Slashdot Mirror
Scott McCloud on Comics and The Internet
Galvanick Lucipher writes "Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics, has begun to tackle the issue of art, payment, and the Internet in his latest column of I Can't Stop Thinking! Comics are yet another art form which could greatly benefit from cutting out all the middlemen. And as always his presentation is entertaining without being distracting." Actually, it goes far beyond being just about comics, but content overall - really well done work.
I like micropayments. They work on a similar system to microCREDIT, which is a model that allows small loans to allow poor people to start cottage industries, hence inducing economic growth in a third world area or in a poor US community.
;)
A successful micropayment system, like microcredit, would have to be based on community trust and enforcement of honesty; the payments are too small to be enforced by, say, MasterCard, who would not make enough of a profit on an online transaction of twenty-five cents.
All of the scifi versions of the Net, in Gibson et al, have been based on such a pay for content system, which allows "market forces" to vet the quality of content as well as eliminating the need to build a community of users, then sell that community to advertisers. A much more honest method imho.
I will note that the artist's way of putting his content in comic form is cool but prevents me from cutting and pasting a relevant quote from his strip into my slashdot post. How's that for content control?
Goat sex free since 2001
Details @ http://www.non-sequitur.com/homer/badnews.php3, but the best quote is "Others wrote to say they would not pay for anything on the net, no matter how much they like it, as a matter of principle."
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
isn't that what he's proposing? charging small amounts from the fan base for the content - eschewing the process and middlemen? Sure, Stephen King may not have been pleased with a couple hundred grand off 7 parts of his wilting Plant, but i'd imagine many web authors would be more than pleased with that.
The only way such ventures will (and do) fail, like Stan Lee's online venture failed, like most of the Image comic book ventures failed, is if the content just isn't worth the price. If the content, really is just consumed due to a fabricated quality-level, pumped by the marketing machine. I think guys in King's situation are underestimating the power and reach of marketing to the passive crowd - vs providing content the interactive crowd desires.
Ask a fan of Pvponline if they wouldn't kick in $2/year to see Scott do PvP in full color every day... there is such content, there is such demand... the key is getting the pricing structure to match it. I have to believe that even a 40% paythrough of Kurtz fan base at $2/year would blow away what he gets from banner ads.
(un)fortunately enough - charging for content just might prove to the content creator that advertisers are willing to pay to fund the crap gobbled up by the masses - the crap that educated consumers just would not pay for themselves.
(TV sitcoms are another great example as a whole)
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
The practical applications are endless. Even when I only think about comics: Right now, good comics that convey a political or scientific message are rare. But imagine: On Kuro5hin, you get 1000 users to vote on a story -- why shouldn't the same 1000 users donate 10 cents to the production of a comic? And the resulting art would be free to reproduce wherever you like. I would really like to see a good, free evolution theory comic in response to Jack Chick's creationist *$()=).
Now, think about what could be done on sites like Slashdot -- imagine the Slashdot effect with "money-URLs". Slashdot's weekly worthy cause: "Donate 1$ to the EFF" == 10000$ in donations. "Donate 1$ to help this college student get a good lawyer." "Donate 1$ to build a school in Cambodia."
Now that you think about it, doesn't it sound suspiciously like the powers that be may be afraid of our combined monetary power? And even if this is not the case, do we really want a central Microsoft bank that controls our money flow?
Where is the open-source movement when you really need it? This is one of the most important battles of the 21st century -- I'm not exaggerating, consider that this payment method will be applied macro and micro, for shopping as well as for donating.
Why don't we have an open micropayment foundation, and an open-source bank, with Richard Stallman as the director? Heck, I'll even settle for Natalie Portman, but really -- the crypto is out there, writing a browser plugin shouldn't be that hard. A mini fee (say 1/10 cent per transaction) might be used to pay the bank, surpluses go to the EFF. What are we waiting for?
--
He draws parallels between one-time-cost services vs. accumulate-as-you-use services like the utilities. The 20-minutes (or less) for $1.00 long distance thing sells because its predictable. One can budget x- number of phone calls and know that they won't exceed them. With long-distance rates varying based on distance, as in the old model (or AT&T's default to this day), a bill for 10 phone calls can be 50 cents of 50 dollars and you wouldn't know until you got it. No-extra-costs for long distance calling is a BIG selling point for celular phone contracts these days.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Well, there's the simple matter of comic book artists needing to put food on the table like everybody else...
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I mean, sure, you have to sign up for it, but what with all the paperwork surrounding banks and credit cards these days, it's almost a certainty that you'd have to sign up for whatever micropayment system came along anyway. And sure, it charges businesses a transaction fee, but not as big of one as credit card companies (and micropay systems have to make their money somehow anyway).
You can send a little as a penny with PayPal (though you have to put a dollar in your account to do it), and I've seen quite a few people (like the Alice Comics guy) putting "click here to drop some coins in my hat"-type links with it on their webpages (and then reporting being surprised at the number of people who donated with them). What does PayPal lack to make it a viable micropayment system for the 'net?
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Convenience is key. The ideal is for micropayments to require only:
- A simple registration process to sign up, and
- One simple click to transfer money every time the user views new content
Anything more cumbersome, and not many people will go to the trouble. It's not that they're selfish with their money; they're selfish with their time. (And why wouldn't they be? You can always make more money, but you can never buy more time.)Do domain names matter?
Think about it -- you need to build a transaction system that will:
- Handle thousands if not hundreds of thousands of transactions securely and quickly.
- Interface with credit card companies, who take a percentage of any transaction. (and if you think micropayments can be successful without credit card companies, you should be sharing whatever it is that your smoking. People aren't going to tape two dimes to a postcard and mail them off 50 times per day)
- Have some sort of settlements system so the proper people get paid the proper amount. (Not all the cash goes to the same person -- several different people have to get their cut)
- Have at least a few system administrators and accountants to make the whole system work
- Oh, and after all this, it also needs to be profitable enough so the company running this micropayment settlement system can stay in business.
This system is absolutely buildable with today's technology, but it costs so much to build and then maintain that there's almost no chance of a positive ROI.I'm not saying this is an insurmountable problem, but so far, I haven't seen anyone with a successful, wide-spread solution.
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/