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.

Comments

Re:Makes a good point

[acroyear]

Wiley of "Non-Sequitur" fame had already tried a $2/month subscription-based idea for distributing his spin-off, "Homer", online. And found that the vast majority wouldn't pay for it. Even at that low a price. Advertising (or run-at-a-loss) has given everyone the impression that "everything on the web is free", and the vast majority of comments on the subscription idea were reflecting that. For getting a presumed readership of several million, they only got 1200 to actually subscribe (I did). They canceled the whole thing and switched to the sell books (though the first book has never made it to print so far, and its been over 2 years).

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."

Comics, micropayment

[Eloquence]

Very well done indeed. Many people have been saying this, yet the industry doesn't seem to get it. Why? Microsoft does have a quasi-monopoly on the browser market, why haven't they implemented a secure transaction protocol? They could be running the bank themselves and be making billions in fees. Take a look at page 2 in the carton linked at Scott's comic: That's exactly what it could look like.

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?

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The Case Against Micropayments

[acroyear]

The Case Against Micropayments at O'ReillyNet is a good counter to Jakob Nielson's Case For Micropayments and also this slashdot-entry. This paragraph provides the best summary:

In particular, users want predictable and simple pricing. Micropayments, meanwhile, waste the users' mental effort in order to conserve cheap resources, by creating many tiny, unpredictable transactions. Micropayments thus create in the mind of the user both anxiety and confusion, characteristics that users have not heretofore been known to actively seek out.

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.

Re:No-Resources Entertainment

[Robotech_Master]

If the author doesn't think his work and the happiness it creates is worth his time (without the money), why should we think it's worthwhile either?

Well, there's the simple matter of comic book artists needing to put food on the table like everybody else...
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What's Wrong with PayPal?

[Robotech_Master]

Not a one of the 2-threshhold posts I've been reading has yet mentioned the PayPal micropayment system. Isn't that a viable micropayment system?

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?
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