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Ex-Pirate Bay Admin Launches Micropayment Service
spyrochaete writes "Peter Sunde, formerly 'brokep' of The Pirate Bay, recently launched a beta version of Flattr — a micropayment service enabling internet users to tender cash payments to any participating content publisher. Its model enables users to divvy monthly subscription fees as donations awarded to the musicians, bloggers, photographers, or other publisher of their choice.
Sunde tells the BBC, 'We want to encourage people to share money as well as content,' and asserts, 'people love things and they want to pay.'"
Sounds pretty nice as long as it doesn't commercialize things that are already free. I like it because you wouldn't think about each individual transaction since you pay a flat rate.
The good thing about this arrangement is that it will make it easier to donate money. It doesn't matter how many Flattr I click I still have the same cost, I do not have to keep track just to know I have the money on my account. I also don't have to take so many decisions, like how much to I think this song/game/application/book is worth or do I really going to enjoy it so it is worth anything at all, I just click.
So there are clear advantages of this arrangement. And I do not see it as a way to charge for a product, but as an alternative to the PayPal donate button.
Hi,
As far as I know Sunde has never been accused of pirating anything. ThePiratebay was and still is legal in Sweden.
Just because you can use their service to illegal distribute content does not make the creator a pirate. This would be the equivalent of calling the city a 'drunk driver' because it builds the streets that can be used to facilitate drunk driving.
This.
If an actual media producer decided to distribute via BT, they could even get paid for it. Combine it with a market system where the punters decide what to (micro)pay for their torrent, and some extensions to BT software (perhaps similar to the rate selector, you have a $ selector), and you've got a brilliant means of distributed media distribution that can completely bypass big media.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
For example: If you have 5000 people a month visiting you and you get Flattr revenues from 1/4 of them between the amounts of $0.01 and $2, with the average being $0,25 you would net $312,5 each month. That's a decent help with the server & hosting bills. How many sites with Paypal donate buttons can claim similar figures? (I agree, my figures are just random figures, but not entirely unrealistic, given the proposed system)
Another counter argument I guess is "Will people use it?" .. that is anyone's guess, but I would totally put some money into the account and whenever I saw something interesting or worth supporting, I could put my money where my mouth is. This instead of saying "If only paypal wasn't so much of a hassle and require so big an investment to donate, I would help these guys". Imagine what this'll do to small pieces of free software, many of which die of neglect because of lack of incentive.
Lots of popular sites right now run on good will of the owner, some individual donations and ads. And in many cases ads that are not very benign in nature. This Flattr system seems to offer a way out of this. Hell, it could probably be expanded to be a payment system for fixed-size payments.. like "Click here to pay $1.99" -> Goto Flattr site to confirm -> Get authenticated as paid customer.
I guess it remains to be seen if this system is any good. But I don't expect it to fail on the willingness of people to pay.. if it fails it probably fails on lack of participating sites or problems on making a deposit. I will sure as hell give it a whirl.
I get that, but it seems arbitrary to me. I don't want to pay X$ for the sake of it, perhaps to ease the admin/banking hassle, or because the punters see it as a donation rather than a fee. Mostly though, I value some sites more than others, and I also don't want sites to get Y$ for 1 visit this month while getting the same for 200 visits next month.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
F..ck major content producers, they have other revenue sources. Being able to support small FOSS projects financially in an easy way and expressing appreciation for thinghs like XKCD is whats its about.
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night.
The key here is to eliminate the role of the recording industry execs. In the digital age, the only real service they provide is marketing, and if you're already interested in paying money for someone's music, then those marketing services don't really add any value to the product you're paying for.
I disagree. I think that if the "recording industry" has a chance of survival, it needs to convert to pure marketing. Along the way it needs to convert to becoming a service where their customer is the artist - not the end-user. That means abandoning their weakening grip on distribution where the value they provide is solely the result of the artificial scarcity they create in controlling distribution channels.
As a music buyer, I need marketing even for bands that I know about. I need to be informed in a timely fashion when they have new music or are on tour or do things like spin-off projects and collobrations. I would really like to be able to subscribe to the equivalent of an RSS feed for each artist that I already like (and that's not limited to musicians either - it can just as easily apply to writers, directors, actors, even painters and artists that work in less digital mediums like say fireworks crews).
What I don't need is hype - which I'm sure is the last thing those marketing execs will ever be able to let go of. And to be honest - a lot of the hoi polloi DO need hype - in the same way that the majority of the population are content to be lead rather than think independently for themselves in terms of politics or even the way they live their lives (go to college, get a job, get married, raise a family, die - the great american dream).
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If you're genuinely comparing someone who offered free movies and music via his website and was smacked down for it to NELSON FUCKING MANDELA and you're not high, you need to sort your fucking priorities out.
You do know Nelson Mandela blew up trains? He was a terrorist.
Personally, I'll stay with the copyright infringers.