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Fame, Fortune and Micropayments

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the please-deposit-5-cents-for-the-next-two-pages dept.

adharma writes "Clay Shirky is at it again. Addressed previously, his new article discussess the failures of Micropayments and the joys of free content."

6 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Sure I'd love to have my bank statements... by Currawong · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...500 pages long with 3 zillion transactions. *Thats* why it'd fail ;)

    --

    What is the point of the internet?
  2. Shirky is wrong. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful
    phone calls, local and long distance, often are pay per unit of some sort. calling 411 too... yet, people can and do "calculate" that calls are worth making, and they pay for them.

    He's sunk his teeth into a clever sounding argument here, and he won't let go, but it doesn't make sense. It is potentially true that the web has brought the price of info down to nothing, but that doesn't mean it's because micropayments fail.

    1. Re:Shirky is wrong. by JayBlalock · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Actually, they'd be a perfect example of why micropayment systems DON'T work. The reason the telephone charging system works is that people DON'T stop and think about it. You don't have to fish a quarter out of your pocket and plunk it into your home phone. You just pick up the phone and dial - which makes the charges invisible to the user, and most likely, almost totally ignored. (how many of you, honestly, actually think about what a call is costing, until you've been talking and suddenly say "oh crap, it's been two hours! This is gonna cost me a fortune!")

      If you DID actually have to make a conscious decision to place a financial transaction every time you used the phone, long distance calls would plummet. And THAT'S what this article is arguing. For a web-based micropayment system to work, it would have to follow the TelCo model - you hand the website in question your credit card, and then you don't hear a word about the cost of the services again except once a month in the mail. And this is, for reasons too obvious to bother typing out, NOT a good idea for internet-based systems. And that's why Internet micropayments don't really work.

      --
      Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
  3. Micropayments will fail because.. by rf0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Expierence has shown that whenever people start trying to charge for content that people will find other sources which are free. We have become use to information being free and feel (wether rightly or wrongly) that it should be

    My $0.000002

    Rus

    --
    Cheap UK and US VPS
  4. Free Rider Problem by David+Hume · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Free, or I'll do Without!

    Honestly, I can live without most things. Sure, I listen to music, and I watch DVDs, and I play video games, but only while they're free. (I mooch from my friends) Were these friends to suddenly become unavailable, I would do without.

    Same goes for web content. I enjoy slashdot, but I'd give it up in a second before I'd spend one red cent.


    If with respect to DVDs, CDs and video games everyone adopted your attitude, you would have to do without them because they would not be available.

    This is the classic free rider problem (see also Wikipedia).

    --
    Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
  5. The forgotten segment by Perianwyr+Stormcrow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If I can buy pre-paid BitPass cards without a credit card, with a similar level of convenience, then we have a winner.

    Either that, or anything targeted at teenagers will never be able to charge.

    --

    What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey