Slashdot Mirror
Online Clearinghouse for Digital Content?
g8orade asks: "I belong to Photo.net, a community photography site that promotes exchange among 'serious-minded' (sometimes) photographers. A key facet is that members review and rank others' photos and can then search for the best, worst, most viewed, by topic, etc. There are plenty of other sites like this, Slashdot itself relies on users' contributions for its content. Is anyone a member of a community, database driven site like this that -also- acts as a catalog, allowing members to sell their digital content at prices set by them or the site, paid up front--not after the fact like shareware, with a cut of the transaction going to the site's hosters?"
"Compared to eBay, here are some key differences:
- It's your own content, or it must be content for which you own the copyright.
- The rankings apply to the content, not the reseller's karma.
- There's no limit on the product; it's digital.
- It might be fixed price per copy, not an auction."
I "dabble" with my little digital camera at DeviantArt.com (http://wiwijumbo.deviantart.com) but they have also started a new service DAPrints (http://www.daprints.com) which allows you to sell your artwork (not just photos), anything from, if I remember correctly, a poster to a postcard.
:)
Not that I'd bother with that with *my* shots.
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
I've posted some photos from time to time, and have gotten very useful feedback.
--Mike--
Perhaps I should say very low costs of production and distribution versus a material good like you find on ebay. However, the question is about production and distribution (artificially/legally) restricted to the owner of the digital work so s/he can make money. And I do mean for all types of digital content, not just photos.
/. love to hate?
This would be for individuals who want to get paid up front or on some standard terms for their product, not voluntarily like on shareware sites.
They don't want to go with a traditional media distribution channel.
Without DRM, is it possible for a net service to replace the middleman, the big media corporations so many readers on
I'm guessing from the numbers of posts that no one knows yet how to solve this?
Everyone with a computer, an internet server, an idea, and some initiative has the means of production and distribution at hand, just not the way to enforce restricted access to the product.
Maybe they need patrons who make their money from physical goods that aren't so easily reproducible.
Digital photography is just an example because that's what I'm into.
Pick ANY DIGITAL CREATION--certainly good coding is an art--and certainly I enjoy the fruits of the GPL. But the persons who code under it do get paid or have sustenance one way or another, if not from it directly. Linus and RMS included. Some organization that charges somebody money for something pays for them and for us to live.
So the question is, if you don't have a job at another place that pays your rent, and you *want* to make money purely from your creation, and you distribute/sell it only digitally, can you do it using the net exclusively as your middleman and cashier, getting paid up front and not later, instead of a "traditional" distribution method?
("the net" could be a website where others upload their "competing products" and can vote your product up or down based on criteria)
And back to the original post: is anyone doing it and if so what are the examples?
Download.com would be one if it also was the cashier and you had to pay up front.
I'm not into porn so I couldn't tell you what it's doing, though I hear that's always the cutting edge industry.
No examples so far...