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.'"

Comments

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[grumbel]

The intro video doesn't say if it is possible to click multiple times on a Flattr button or pay larger chunks of "money", which would be needed if the scheme should be fair (blog post typed in a few minutes has a different value then a game that might have taken month or years to create).

Other then that, the scheme sounds quite good, as it is based around a flat fee, so you don't risk going bankrupt by clicking a few to many buttons and it also reduces the mental overhead that a normal payment would create.

This might explain why he was working with AES:

[rigolo]

This might explain why he was working with AES:

http://twitter.com/brokep/status/7915813818
"@niczar I clocked 12.8Gbps using AES 128 ECB on a dual quad 2.26ghz xeon with HT (= 16 cores). Not cost efficient."

http://twitter.com/brokep/status/7905751784
Is there a fast solution with a graphics card to do #AES within #Linux? I need 10Gbps or so realtime.

Beautiful

[logixoul]

This is so beautiful. It might be the first web service I truly, really like. It's in the right place at the right time. People, me included, love clicking "upvote" buttons all day long, because they like to show appreciation and it gives them a feeling of power. How much more meaningful this becomes when there's money attached! It will feel great to "flatter" people with some of your money, while never bothering to keep track of "how much you spend" (stressful, anyone will tell you), as it's a constant that you've decided you want to give out to the world for a month.

I don't know about you guys, but this fits my mental model of donations better than anything before. I think it'll catch on, because both providers and consumers will love it. We will move to a web with less crap. Maybe even reverse Sturgeon's law.

Excellent idea, if....

[Demonoid-Penguin]

it gets enough uptake.

Pity that it's unlikely that anyone contracted to the major content distributors will be taking it up - I suspect the studios and publishers would bang that on the head. They (sic) like total control over the money flow.

Earlier this year when "well known musicians" came out to damn piracy - and it was covered by bbc, abc (Oz) and others I posted the suggestion (on those sites) that artists create a blog with a paypal account, so that people who download music and movies illegally (like me) could directly send the artists money. The posts were immediately pulled.

I (for one) welcome a New World Publishing Order - where the consumer determines the rewards for the artist/author/whatever, instead of the existing model where the studios/publishers tell the artist/author and the consumer "what market wants".

Just saying...

Fine, another target for exploits

[AliasMarlowe]

As soon as it's up and running, you can bet that there will be trojans, worms, evil javascript, and so forth all vying to exploit it. Setting up artificial flattr clicks to a scammer's site will probably be possible in many ways, even if you never consciously visit that site. Collecting flattr cash from a handful of victims is hardly worth the effort, but if you can infect enough unwitting donors, then it should be worth a bit.

Before long, infected PCs will just be sending floods of flattr clicks to a swarm of scammer sites, and the few clicks sent to intended sites will be effectively worthless. I expect flattr will fall by the wayside, unless security measures are added for each flattr click (password or other interactive authentication). It will certainly collapse after it adopts sufficient security to properly inhibit exploits.

Here's how I'd do it...

[Cruciform]

Instead of constantly creating slices and diluting the amount equally between everyone, I want to be able to edit my Flatter profile the following way:

I log in and see all the sites I've Flattr'd in the last 30 days.
The site list is accompanied by sliders that are hooked into a bar graph or pie chart.

I slide the settings around until I'm satisfied with the split based on the content that I think has the most worth.

I can edit the sliders right up to payout day. That way if someone impresses me at the beginning of the month, but then pulls a bait-and-switch with trash for the following weeks (or it turned out they plagiarized another content producer) I can put that money elsewhere.

Re:Good idea

[PopeRatzo]

there is a very good reason economics is called the dismal science.

Another reason is the people who decide to become economists.

Just look at what passes for rockstar economists, like Levitt and Dubner who wrote the smash hits "Freakonomics" and "Superfreakonomics". Both dismal intellects who couldn't pass a 300 level class in any other science.

Economics is even "softer" than psychology, and it's even more rife with conclusions that are little more than flabby apologetics for their own emotional reactions to other people.

I think of how much better off our world might be today if Milton Friedman had just gone to a goddamn psychiatrist.