fees you already pay (online banking, for one). The fact is, if a company can't make money at least enough to recoup development costs, pay its bills and employee salaries, the company will remove the site. Isn't it much more mature to say "I'll try to find other free sites" and hope some rich company with bottomless pockets can continue to provide free content at a loss, than to say "Keep it free! I don't want to pay?" You find free sites, I'm willing to pay for quality.
:::: Mike Snyder
:::: Mike Snyder
Apparently it just doesn't occur to most people that you COULD put your original content on the Net and still make money from it. However, systems to adequately compensate for that are not yet developed or implemented. I think that if it were convienent enough to do, most people would gladly pay a couple of cents per song or book to the author -- if they knew it was going to the author/artist themselves and not to benefit the huge corporate beauracraZy. The problem is.. we haven't reached that point yet. When I say easy.. I mean it needs to be user controllable, but otherwise automatic. Web sites where you can log in and 'donate' a couple of bucks to your favorite artist are nice, but the additional steps mean that they'll likely never really catch on.
... Television?
Here's my favorite quote from the article; "Advertisers would lower the licensing surcharge further by paying ISP's for access to consumers' eyeballs....The Heavenly Jukebox might even be free."
Wow.. isn't there already something like that? What's it called
Have you, Mr. Coward, tried to make a living from music, writing, movies, or even code, without some sort of corporate sponsor? Trust me, it's a tall order, even now when you can still charge for the physical object containing your ideas. Unless something changes, it's only going to get harder.
This isn't about greed. It's about preserving an incentive for talented people to be creative so that they can devote their efforts to their work without starving.
P
and microsoft lost millions because they didn't raise the price of windows/office. they could have made $10 more per bundle, at 1 million bundles, that's $10 million! That's a lot of lost prospective revenue!
it's also complete and utter bullshit.
Ideally, people would be payed for the work they do, not the reproduction of the work, especially if reproduction is without cost. I get payed for writing programs, I don't get paid for the programs I write. This is a significantly different viewpoint, and we'll probably never agree. Such is life.
PS. I have written slightly more than a few lines of code
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I that is exactly what I'm saying. If Britney didn't make that damn video, do you think girls would have wanted to buy her music? People were doing fine with grunge, rap, and R&B and almost seemed glad that this BubbleGum, Teenie-bopper crap was gone. That didn't satisfy the music execs, so they found a girl who can sing, wasn't bright nor strong-willed and had sex appeal to make a video. After that video became a top ten hit (mostly among guys and the girls who wish they could grab guys), they made an album that was targeted more twoard teen girls. They marketed Britney in a box, made sure her song never left anyone's head and, in turn, convinced people that they like her. It was absolute brainwashing (for lack of a better word). I know too many people who told me that they hated her songs but then would up buying the album because they couldn't get the song out of their head. I think this is not a coincidental effect, but rather an intentioal cause of the Pop-Gum craze that is going apeshit these days.
BTW, you are right, my statment was a bit convoluted
Finder of the any key.
I need you to support this. I have a friend right next to me who is in the industry and, although this is purely anecdotal, insists this is not the case. This, on the other hand, is not anecdotal. In it, it says that artists who have a minimum contract (which almost all do) only get 7.55 cents per full-length album. This doesn't add up to much, even when you go quad-platinum. Make that up, Whore! 9-)
So you mean Madonna or Michael Jackson has stolen you salary lately?
What kinda loose comment is this?!? MJ does not produce himself, therfore, he is not part of the industry that I am concerned about. Madonna is, and from what I understand, she is a nice suit, so I my mind, she doesn;t count. Although that comment was harsh, it is how I feel whenever I see that those shmucks are producing people who don't even write their own songs. UGBALL!!
And as for Napster, I'll leave you with a quote by Courtney Love -- "Stealing our copyright provisions in the dead of night when no-one is looking is piracy. It's not piracy when kids swap music over the Internet using Napster. There were one billion downloads last year but music sales are way up, so how is Napster hurting the music industry? It's not. The only people who are scared of Napster are the people who have filler on their albums and are scared that if people hear more than one single they're not going to buy the album."
Finder of the any key.
What many people don't seem to realize is that there are jobs behind much of this -- people who earn a living just like they do -- employees who would be out of work. Sometimes I'm sickened thinking about how people only care about themselves these days -- holding a hand out waiting for a free ride -- but it doesn't surprise me.
:::: Mike Snyder
:::: Mike Snyder
This is a good point. I think I have a solution, but I'm not very happy with it.
Basically, all ISP's would have to implement the system at once. It would have to be legislated that as of Jan 1, 2005 (or something), all ISPs will have to track the "tags". In short, the first of your suggestions: all ISPs would transfer all content.
I'd love to get government out of the model but I haven't figured out a way to do it yet.
P
Where exactly did we disagree? Sounds like we have the exact same viewpoint -- you're able to offer free content, I'm not. I never said all content should be charged for - only that those who believe *no* content should be charged for haven't lived in the real world. I believe our opinions are the same.
:::: Mike Snyder
:::: Mike Snyder
"In an ideal world" there would be no need for money."
Actually, I believe that is true to a point. As a thought experiment, imagine one fine century all production of goods is done by automation, including production and repair of the automation itself. The production cost of any given good is now 0. There is no employment because machines do what employees would do (no employment for engineers or designers either, no business incentive to design anything new).
Would innovation just go away? I doubt it. Somebody somewhere will innovate for the joy of it (since no income is required or available anyway) and others will do it because they want the result and don't see anyone else doing it.
Many couch potatos will disappear into a black hole of 24x7 free (recycled) entertainment and be looked down upon by everyone else (or just not looked at at all). Some will produce new arts, crafts, software, machines, or discoveries and be looked up to. Esteem would be the currency of the day.
And yes (to the inevitable objector), I realise that won't happen next week. I also know that this is a simplistic explaination of a much more complex 'economy'.
How was that Danish dude arrested in Denmark for for a crime committed in Denmark ? DeCSS was against the laws of Denmark (and coincidentally as it happend, the USA).
We need to start taking copyright infringement a bit more seriously.
My favorite analagy is with drunken driving. In the 40s we all did it. In the 50s and 60s the message came across, its dumb to drink and drive. Now only a few sociopaths would dream of getting behind the wheel after drinking.
The same social effect will eventually extend to ripping mp3s, once the public is better informed about the damage it is doing.
Just because some people illegally copy data to a recordable media doesn't mean that the only use for that recordable media is for copying unliscensed material. For example, I use recordable media to backup all of my email (which runs around 1gb a year). I also use it to backup other personal data and make backups of games I really like and would hate to see damaged from routine handling around my house.
Perhaps if the greedy "pay me! pay me!" mentality of so many people in the recording and entertainment industry (outside of the actual musicians, actors, writers themselves) had a bit more experience of the real world, they'd realize that it is as unfair for them to force me to subsidize their businesses when all I'm doing is making a legitimate use of legitimate data storage devices that has NOTHING to do with any of them, even remotely -- as it is for other people to unfairly copy and exploit their intellectual property.
I've seen people photocopying from books at the library -- but I don't see anyone forcing me to pay tax on paper becuase some people could use it to pirate a book. And I've certainly never been taxed for a pocket-sized spiral notebook, because some people can use it as a utility for storage of ill-gotten software passwords.
---
seumas.com
give people are reason to pay you! When was the last time you did work for hire? Had someone commission you to paint something? or heard an author ask his readership what they would like his next book to be about? Where's the incentive to give you money? It's like saying "hey.. I've built this house, it's a popular kind of house but it's probably not exactly what you wanted but I'll tell you want, instead of selling it outright to you I'll just charge you and everyone who wants to live in it rent" oh wait.. that actually works :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
you can look forward to members of the described collection agency knocking on your door asking you for either your tag counts and cash or access to your network to prove that no-one is accessing copyright materials (by scanning for said tags).
How we know is more important than what we know.
All they have to do is hack this tag metering thing into Carnivore!
/sarcasm
How we know is more important than what we know.
Dr. Jakob Neilsen has alot of interesting things to say about micropayments, but take it with a grain of salt because "In an ideal world" there would be no need for money."
:-)
IIRC, they used to say there was no money in Star Trek, till they introduced the Ferengi and gold-plated latinum or whatever.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
To work, it would have to be just like cable TV. Basic cable is cheap. Premimum (music & video) extra + pay per view. I see multi tier service just like cable TV in the internet future. The trick is to get the ISP's to foot the bill to install the billing/access infastructure.
The truth shall set you free!
know anyone with unsigned manuscripts? let's find out.
How we know is more important than what we know.
What those that create the content should realize that most people on the web would like to sample products and test them before purchasing the better physical product. If a music publisher were to give away *free* 96kbyte-encoded mp3s (which IMO are close to FM radio quality) on the web, hoping to entice those that listen to them to buy the full album, they'll have a better chance than if they offered the same selections as 192kbyte mp3s; the former file size would be much smaller so that those with dialups can easily get them, and the encoding would be good enough to be able to judge the quality of the music for a potental future purchase. (Of course, consider that the average napster-using college student is going to snarf everything and buy nothing, but without napster, it's pretty much the same situation, they won't have cash to be buying overpriced CDs).
Same with, say, television. I wouldn't mind having to watch any broadcasted episode of (for example) Farscape or the Invisible Man from Sci-Fi in crappy 240x180 window size, mono sound, streaming video assuming it was distributed free, since I have some interest in the shows but am not a devotee, but I *will* pay good money for quality (DVD) reruns of Babylon 5. Maybe there's a particular episode of Farscape that I also want in high quality format -- the free option will allow me to locate it, verify that I want it, then go off to the store and buy it.
You still have problems with those that get the physical medium then digitize it and distribute it, but that's a problem with anything digital. I'm sure that while rumors, software companies have been compensating for pirated software losses for years (some possibly using it to their advantage :) ), and the content providers of today (music, movies, television and press) need to realize that they can't avoid such losses... if instead they worked to making better relations with net users as opposed to trying to shun them, they actually might see their bottom lines increase.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Firstly, any restaurant that plays any music of any kind (including tapes and live bands) gets hit with a fee by collection agencies (unless the music is original in which case they just pay the band) and yes, I could assume that there would be ISP's that have a scanner that doesn't allow tagged content through.. but that would result in exactly the same thing, people would use the unmetered ISP's to download tagged content and the people on metered ISP's would be saying that they are subsidising the unmetered users.
As for the issue of ballot stuffing, I doubt that producer could increase his share of the pie any more than the amount that he was charged for by his ISP!
How we know is more important than what we know.
This is easily the stupidest idea I've ever heard.
---
"You just stranded one of the world's greatest leaders in San Dimas!"
Bob Fucking Costas. Does anyone else hate that motherfucker?
I would have to say that the lethargically reacting Music industry will in fact win in the end through the use of copy protection technologies and the age old tactic of suing everyone in sight until their grandchildren bleed.
-"You'll have plenty of time to sleep when you're dead."
It seems like this system requires ISP customers to accept a pay per byte system. Right now, most ISPs in the US are flat rate.
If we go to a pay per byte system, then spam will start costing us money. This is already the case in the UK, isn't it? Well, we certainly haven't solved the spam problem yet, so going pay per byte on the user end is problematic.
How about only charging per byte on HTTP, FTP, etc., but not SMTP? Well, then people who want to exchange copyrighted material will just set up list servers.
Another alternative is for participating ISPs to continue charging flat rate, but add a uniform surcharge to each account. Problem? The first participating ISP will lose customers to nonparticipating ISPs. Even if everybody does it, the cost of an ISP will be driven up for people who don't download copyrighted material.
Ultimately, the possibility of maintaining reasonable ISP prices at flat rates can be determined with a simple calculation: Take the current revenue of all content providers, add it up, and divide by the number of ISP customers. What do you get? I don't know. If it's $10, that's not bad. Who wouldn't want all the guilt-free MP3s they can download for $10/month? If it's $100 forget it.
The ISP could simply pass through charges to the customer based on whether or not they downloaded copyrighted material. Then we are right back to the same old problem. Users who want to download a lot of copyrighted material will find a way to make it look like they aren't.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
No Sir, I believe it's you won't are mistaken. I never said using a website was stealing. Did you make that up yourself, or did you simply misunderstand me? I said that taking something you haven't paid for -- which is by its nature NOT free (such a music which *hasn't* been released as an MP3 but is available on Napster, or the latest video game which is *supposed* to only be obtained by purchase) is stealing. I don't care that sites are free or continue to be free. What I take exception to is the notion that people don't have a right to charge for their services, such as online games, auction or financial sites. These are the people who want EVERYTHING to be free, instead of simply accepting that some sites may not be (whether or not they use the site).
:::: Mike Snyder
:::: Mike Snyder
Too much to do, so much to get done - Should have stated that I "believe it's you who are mistaken."
:::: Mike Snyder
:::: Mike Snyder
Why do you believe this is an all or nothing thing? Those who want to have free sites will. Those who can afford to have free sites will. Those who do it as a hobby will. Those of us who can't, won't. If we charge and succeed, fine. If we charge and sink, fine. What seems to be the problem?
:::: Mike Snyder
:::: Mike Snyder
      I hope nobody in the music industry reads that article. Having chips, hardware and operating systems embedded with copyright technology? That's ridiculous. The only way the music industry could accomplish that feat is with a new law. And it would be political suicide to pass it.
      As for the proposal about ISPs charging per bandwidth, OMG, that could happen. The worst part is that the crappy ISPs in my town would use that law as an excuse to make extra profit. Imagine having to pay for each visit to slashdot.com. Or having to pay for the amount of data transferred when you check your E-Mail, or when your instant messenger pings it's server.
      I'm sure that an ISP could easily come up with a fair system to charge only for the copyrighted material downloaded, but why would they? Most of them do not have decent competition and all they have to do is make up a number and list it as "Bandwidth usuage fee."
I mentioned a similar idea in the article but didn't make a big deal ...
The idea is that advertisers could subsidize the licensing fees buy buying end-user eyeballs directly from the ISP...
This becomes a major new source of revenue for ISP's, reduces the cost of bandwidth (possibly to FREE, if you're willing to watch a bunch of ads), and provides advertisers with a much more efficient way to reach customers...
P
Sorry if it was unclear. The idea is that the pool of money collected by ISPs would be distributed DIRECTLY TO COPYRIGHT HOLDERS (who in many cases will be artists themselves, though in many cases will also be giant media conglomerates) by performing rights organizations like BMI and ASCAP.
BMI and ASCAP are far from perfect, but they do get money to creators.
P
Okay, I have a cable modem and pay roughly $40 bucks for the service. I assume $20 goes to the cable company for the hardware and $20 goes to the ISP for the connection to the internet. Who has to pay the royalities for viewing content? And once I view a copyrighted web page (which this system would then cause every page copyrighted) what if I return to it and it hasn't been refreshed with new contect. The ISP now has to pay a royality once again for the same content/same consumer? And I'm going to get paid for every person viewing my copyrighted webpage? It's a nice idea but when millions of people become copyright holders of their own content the company who is charged with paying the royalities will have to then keep track of everyone and then pay them. Doesn't this coopt the internet which then would make it easier for goverments to tax people for the web pages. And once we are taxed entities for our content couldn't the goverment begin to censor our pages. Because we are no longer private citizens with 1st amendment protections. We are now content providers (or broadcasters) and possibly become subject to FCC rules and regulations? Business models don't work on the net because of why there is a net. Free expression of ideas between individuals. First research was placed there so that every scientist could review and debate scientific ideas. When people came aboard starting 10 years ago then it was ideas of the people that were freely available and exchanged. And since that time the goverment has tried to pass censorship laws. Banning free speech. None got thru. But what if the people or no longer people how easy would it be for the goverment to state that anyone receiving a royality for content is a paid broadcaster of information. Then what??? The internet was not designed to make money it was designed to freely exchange ideas!!
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
I thought the days when downloads were paid per megabyte were long gone... it seems i'm wrong. Also, this redistribution of payments won't do anything good for the artists. RIAA will get fatter and that's all.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
That means we are NOT talking about state funded arts. We are talking about state funded record execs. Are we possibly laboring under the misconception that the artists will get any of this? And what about the business case for the struggling band not contractually raped by a large record company? This proposal takes money from that band's distribution and awards it to the execs of the big record company!
I can't think of a _worse_ way to deal with the situation. Better that _nobody_ should get any money, than if money gets taken from small artists and awarded to the big ones.
What this guy is proposing is the functional equivalent of saying, "Since all operating systems are pirated, all customers should pay an aggregate tax to Microsoft whenever they DL Windows, Be, BSD, MacOS or Linux because Windows is by far the most 'infringed upon' with piracy". Now is the reality of this proposal sinking in? Seems there are a few Slashdotters all too happy to pay danegeld to a trust as long as it's not in _their_ line of work.
The sad point is, you've either never been out in the "real" world, or you don't value your own job enough to realize why things cost money -- intellectual property or otherwise.
Hee, hee, you silly person... what a silly thing for you to say, since you have no idea who I am or what I do!
In fact, I run a server (among other things) and pay for my own bandwidth. My business-oriented stuff, I pay for (and expect to), and the things I give away, I eat the (small) costs of doing so without whining.
I just don't expect my website to be a source of revenue. My revenue comes from other sources. My website is an expense like my phone line is an expense, or like an ad in the paper is an expense. Don't want to run a site, pay for one, or give stuff away? Then don't. Just don't complain that there's a cost involved in doing so. Simple, no?
If you're really going to assert that use of a website constitutes "stealing," as you said in your first sentence, then you're greviously misunderstanding the entire paradigm. And while all companies need to make a profit (mine included), trying to do so via the web is running smack up against this problem. Build a proprietary protocol if you want one, and try to convince people to use it. The web was born free. Businesses that put all their eggs in this basket deserve whatever happens to them. I won't lose sleep if Amazon and Ebay go out of business. I'd choose a smaller, free web run by enthusiasts any day over another pay-per-view extension of the corporate world that already bombards us from every other angle.
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Secondly, all of the people who are ranting and raving about how unfetterred copying on the internet will lead to the death of art are also mistaken. Copyright is a relatively new legal concept and the arts survived before it and they will survive after it. In fact, many people can successfully argue that the finest of art and music was better before the existance of Copyright, but that is irrelevant.
The main problem many people have is they are stuck with this outdated assumption that every single copy made should be accounted for and paid for. If my friend sends me a copy of a song and I listen to it once, decide it is garbage, and never listen to it again, who loses? The answer is: Nobody.
The problem isn't that people on Napster and other information trading systems do not want to pay for any of the music under any circumstances. It's that they cannot! If you download something from Napster and really like it, the only way to compensate the artist is to go to the store and buy their album. This certainly happens, but because of the dissociation between the downloading and the purchasing, there isn't a good way to measure this activity (downlaoding then buying).
Given that you cannot stop people from copying bits and you cannot force people to pay for art either before or after the fact, the only hope for artists is to make voluntary payments after the fact as simple and painless as possible. We have the techonolgy, the main road blocks are political. Many people are vehemently opposed to voluntary tipping of artists but those same people always insist on some type of involuntary a priori payment, which shows that they are in denial of reality (you can't stop people from copying bits).
The upshot of a voluntary tipping system that is integrated into browsers, viewers, players, etc... is that many more small artists who couldn't support themselves on their art alone will be able to. What will happen to the "mega pop stars" is less certain, but it is entirely possible that these folks will get even richer. The Internet will become the greatest thing to ever happen to art. The only thing is certain is that the people who have been making money by virtue of the control they have over the traditional distribution mechanisms (i.e. big record companies) are going to loose.
People want to support the artists they like. After all, we all do what we have to do to make money so we can eat, so the idea that people are unsympathetic to the needs of artists has no merit whatsoever. I find it very disturbing that record company executives who get rich off the backs of artists go around pontificating about how common people do not understand this basic fact of life (artists need food too). The evidence is that fans voraciously purchase hats, t-shirts, and other trinkets (even CD's) for little other purpose than to enrich their favorite band. Stephen King's "The Plant" experiment is also good evidence. The author of the referenced article tries to make it look like a failure when it was actually a complete success. Not only did a ridiculously high number of people purchase the first part (over 75%), some people expressed interest in tipping more than the suggested one dollar and some went ahead and made multiple purchases. The author tries to make it look like a failure, because the second part wasn't successful, but that's just because people didn't like the first part all that much, and nobody likes to read a book in stages; people like to read the whole thing at once.
Summary: you can't stop people from copying bits. You can't force people to pay for something they have a copy of, either before or after the fact. The only solution is to make it as simple and painless as possible for people to voluntarily contribute to the artist after they get a copy, no matter where they get the copy from.
Burris
"What do you do when you know that you know, that you know that you're wrong? You've got to Face the Music, you gotta listen to the Cosmos Song."
I am the author of the article ...
...
... file format is unaffected.
Grant, thanks for your interest. I'm glad to hear you're making money with your brain -- I don't hold out much hope of my solution being implemented any time soon, so we would do well to look to your example if we want to make a living
But let me see if I can address some of your objections.
"1. Unless it's 100% "fire & forget" then the ISP's will bitch & moan about setting it up"
Well, let them bitch and moan. It will be the law to comply. (That said, I'd like to figure out a way to get the government out of the model -- I'm working on an idea for it but I don't quite have it yet.)
"2. Unless it's 100% easy and centralised with automation, it benefits the big boys and not the basement recorders."
That is exactly the idea, that it would be 100% easy. Any random schmuck could get a "tag" for their work simply by registering with the US Copyright Office. Then all they have to do is post it, and if anyone downloads it, they will start collecting royalties. The system would benefit BOTH the big boys AND the basement recorders. (Any system that doesn't benefit the big boys has NO chance of getting implemented in the land of $50m Senate campaigns.)
"3. Packaging the files together into a compressed archive will avoid the TAG searches"
Still working out the details, but my first pass is that the tags would be implemented as part of the IP header and tracked by routing software
"4. Why should I pay for some lame-o who just slurps TAG'd files?"
This is the biggest argument against the model. It is to some degree unjust that users of minimal copyrighted content subsidize those who consume more. But I believe that this small evil is outweighed by the greater good of providing a simple, equitible way for creators to be paid for internet distribution of their work.
"5. What about "self-promotion" - I produce a TAG'd file and stick it up somewhere. I then go to what-ever places I can and start d/l'ing the file. It costs me stuff-all (free if I can "borrow" other people's accounts, etc) but it drives up the amount I get paid."
Another valid point. "Gaming" of the system will be possible. But unlike users of Freenet, people who game this system will NOT be anonymous since the checks have to be mailed somewhere! These people can be targeted with civil or criminal legal action to prevent this sort of behavior.
Again, thanks for your interest -
P
This is one of those statements that can be uttered on its own without any further commentary -- the idiocy speaks for itself. ... you have the rediculous idea that if I use the internet for nothing but sending a few emails back and forth ... I should be made to contribute toward the cost of the other guy down the street downloading porn and Dr. Dre
You wouldn't have been so quick to criticize the poster if you had thought about it a little, because when people pay their fixed ISP charge today they are doing exactly what you say is idiotic --- paying for resources in the aggregate, rather than on a per-use basis. It even applies to "free" ISPs, because there the cost is "paid" by aggregate viewing of advertising, whether individuals block it or not.
ISPs factor in every customer equally when arriving at their charges, not on the basis of actual use --- for one thing, the cost of fully detailed use accounting would be massive and prohibitive, and there are privacy concerns associated with full accounting anyway. No, much easier to charge by aggregate, and that is exactly what they do.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Let's face it...collection of money IS work, so what will happen is that the ISP will be given a piece of the action. Mind you, the ISP is ALREADY responsible for collection for the providing of the service, so it's not like they getting new duties. Frankly, an additional couple of grand a month is quite an incentive for an ISP.
If you only bill the web site you ignore file sharing which is where the problem is!
How we know is more important than what we know.
sure it's _A_ law. just not a law that affects me, being dutch, and in the netherlands.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Napster is really taking the hinges off of the doorway into fame and I applaud the change. It may seem cold-hearted, but I really don't give a flying fuck about those jerks in the industry, just as they never cared about me. This is a crock, they are well-established businessmen who, as of right now, are still making more money per second than I will in my lifetime. Not only that, but there is good evidence to support that they are making more money off of Napster than they are loosing. I'm not sure how, myeslf, but I've heard it come out of the artists mouths enough to think that there must be something to it.
Look, the internet is a natural progression of man, and being as such, there is going to be resistance. I understand why thos corp-execs don't want to look for a new job, but they just cannot stop it. What I suggest is that we all just go with the flow and enjoy the fact that we are going to get quite a few free rides due to the internet revolution. I welcome thee, Napster clones, and wish thyselves to prosper and whatnot. BTW, the same applies to all media. I'm just using the Music Ind as an example of sorts.
Finder of the any key.
What I do know is that right now I can get that new N'Sync album off of Napster for nothing while it would cost me $15 at Best Buy. N'Sync doesn't appear to be short of cash and if they do go broke I'm sure someone else will take their place quickly. Maybe after 20 years of this no one will want to make shitty music because there won't be any money in it, but then maybe not. For the time being I'll go with the sure thing.
Copy control hasn't worked in the last 20 years and it isn't going to start working now. The day the music industry actually starts suing individuals for their illicit use will be the day anti-copyright zealists declare victory.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think everyone should know the answer to that by now... The real issue is, who has a far enough reaching impact to implement such a system. The government could step in to create such a system, but with the money that the RIAA and MIAA have in Washington I wouldn't hold your breath for that. The private sector? Come on now, we're talking about technology to eliminate the middle man, does the middle man really want to help? The consumers?????
If something like this happens and we see change for the better, I will eat my hat.
It's an interesting idea but not very pratical. It would seem to give ISP's an awfull lot of work to do, between the tracking, reporting, billing, and paying the various media publishers. It mentions that the cost could be passed on to the ISP's customers as a blanket charge for bandwidth. In a sense ISP's already charge by bandwidth.. or at least the bandwidth they provide is a large part of their costs which they bill back to their customers. Now your suggesting that the ISPs should give a cut of their money back to copyright holders. So the ISP does more work and makes less money; I don't think many will be interested.
Your missing the point, the charge is made for your dialup access, or ADSL connection or whatever, not for actual page accesses. If a search engine hits the page the only potential beneficiary is the copyright holder, and they are paid indirectly (by the ISP.) Search engines may distort 'chargeable' page hit counts to some degree, but I would think that in terms of number of hits for any given page, search engines would be a very small percentage, and the effects would be negligible. but would still be something to be worked out between copyright holders and ISP's anyway.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
I think that anyone devoting more than five minutes of their time to analyse the profitability of online content providing can see that it's just never going to work. People just don't want the current system to change; they like getting stuff for free, and the creators be damned.
It's again an example of short-term thinking, in which people are happy to gain in the short-term, without a care in the world that this attitude is quite likely to cut down on the number of providers in the long-term. People need money to be able to work, and this has always been true throughout history. Whereas then they had patronage, nowadays they have the RIAA or the MPAA, and these organisations will remain until someone figures out a way that will allow artists to get paid at all, let alone fairly.
Whether or not artists get treated fairly by the MPAA/RIAA is a moot point; at least they get paid something. If they moved onto the net today, they'd never get a penny.
Obviously there are tons of reasons for us to not comlain and hopes this whole thing goes away, but it won't.
The current situation will change, soon. As long as people keep coming up with new ideas then there's still a chance that a reasonable plan may be enacted, instead of a typical government plan.
Personally, I think the best way may be what is happenning with napster. Not that I would pay to use that slow service... *COUGH* IRC *COUGH*...
Ahh, but now I'm being redundant.
Devil Ducky
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
Which is to say: if we use the people involved with tracking and controlling radio station airplay we are so fucked. Be careful what you ask for.
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If a site can charge - must charge - to remain open, then it has every right to do so.
Sure it does, and users have every right to stay away in droves if they can do without the service it's charging for.
We charge for [x], which is a web-based game. If we didn't, we couldn't continue to run the game.
And your business model, which is built squarely around this payment model, will either work or it won't. If it doesn't, then you can conclude that your model is flawed. If it does, then you have nothing to complain about! But your continued inference that people who believe in a "free web" are "moochers" is just silly, if not insulting. Nobody's stealing from you. And some of us like to provide free content and get our money from other sources.
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
It's like agreeing to split the check evenly at a restaurant: you're screwed unless you order the most expensive thing on the menu.
--
"If you think I'm expensive, wait until you hire an amateur."
To boil down this comment to its essense:
Web content in and of itself is primarily advertising. Information about a company and its products, music samples, and even warez and the like, are all, in a nutshell, advertising: showing us what they've got that we might want to see, use, maybe even [gasp] buy.
Viewed in that light, pay per content becomes the equivalent of "viewer pays to see advertising". Say what?!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Gravity is an architecture I developed more than ten year ago that worked something like this. I had anonymous micropayments built into from the start. Never got funding for it and the web came along a few years later, making most of it moot.
For the curious (written in 1992): Nine Principles and Gravity Notes
BTW, "Immuexa" is currently the name of my company. Back in 92, it was my name for what became the web. The software product was called Colony. We sold the trademark last year, so were legally required to change the name (to ThoughtShop).
A reimbursement system such as the one proposed has the potential to encourage stealing in the opposite direction from that which occurs today. Authors of copyrighted content could download their own content in order to increase its "agregate" value and increase their own share of the royalties pie. The cost of a high-bandwidth connection could likely be offset by the revenues generated from continuously downloading your personal content.
Worse, if the proposal is extended to permit content to be priced based on its value (Why should a copy of The Net cost the same as a Slashdot article? There should be some way for Slashdot troll authors to be more reasonably compensated.), then anyone could enter the fray and "offer" up expensive trivial content that only they themselves would "buy".
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Consumers have a choice of whether to eat at a restaurant that adds to the price of a meal by providing live music. What's being proposed is the equivalent of everyone who eats at any restaurant, even ones that don't provide any music, having to pay that same $4.00 surcharge so that some diners (the ones with fat pipes) can order a table-side command performance by Metallica.
While the proposed scheme bears a superficial resemblance to other things for which people are used to paying a flat rate for access, even though they might not be getting the full benefit (e.g. most dial-up ISP and local calls, at least in the US), it fails in the crucial respect that the price cannot be set by the market. Since the marginal cost of producing extra copies of the content is zero, the clearing price ought to be zero--but the whole scheme is designed to make sure that the price is greater than that, which means that regulators will have to set the "value" of the content based on what they think that people ought to be willing to pay, and then extract that rate from people whether or not they agree to that assessment.
Heck, under the proposal, an unscrupulous content producer with deep pockets could increase its share of the pie simply by setting up a connection to continuously download its own work; furthermore, demonstrating that it was doing so would be illegal (ISPs are forbidden to track individual account usage).
it's pretty simple. You get charged an extra cent per megabyte (assuming your ISP currently charges you per megabyte, otherwise just take the number of megabytes that they expect you to download, after all that's the concept behind uncapped accounts) regardless of what content you are downloading. The ISP then counts up which artist's work is being downloaded and how many times and works out the percentages. All those extra cents go to the collection agency along with the percentages and they write out the cheques.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There weren't any details describing just how the artist or the individual who created the material would recieve his/her payment for such said charges. It sounds as if some will reap the benefits but who? In the section [?Monetizing content?] where he talks about the fact that no one is making money on the net content that is flying around out here, this only stands to augment my question of who will be making it if some thing like this is done.
His article, ambitous and hopeful, does not tell me one single thing about how I'm going to get paid when and if this ever gets implemented. There is no sight that takes me through to the clear and concise end. These are fluff and stuff stories of an idea. Not definitive solutions. I am not convinced.
He speaks of charging ISPs for content, regardless of it's nature. Whether it "50 megs of garbage or 50 megs of Garbage" who's going to keep track of that my friend? Who will know just what has been viewd or listened to. Who will determine who gets how much in the end. This is a bit like MP3 saying that the Payback for Playback plan works. At 2 cents per download or what ever it is, it'll be 4010 before any one accumulates any amount of money.
Look, all I know is that I hated Napster when (it) the idea first hit the net. Some how I began to like it though. It was because it was free. I am officially torn in this issue of credit where credit is due. I like listening to the music like I would on the radio. But I still feel the guilt of downloading a song for free and knowing damn well that it'll be -10 degrees in hell before I go buy every album containing every track that I've nabbed.
I propose that if there is a solution to this. Abolish all forms of MPEG format. That's bold I know. But if a person were able to log on to a site and pick from every song (available) that they wanted, and could build their own listening platform, then the usage could be tracked in the form of how many times you check the songs out of the *library*.
Did any one find the excessive use of ?'s (question marks) in the article really ?annoying?
.
Being rather blunt, this has stuff-all chance of being implemented. Lets look at why not:
:)
:)
:)
:)
:) Many of them are writing articles on behalf of their companies, etc.
:)
:)
1. Unless it's 100% "fire & forget" then the ISP's will bitch & moan about setting it up (you should have heard the complaints about the absurd legislation the Australian government tried to enact enforcing site filtering at the ISP level
2. Unless it's 100% easy and centralised with automation, it benefits the big boys and not the "basement recorders."
3. Packaging the files together into a compressed archive will avoid the TAG searches (unless the ISP looks into the archives as it goes past - whups, there goes my gigbit router slowing back down to 10mbps - say, what's this privacy thing too?
4. Why should I pay for some lame-o who just slurps TAG'd files? It would require some form of "pay per use" - sort of a modified RADIUS system.
5. What about "self-promotion" - I produce a TAG'd file and stick it up somewhere. I then go to what-ever places I can and start d/l'ing the file. It costs me stuff-all (free if I can "borrow" other people's accounts, etc) but it drives up the amount I get paid. Of course, it will also drive my file up the "frequently downloaded" lists and may induce others to download it, snowballing things and leading to lots of juicy $$$ for me.
So that's just 5 things that we can easily find which will cause problems. If something relies too much on the "goodness in our hearts" then it's doomed. Most people may be cool, but there are greedy, opportunistic, lazy, I-want-it-all-for-free types who will always be there to rort the system.
Of course, a fully draconian solution could be implemented, but that would require hardware & software level controls, etc throughout the end-to-end system (from record to host to grab to play, etc). We've all seen what's happening with the whole "Copy Protection on Hard Disks" thing...
Thus we are left here with yet another payment system that doesn't quite cut it. Bummer. So, what can we do to balance the need of content vs staying alive/profit?
As someone who has a family to support and rather intensely rich desires (Ferrari, business class travel, geek-toys, etc etc etc) I am not about to take on the role of "unpaid producer of content" etc - the tragically-hip suffering artistic type is just tragic, not hip
So, here's the basic model for the content sites & similar things that I'm working on at present:
1. I've got a real job (plus some paying consultancy gigs on the side). This keeps my family alive, well and getting as many international holidays as we can (admittedly via economy class - not quite there yet
2. I'm consulting & advising friends/associates in their business ideas (both at conception and during their operation). I'm doing this on a (mostly) stock option basis (eg: swapping shares for cash). Many of these will go no-where, some will pay off. I'm careful to give my time mostly to the ones I think will pay off.
3. The content related sites I'm working on at present have the following in common:
A) Topical theme that's just starting to gain public awareness.
B) Good content producer(s) - who also have regular paying jobs
C) Sponsors who are aware that they will likely not make any direct money out of this but will get their names "out there" in a beneficial manner (this public service supported by
D) Simple site designs and a dynamic database engine that's already been produced once so we're not reinventing the wheel. Looks good, loads fast, no crap "style over substance" crap.
E) All content is loaded dynamically - so long as the server is running, the tech crew are not required
F) Cheap (but good) hosting service - site is available, served quickly and (thanks to lots of clients) not too expensive to host.
G) Syndication of content around the planet with some $$$ coming in but mostly trading content.
As a result of all this, it's cheap to set up & runs on a shoe string, the sponsors don't have to shell out too much and the content producers are getting their names out in their industry (good advertising for them and/or their companies). Those of us on the core team are all shareholders (some more than others) and if the thing ever goes ballistic, we're happy. If it doesn't - who cares - it's paying for itself and we're getting a good reputation in our industries.
Just keep saying the magic mantra:
"If it worked for Slashdot - it can work for me!"
:)
PS Yes, I'm cheating by ensuring that everyone has a "real" income stream - I've gone out on the limb once and it's not my idea of fun. I'd rather take slightly longer to get it happening than do that again
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Revenue protection due to the transparent system mentioned in the article means that:
* The entertainment industry has a secure income even though not everybody uses the product. So they can produce even less quality than they do now.
* As a concious not-consumer of TV-shows, and Holywood films, I pay for their product, I don't think I want that - I'm boycotting their crap while I'm paying for it?
* Third world countries whom will never cooperate with the ISP regulations can watch any movie, while the west pays. For small countries this shouldn't be much of a problem, but demographics teach that there are second and third world countries with millions of people on-line
To be short - don't think this is feasible at all.
Bizar technology?
Don't laugh, it's here! I got a pre approved credit card application in the mail Friday. It is smart chip enabled and they will send me a free smart card reader to hook up to my computer so I can use the card safely on the internet! The aplication is now paper dust so I can't say who it was from. I doubt the reader has a Linux driver and I didn't ask. I never impulse buy anything on the internet. If I am interested in anything, I research the source to prevent fraud. If they aren't also in the yellow pages with address, 800 number, fax number, etc., it is an automatic no sale. I do buy stuff I find, but I phone in after I find them in the yellow pages. The last thing ordered, if you are interested was bulk ink for my inkjet printer.
The truth shall set you free!
Obviously this would be an extra burden on the ISP's but studies have shown that people will generally be prepared to pay slightly more for a service on a fixed rate, than on a metered one. So although I can see that it would be a huge pain to administer, if it was working correctly you should be able to make a profit out of the system at the end.
The problem, as far as I can see, is how do ISP's compete under this system? Either all ISP's have access to <u>all</u> content and compete on the basis of price and economies of scale (you ould probably eventually only have one or two huge ISP's) OR you have content 'holes' depending on what ISP you subscribed to. Under the current system this would probably mean DNS black holes, and I think it would be a serious downside to have a system that would encourage these to proliferate.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
From the article:
Suddenly, the era of the "Epic Ballad" (Rush's 2112, for example) are dead.
"Why download 2112 -- that'll cost me $X. Prime Mover is a great song, I'll get that instead, and it'll only cost me $X/2!"
The idea has merit conceptually, but just changes the problems. (Oh, you can also kiss goodbye Wagner's Ring Cycle (which, actually, is okay with me). It takes 4 days to perform.)
My complicated and difficult solution is to let the market decide, i.e. let the bands and artists and symphonies and video producers decide how they want to protect their work (or not, as the case may be), but not forcing a single standard down our throats. In a couple of years, a winner will shake out.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Stephen King ONLY made $120,000??? Thats a real shame considering how much quality probably went into "the plant". Let me guess, its about a plant that becomes powerful and evil after a comet passes close to the earth.
How many times have you paid good money for music, magazines or books, taken them home and realized they are pure crap. I figure that a lot of money is made out in the brick and mortar world just because people are too lazy to bring it back, or cant. With the internet, we know right away things are crap.
Sucessful musicians are going to have to eventually get used to living very comfortably, rather than like royality. Its just a confluence of circumstances that let them earn so much money new, while aids researchers and the like dont.
Advertising does work on the internet, just not as well as tv or radio, just dont have hundreds of people working on one site and expect advertising income to pay for them all.
The internet is for the poor man to talk to the world, if we lost amazon.com, ebay and whatever things will be fine.
As soon as I press submit I'm sure I'll think of something else to say.
Sneakemail is to spam filters what an ounce of prevention is to a pound of cure.
Isn't it equally possible that all the media/software companies will just bomb and die as everyone happily takes their product and makes infinite copies? Could we not even call upon the old standby Occum's Razor and say that this is the simplest thing that could happen and probably will? If so, I hardly think it is the end of the world. So people wont make money off media and software or at least not as much as they do now.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Great idea here folks:
;))
(Who uses their serial port, anyway??
We design a coin-op box that plugs in to EVERY desktop computer. It accepts ONLY American currency (no one else matters, right?) (BTW, I'm a Canuck). So, every time you want to download something, you put some change into the box, and voila! You may now proceed with download! For a really authentic coin op, it can be programmed to "eat" every 10, 15, 55th coin!! Amazing!!
How do we collect all the money?? WEll, we gather up all the people of average intelligence - 1 sd above and below mean), give them orange shirts, and have them run around and collect all the money!!! We'll give them guns too, just in case people complain that their coin-op ate 1.50$.
THen, we can pay their wages out of money collected, and the copyright holders can get their fair share of the loot!! Brilliant!
Heheheheh. This has gotta be moderated up. If it weren't so obviously being funny, you'd make a pretty classy troll. ;)
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seumas.com
Nothing will ever free the internet from Open Source short of putting corporate discipline into all of its users -- The idea that no-one wants to see happen. Charging more for internet access based on files they transfer is rediculous. Do we really need a stronger call back to BBS's? We could interconnect them all, and call it the "Binternet". Just as democracy isn't a totally flawless belief, the internet won't be either.
Somebody should probably tell these people that it will never happen. It's already too late. What are they going to do, collapse the internet? I seriously doubt that, the internet is already too much of a big-money venture even with open source losses.
Seeka
DeCSS doesn't break anything, it fixes. It is also completely legal just about anywhere except the US of A. This is just another control mechanism that has no basis in law, which I will be completely free to defeat and/or reverse engineer.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
"Excuse me. I ordered the baked potato, he ordered the lobster."
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All that will happen is another warez culture will emerge. This time instead of sneaking a camera into a theatre or renting a dvd or going out and buying a program, and then spreading the joy, somebody will simply download the file (whatever it is) for pennies, then encrypt it so that the ISP cannot know the contents, and send it to his/her 10000 closest friends. It will be just the same. There will always be ways around any kind of payment scheme, unless you can't buy the internet service without also buying a subscription to the content service, and you don't get charged per-download, you get charged a flat rate (ie $50 a month for a 10-megabit line on which you can download any TV show or recording ever made in any part of the globe). Attempts at making users pay for content that fall short of this will never remove the warez distributors, and only THEN will the recording industry truly have what they are after, which is eveyrone paying them oodles of money and nobody getting anything for free.
-S
I certainly don't want to pay for a portion of what the other users at my ISP are looking at. If I'm reading web sites for various Linux distros, gnu.org, slashdot, and sourceforge and none of them are charging anything, why should I pay for someone's reading habits at various predigested news sites.
Separating the payment from the use, especially spreading it around, encourages overuse. It is a large part of the problem with the cost of medical care in the US. If you don't have to bear the costs, why not have the best and use as much of it as you want.
David Friedman talks about Information as a Public Good in his book Price Theory. Follow the link and search for "Information as a Public Good".
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Web content in and of itself is primarily advertising. Information about a company and its products, music samples, and even warez and the like, are all, in a nutshell, advertising: showing us what they've got that we might want to see, use, maybe even [gasp] buy.
:)
:) has indicated that these articles are generally informative (especially if written like a submission to a scientific journal) and help raise the reader's impression of the author and/or their company. If it becomes blatant advertising, most people "tune out." Here in Australia, most of the blatant stuff gets "advertorial" stamped on it somewhere :)
Good summary - I gotta learn to stop writing so late at night
You're point is valid, however I didn't make clear that the "advertising" side of things is secondary. I'm not sure what you think of some of the articles in computer/technical journals written by consultants/staff of companies such as CISCO. In these, they write about concepts such as networking, future routers, etc etc etc. Generally, this stuff isn't blatant advertising but does add to the general knowledge of the reader. My limited market research (I asked some friends & associates
You're right about the nasty side of advertising in web-content. It's a fine line that we have to walk - I feel if our content is too blatant, we'll lose readership.
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Content does not have to be doomed... It may just be the new economy to be doomed. No one realizes that the internet does not -have- to be used to make money
Bizar technology?
1) Tagging/accounting is not possible. It is too easy to get around using encryption.
2) It gives ISPs the incentive to get around the tagging/accounting so that they are charged less and can bill less.
Devon doesn't appear to know about actual network protocols or information theory.
Do I pay up front? (Like for example the BBC's flat-rate licence fee that every UK household with a television pays.) That way the amount the artist gets goes down the more people are downloading!!
Or is it billed each month, I get a bill for hundred of pounds/dollars, based on what my fellow customers were downloading that month!? I'm not going to want to pay for someone else's MP3 downloads. And I'm not going to enter into an agreement where I can get billed for essentially random amounts having nothing to do with what I downloaded?!
Maybe one way would be everyone pays per byte received. Then maybe some kind of tagging or fingerprinting can re-distribute the money to the right people. Sounds a bit like asking me to pay for content, except there is one difference - it can't be so easily circumvented. But the technology to say this byte moving to this end user means this $0.000000001 should be paid to XYZ seems impossible.
I see a drawing board.. perhaps it's time to get back there.
Very smart concept. When search engines check sites they end up paying an awful lot just to make limited indexes! No good. If you make exceptions for search engines you suddenly realize how easy it is to say you're someone else and all the sudden everyone is pretending to be a search-engine. If you grant special permissions to search engines from specific domains you're excluding virtually every startup there is. In total: great idea, has lots of issues.
Have you ever had to watch your work be stolen from under your very nose ? Seen your latest release which you sweated blood over be immediately 'cracked' and put up on warez sites all over the world before you have seen a single cent for your efforts ?
Perhaps if the largely teenage audience of slashdot had a bit more experience of the real world, they would not be so quick to judge.
When was the last time some type of service like this wasn't hacked apart?
The only way this will work is voluntary, and for obvious reasons this does not work real well, check www.fairtunes.com to see how few people have actually "tipped" their favorite artists.
Dr. Jakob Neilsen has alot of interesting things to say about micropayments, but take it with a grain of salt because "In an ideal world" there would be no need for money."
"i blew a booger that i'd swear had it's own spinal cord" "OUCH" Caroline's Spine