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

Good idea

[^_^x]

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.

Re:Good idea

[Hermel]

I signed up for it. I'd love to see this succeed. A flat rate to pay for things that can be copied without cost makes economical sense.

Re:Good idea

[PiAndWhippedCream]

No it doesn't.

In economic terms if something can be copied without cost, then it must be ``sold'' to everyone for nothing.

Flat rate to consume for flat rate to produce makes very good common sense though. Which is better than economical sense any day; there is a very good reason economics is called the dismal science.

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.

Re:Good idea

[c_forq]

It might be fun to think that, but I don't think that is really the case. I had an economics professor that worked for Ford (you know, that auto company that didn't take a government bailout) and designed the budget for my alma mater, and over half of the schools in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. Just because the ones in the limelight are idiots doesn't mean the entire profession is a lost cause.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Dubner is a dumb-ass journo/author hack, who writes popular "science" for stupid people -- don't call him an economist. Levitt, however, is seriously smart (as was Friedman). Have you read their papers - or even had a look at their Wikipedia CVs?

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't pass a 300 level class in any other science? You obviously haven't seen how much math upper level econ courses use.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

... I'm looking at you Econometrics!

Re:Good idea

[PopeRatzo]

Have you read their papers - or even had a look at their Wikipedia CVs?

I've read his book and that affirmed my opinion of him as a moron.

There was an interesting piece about him and his book in a recent New Yorker. He came up with his "geoengineering" solution to global warming without speaking to a single climate scientist.

And regarding his CV, believe me when I tell you that's no indication of a quality mind. I've also got an impressive CV, and I still manage to be a total goof.

No, my opinion of Levitt stands. Even other economists think he's a moron.

Re:Good idea

[physburn]

Must as i don't mind pirate bay and similar services telling people where to find downloads, its wasn't very legal and the guys doing it knew they where pushing the law. Now one of these guys wants to set up a micropayment service after his last site was shutdown by the law, i'm not sure I trust his new site at all. Unless his account is Abraham Lincion or Mahitma Gandi, i don't think i'll trust his payment service with any of my money.

---

E-Commerce Feed @ Feed Distiller

Re:Good idea

[Troed]

Would you trust him more if you lived in the same city, have met on social occasions more than once and where your opinion of him would be highly rated since he's a really nice and bright guy?

I do.

Re:Good idea

[MobyDisk]

Also, I didn't think Dubner claims to be an economist.

I'm with stupid

[Gadget_Guy]

Yes, I will voluntarily give my money to pirates.

Re:I'm with stupid

[xous]

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.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Gadget_Guy]

But they were the ones who put the word pirate in the name of their site. In your example, the city would be called Boozer City.

Which I think does exist somewhere in Australia. I might be wrong, because I have been alternating between rum and beer, so I have no idea what is going on here. Hmm, and I am currently downloading some TV episodes at the moment. Oh crap! I am that pirate in Boozer City!

Re:I'm with stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

newsflash: they were found guilty and sentenced to jail time IN SWEDEN. maybe you tried to avoid hearing it, but it happened.
The guys a fucking criminal. lets not pretend he is some kind of fucking hero. All Sunde cares about is Sunde and Sundes bank balance.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Jalfro]

Some other criminals of note: Sparticus; Jesus of Nazareth; Nelson Mandela.

Re:I'm with stupid

[bbqsrc]

Sentenced, and currently going through a multitude of appeals. They're not in jail yet, and it's likely they'll never land in jail at all. I don't think this has anything to do with heroism or anything of the sort. He has started a business, and it will mutually benefit him and the 'sellers' of the 'commodity'.

Re:I'm with stupid

[daveime]

newsflash: They were found guilty under a law that DID NOT exist, simply on the basis of the affiliations of the judge. What they did was, and still is LEGAL in Sweden, as no law yet exists regarding the copying of information. Unfortunately, instead of applying the law as it stood, the judge chose to create a new law akin to "aiding and abetting" especially for this case.

You have to realise that the Swedish adjudication system was originally based on throwing axes at people bound to spinning wheels to determine guilt, (or something like that), where the actual decision regarding guilt or innocence had probably already been made by the Chief Viking and his advisors, and the rest of the proceeding was just for show and keeping the lower ranks happy.

Surprisingly, 1500 hundred years after the Vikings, not a lot has changed, except the advisors are a bunch of corrupt RIAA employees :-(

Re:I'm with stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

But, what prison are they in?

newsflash: they were found guilty and sentenced to jail time in sweden by TINGSRÄTTEN. The case was then appealed, and that was just the first instance. There is an second and a third.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence the suburb of Upper Hutt is guilty as charged, because it has a Moonshine Road.

Re:I'm with stupid

[c6gunner]

Under Swedish law, the verdict means absolutely nothing while they're going through the appeals process. In other words, they're still "innocent until proven guilty". Judging by the obvious bias of the judge in the initial case, I'd say they have a pretty good chance to get a better verdict the second time around.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Sticking with the drunk driving analogy I think that the Pirate Bay's activity is more akin to putting up advertising billboards, some of which give directions to the nearest discount liquor barn. Still not "lock em up and throw away the key" stuff but hardly building streets.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Andtalath]

Except, he has been convicted in court.
It has of course gone to the higher level in court, but he is currently under a court order to pay a lot of money for his crimes.

The court room was kinda farcical though.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Savage-Rabbit]

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.

Not quite, what the state does is build streets, pass laws against drunk driving and maintain a police force to make sure people don't drive drunk. What the Pirate-Bay did was more like build streets, facilitate the free distribution of booze then make fun of people who complained about drunk drivers.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't kill you, you just accidentally tripped and hit my knife 15 times! WHAT A FRIGGIN COINCIDENCE.

Re:I'm with stupid

[sopssa]

But like you said too, they were sentenced. As it is currently, they have been found to be violating law. You can normally appeal, but as of now the court decision has been done.

Besides, this service charges 10% for "administration fees". Even PayPal doesn't charge that much and some take just 0.30%. Not in it to make profit, yeah sure.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Joe Jay Bee]

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.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Alef]

Just because you can use their service to illegal distribute content does not make the creator a pirate.

What people must go through these days to earn the title of pirate...

Re:I'm with stupid

[sopssa]

"Copying of information", yeah right. At least take the stand and speak about things on their correct terms. It's file sharing. It's copyright infringement. On TPB's part, it was massive aiding of copyright infringement.

You see, our legal system actually looks at ones purpose on things, instead of going on merely technical terms. This means the stupid "but .torrent file itself isn't illegal!" doesn't hold much water and you can't just mess around going against laws with such stupid technical excuses. If you look at the legal letters and responses to them, or 99.9% of the content of the side, or the freaking The Pirate Bay name, I think it's pretty clear TPB knew what they were doing.

If they would had just played it cool, responded and acted to copyright infringement notices and, for fucks sake, chosen a little bit more neutral name they could had have a better change. But not like this.

Re:I'm with stupid

[aliquis]

ThePiratebay was and still is legal in Sweden.

I guess you can keep on arguing that. But they where sentenced and I don't think it's even hosted in Sweden longer so well. Make what you want out of that.

Re:I'm with stupid

[IamTheRealMike]

Yes, but under "common sense law" it does.

Imagine somebody turned up at your front door and say, hey, why don't you give me some money? I'll make it easier for you to donate to charity! And you say, wait, didn't I read about you being found guilty of something, and he says "yes but don't worry, I'm appealing!" - is that going to reassure you? It sure as hell wouldn't make me feel better.

But it gets worse for Mr "brokep". The Pirate Bay deliberately antagonized the people he is now trying to help. He ignored DMCA takedowns and told anyone who would listen why he was right and the rest of the world was wrong. During the trial where he was found guilty, he believed it was going "quite well". And his business partners have a history of harassment, like the "ddo$" scheme against the opposition law firm.

Like all the of the guys who ran the pirate bay, they have spent the last few years proving the world that they're stupid and untrustworthy. I can't think of a worse person to run something like Flattr.

Re:I'm with stupid

[QuantumG]

It's an interesting system, in that you don't have to appeal from a disadvantage, but it also means that more rash decisions are common at the first court as the accused can always appeal.

Re:I'm with stupid

[sopssa]

They can't always appeal. The appeal process has to be requested and it's possible it's denied if the defendants can't create valid reasons for it. But since this was a large case and they could provide valid enough reasons for it, they were allowed to appeal.

They are in no way "innocent until proven guilty" now as the parent put it. They are guilty already, but they still have a possibility to turn that around.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Of course he will ignore DMCA takedowns, they are not within US jurisdiction.

Besides, in Scandinavia we don't follow "common sense law". We are quite unreasonable people.

Re:I'm with stupid

[mikael_j]

Well, the way the swedish legal system works you aren't "really" guilty until the appeals process has been completed.

Besides, it's pretty much standard fare for decisions in tingsrätten to be overturned by hovrätten or högsta domstolen since in tingsrätten there is normally only one actual judge and four laymen (most often politicians), and interestingly enough these laymen have a tendency to occasionally focus more on their emotional assertion of a case, how much money someone slipped them under the table or just plain political ideology ("Drugs are bad because they're illegal and they're illegal because they're bad, also by law any use of illegal drugs is always abuse, here's a SEK 20,000 fine for abusing drugs (but oh, don't forget that drugs are only illegal so we can help abusers stop abusing)").

/Mikael

Re:I'm with stupid

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Wrong. Wrong, And Wrong!

But they were the ones who put the word pirate in the name of their site.

Originally PirateBay published economic trends. They used the price of Four'n'Twenties as a cost of living indicator.

Hence the name - "Pi Rate" which translates into English as "cost of a meat pie".

the city would be called Boozer City.

Which I think does exist somewhere in Australia

There is no city in this fine and fair land called "Boozer City". You fool! (perhaps you've just come back from BongBong - hopefully Mount Camel was not on the way)

All the towns are called "Boozer Town". The cities, going clockwise from the bottom-south, are Shooter City, Underbelly City, City of Colour and Movement, PartyCrash City, Big Stubby City, Bundaberg City, Ice City, and (my city) Tired And Emotional Politician City.

Don't listen to the talking Polar Bear on the bottle - he studied at the school of Tallho Rolling paper trivia.

Hmm, and I am currently downloading some TV episodes at the moment

Wrong again! You are watching the dishwasher (and that is a mouse in your hand).

Re:I'm with stupid

[GreatBunzinni]

More to the point, the "piracy" term refers to the commercial distribution of copyrighted works without the copyright owner's explicit authorization. If you download an album for your personal use or even if you upload it without getting any currency out of it you are not "pirating" anything. But the media companies sure want to tack that nasty term to everything they don't approve. After all, "unauthorized distribution for personal use" doesn't quite have that negative image associated with it. You need an image of some bearded, blood thirsty thief and murderer with a parrot on his shoulder to make believe that copying a file is somehow a terribly wrong thing to do.

Re:I'm with stupid

[chilvence]

He didn't imply a comparison, if he had he would have said so. Try reaching for the names of three historical or modern figures convicted of slightly dubious crimes to the mild consternation of a significant minority. You can't can you. He was pointing out how ridiculous it is to take the authoritarian definition of criminal at face value, because they can be a bunch of criminals themselves :)

Re:I'm with stupid

[azenpunk]

If the cars being driven while drunk were incapable of causing harm when they collided, they would be right to make fun of those who complained. Imagine the oil companies complaining because people were able to fuel their safe cars with some of the booze available for drinking, thus depriving the oil companies of their rightful income.

Re:I'm with stupid

[azenpunk]

Either i have had too much vodka or some of those words are not English.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't beleive they have made any serious money out of it and I don't think their motivation is money.

They have taken money from advertising to run the site, but made any money, I don't think so.

Especially compared to what they could have spent their time on.

So, I think there is a fair amount of "heroism", or whatever you want to call trying to make the world a better place involved.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Laglorden]

No it's not "done".

There are different legal systems in the world.

Micropayments are different from regular payments. 10% of a small amount is less than 0.30% of a large amount... More SHOCKING mathematical facts soon ;)

Re:I'm with stupid

[srw]

Why would heavy metal bands be making legal judgements?!?

Re:I'm with stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably 'cause sweden is awesome like that.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Kjella]

They can't always appeal. The appeal process has to be requested and it's possible it's denied if the defendants can't create valid reasons for it. (...) They are in no way "innocent until proven guilty" now as the parent put it. They are guilty already, but they still have a possibility to turn that around.

Formally, you are wrong. An appeal does not turn the burden of evidence around, they start again with a presumption of innocence and the prosecution has to prove their guilt. I don't have the exact details for Sweden but at least here in Norway you can appeal the lowest court's decision on findings of fact, findings or law or procedural errors. There Supreme court will often refuse an appeal, but the appeals court (hovrätten in Sweden, lagmannsretten in Norway) will rarely refuse an appeal.

The whole concept is a bit different in Scandinavia than in the US, remember here both sides can appeal, so both the prosecution and defendant has to accept the decision. If there's real material disputes or legal principles at stake, it's almost always appealed. A ruling here can equally well find you guilty even though you were found not guilty in the first trial, make your sentence longer and damages higher rather than acquit, shorten and lower it. It more a "full" trial versus a "light" trial than a US appeal.

Formally the legal system is one big process with up to three stages (courts) and your guilt is not decided and the sentence is not binding and final until all the possibilities for appeal have expired. That works both ways, an acquittal is also not binding and final so it can be appealed without causing double jeopardy, to be double jeopardy the system must have found you not guilty not just a single court. The Supreme court's decisions are immediately final since there is no more appeals, anything else is not.

Re:I'm with stupid

[cpghost]

Besides, in Scandinavia we don't follow "common sense law". We are quite unreasonable people.

Not trusting "common sense" is actually very reasonable sometimes...

Re:I'm with stupid

[duguk]

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.

Re:I'm with stupid

[daveime]

On TPB's part, it was massive aiding of copyright infringement.

Which part of "it is legal in Sweden" do you not understand ?

This means the stupid "but .torrent file itself isn't illegal!" doesn't hold much water and you can't just mess around going against laws with such stupid technical excuses

Well, yes, the law is *exactly* about technicalities, otherwise people walking around with gun holsters could be charged with firearms offenses, *regardless* of whether there was a gun in the holster !

A .torrent file is NOT illegal, it depends merely on what information it is POINTING to, and in which countr(ies) that information is considered copyrighted ... exactly the same position as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. Except those entities, being a American-based company are bound by American laws, such as DMCA takedown notices.

It still remains a fact that they broke no law as written in Sweden, and the "judge" (I use the word in it's loosest sense), created a new law under which to find them guilty. Thank your lucky stars you live somewhere where this doesn't happen, otherwise maybe next week they create a law against being an uninformed troll, and find you retroactively guilty under it.

Re:I'm with stupid

[lyml]

Don't be silly now. According to Swedish law you can't be an accomplice in copyright infringement (which is what they were sentenced for) if there is no main culprit. That is, you cannot be convicted to be an aid in a crime when the crime has not been established, several legal experts have testified to the judgement being in error and it will be overturned when it gets to Hovrätten.

Tingsrätten is only for filtering minor issues and frivolous charges, almost every crime there is taken to Hovrätten. In fact you have the legal right to be tried in Hovrätten if the judgement gives you a punishment.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahaha

yeah the judge is biased if he doesn't agree with the retarded "all the content should be teh free!!!1111" gibberish that idiots in 'the pirate party' spout...

TPB is a criminal scam run by millionaire fascist Carl Lundtsrom. He hired a few charismatic kids as frontmen, and peter Sunde was one of them.

This is fucking obvious to anyone who delves behind the pathetic 'stick it to the man' jingoist marketing BS on the front page.

Re:I'm with stupid

[eiMichael]

However; .10x + .10x + .10x + .10x = .10(x+x+x+x)
So as you can see, 10% of many small amounts is 10% of a large amount.

But comparing it to PayPal isn't quite fair, paypal doesn't have to negotiate copyright licenses from potentially hundreds or maybe thouseands of different entities. Maybe 10% is actually appropriate in this situation.

Re:I'm with stupid

[brit74]

More to the point, the "piracy" term refers to the commercial distribution of copyrighted works without the copyright owner's explicit authorization.

... oh - *that's* why they called themselves the Pirate Bay. Oh wait. I take that back. Even the Pirate Bay disagrees with you.

Re:I'm with stupid

[brit74]

As far as I know Sunde has never been accused of pirating anything.

I've seen videos of him admitting that he pirates stuff. I think his quote was something along the lines of "if I want something*, I take it. I don't care what the law says. I just don't care.".
*[ referring to digital media ]

Re:I'm with stupid

[sopssa]

Uh, why would these guys need to negotiate copyright licenses. From all of the summary, article and their video I understand it will be like donations to different sites (like the paypal button on different sites). And even if it would actually be about selling something, flatrr would be just a payment gateway - there is no need for them to negotiate any kind of copyright licenses.

Re:I'm with stupid

[sopssa]

Yeah that's how it is. And yes, you can actually get toucher sentences if you appeal.

However, I was mostly replying to the parents saying about "you can always appeal, so first ruling doesn't matter". For example in civil cases, you cannot if you never answered for the initial court (it will be ruled as one-sided win for the suer). Another case where your appeal is likely refused is if it is quite stupid and a minor case. For example getting a speeding ticket from police, and trying to appeal it even when theres good proof you did actually speed (people do this time to time just for funs)

However on cases like these and when it's about a little bit more than useless things like that, it works pretty much how you described.

Re:I'm with stupid

[rackeer]

What did you smoke?

Mandela was classified as a terrorist by South African apartheid regime and was on US terrorism lists until 2008 and arrested with the help of the CIA. He was involved in para-military activities, however I can find no evidence that he ever harmed people. In court the charges were sabotage and conspiracy. Had there been anything else than rumors charges would have been different.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Had there been anything else than rumors charges would have been different.

Rumours? Really?

He was involved in para-military activities, however I can find no evidence that he ever harmed people.

So if I blow up your house, but I don't hurt you, I've not done anything illegal?

Re:I'm with stupid

[Husgaard]

There are so many irregularities in this case that it would make a very long list. Here are just a few off the top of my head:

After the (very surprising, if you know Swedish law) verdict, some journalists found out that the judge was biased. He had an extra job where he worked with one of the plaintiff lawyers. And he was member of a copyright-fundamentalist club promoting harsher copyright violation penalties where he regularly met several of the plaintiff lawyers. The judge kept this secret during the trial. A tribunal of three judges was set up to decide if the judge was really biased, but when their names were made public, it was revealed that all three were also biased. The tribunal was replaced with three more judges, and although it was revealed that at least one of the judges in the new panel had connections with one of the plaintiffs in the case, she was not replaced. The new tribunal decided that the judge was not biased.

Just five months before the big raid on The Pirate Bay the chief prosecutor in the case wrote a memo where he concluded that it would not be possible to convict the people behind TPB for copyright violation.

There are heavy rumors and a lot of incidental evidence that the raid against TPB and the resulting court case was done on a direct order by the government. This is illegal in Sweden because it means that the court system could be abused for political purposes. Documents that could tell if this is the case are kept secret by the Swedish government.

The policeman heading the police investigation got a new job immediately after the police investigation was concluded. His new employer was one of the plaintiffs in the case, and he negotiated his salary with his new employer in the final stages of the police investigation.

The legal advisor of The Pirate Bay was arrested during the raid and forced to give a DNA sample. (This is possible in Sweden if the charge can give at least one year of prison time and a DNA sample is relevant for the case.) One of the people later convicted to a year of jail time was also arrested and refused access to a lawyer during initial police questioning. (Possible in Sweden if the charge is is not likely to give jail time. And Swedish law admit evidence even if the police has obtained it illegally.)

Anybody who knows Swedish law and have followed this case closely (ie. read all court documents) know that this case is a joke and a distortion of Swedish law. This is a political court case intended to bend Swedish law so people can be convicted for "crimes" that are not illegal according the the letter of the law.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an NBA team which carries the name Washington Wizards. Do you believe their players are wizards?

Re:I'm with stupid

[Ibn al-Hazardous]

In the civil cases it is not a question of guilt and crime in the formal sense - you're not a criminal because someone sued you (and the epithet 'criminal' sparked this thread, remember?).

In the cases of the speed tickets the ruling does still not come into effect until the appeal period has lapsed. Furthermore, there have been successful appeals to speed tickets too... ;)

Re:I'm with stupid

[c6gunner]

I think your response to me was very well thought out, and I'm sorry to see that you got modded "troll". With that said, I disagree with pretty much everything :)

Imagine somebody turned up at your front door and say .. And you say, wait, didn't I read about you being found guilty of something, and he says "yes but don't worry, I'm appealing!" - is that going to reassure you?

I'd take the trouble of finding out what he was convicted of. If he was an American citizen convicted of legally obtaining a handgun, I'd call the ruling preposterous and would disregard it. Likewise, a Swedish citizen found guilty of violating a law which does not exist is more likely to receive my business BECAUSE of his bullshit conviction.

The Pirate Bay deliberately antagonized the people he is now trying to help. He ignored DMCA takedowns and told anyone who would listen why he was right and the rest of the world was wrong.

Why is that a problem? He WAS right, and they were wrong.

If some twit from Saudi Arabia insisted that I take down a picture of Mohammed because it violates Sharia Law, I'd tell him to get fucked. The Pirates Bay folks did exactly the same thing.

And his business partners have a history of harassment, like the "ddo$" scheme against the opposition law firm.

Their "DDOS scheme" was perfectly legal, unlike the DDOS attack which "The Biz" was planning on using on them. Last I checked, there was no law prohibiting people from giving money to a law firm, while there certainly are laws which prohibit hiring hackers to flood someones servers.

Of course, they're walking a fine line there, and if I were them I certainly wouldn't have stooped to that. On the other hand, considering what they've had to put up with, I can certainly understand their response.

Like all the of the guys who ran the pirate bay, they have spent the last few years proving the world that they're stupid and untrustworthy.

That's your opinion. As far as I'm concerned, they've shown themselves to be a lot more reasonable and intelligent than anyone at the MPAA or RIA.

Re:I'm with stupid

[xous]

"Copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material that is covered by copyright law, in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_(media)

Quit conflating "providing a medium for distribution" and "piracy". A torrent tracker or the web service does not make copies of the content they are complaining about. Refusing to comply with a DMCA for content to which a company does not own ("torrent files") is not piracy. Unless you think they can copyright the numbers their potential works may produce when processed with certain algorithms.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Troll? Redundant? Who the hell modded my post? If we all modded like this Cowboy'd have to rename the site 4chan.

Redundant? - show me where... Troll - hardly, it's a joke Narelle. The author of the parent is unlikely to be upset - he/she understands "irony". (no - that got nothing to do with ferrous content).

Hey I wouldn't complain if it was tagged "Off Topic".

Re:I'm with stupid

[shentino]

Considering TPB's name and attitude towards legal threats/notices (that last one is a doozy), I think they knew GODDAMNED WELL they were facilitating illegality.

I don't know Swedish law to the letter but I think that aiding and abetting is just as illegal.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Kalriath]

That's in New Zealand, idiot. And Upper Hutt is not a suburb, it's an entire town.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Kalriath]

At which point it's cheaper to just have PayPal donation buttons.

So what's the point again?

Re:I'm with stupid

[Troed]

That's ok, vodka isn't English either.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Troed]

Actually the GP is correct. The Swedish law doesn't do technicalities (the US law does, otoh) but focuses on intents.

(I'm assuming we're all Swedish here so please look it up ;)

Re:I'm with stupid

[xous]

Hi,

Yes, because it's wrong to be an asshole to lawyers and paralegals that send you notices that don't apply to you.

Everywhere is not America. Well, It wasn't until the MPAA/RIAA bought themselves a judge.

Re:I'm with stupid

[Qu4Z]

I believe the point is that with Flatter^H^Hr you pay a fixed monthly fee, which is divided between the recipients. It means that you don't need to decide how much to give, and you can Flattr an artist without worrying whether you can afford to donate any more money.

Personally, I think it's a good idea, and not a duplicate of Paypal, although 10% does seem a bit steep...

I am not so sure about this.

[Jane Q. Public]

The way Flattr is set up, your monthly payment is divided up among the sites you Flattr that month... so if you Flattr 5 sites it will be divided by 5, if you Flattr 100 sites it will be divided by 100. I am not sure I like that arrangement.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[QuantumG]

Does seem a little arbitrary.. maybe there needs to be a mechanism to decide on the amount of cake. But I wonder if the Swedes are aware that the cake is a lie.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[BiggerIsBetter]

Agreed. Perhaps a set amount per Flattr would be more palatable.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[snaggen]

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.

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.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[kestasjk]

The whole point of it is that it's flat rate, so it doesn't matter how many things you click you'll still pay the same, and this encourages people to spread their fixed fee around to all the places they like.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[BiggerIsBetter]

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.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[vacarul]

I think if you have 200 visits on one site you can click 200 times the button to send money to that site, so that site will get a bigger chunk from the flat rate than other sites. At least this is my understanding of it...

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[Jalfro]

sounds like it should be easy enuff to set it up to flattr a site more than once?

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its an abstraction of money, a flattr is not an amount of money until the end of the month. Its so you can just spam flattrs to many places without care and hopefully that there are enough flattr users for the amount to become substantial. Also if something takes a lot of time to do and deserves more money for that reason then well you can just flattr them every month.
Brokep was joking about paying the money they were sued for as a ddos of pennies... i guess he decided that such methods would actually be a nice way to pay for things and shouldn't actually end up in a ddos.

Its pretty hard to decide how much to donate to each website as there are far too many great services on the web that deserve it which diminishes anything you'd donate to nothing. Deciding on X money per month for N amount of sites seems like a nice way to distribute.

Also an interesting mechanism is that if only few people adopt flattr buttons they will get full cakes to themselves.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[Yvanhoe]

Well, you always have the possibility to pay more per month. I really believe this is the missing piece of the culture in the online world.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[Bottles]

Congratulations!!!!

You are the first person to have used the URL as a VERB, an act which ensures this Web 2.0 endeavour success and places it in the same heady verbal area as:

Google - 'Why don't you just Google it, you noob?'

Orkut - 'Yeah, that bitch was dissing me online me so I Orkut his face.'

Zune (archaic) - 'Why don't you just go Zune yourself?'

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[MooUK]

Actually, the original parent of this thread used it first...

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[sopssa]

Seeing you're quite new here, you probably haven't heard the term "slashdotting a site" either.

I hope your last nerve didn't explode now and you're able to continue to write us your quite pretty insightful opinions.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[aliquis]

In Sweden the cake is a pie.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[Vintermann]

Seems fair to me. If you just like one site, odds are you like it a lot more strongly than one who uses 100.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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).

"Fair" is in the eye of the customer. Sure, I agree that the customer should have the ability to control how much money goes where. I'm just disagreeing with your example and the assumption behind it that more effort going into the creation necessarily makes the creation more valuable. A 10 second twit that tells me what the powerball lotto numbers are going to be 1 hour beforehand is worth a lot more to me than all of the video games ever created combined.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[John Hasler]

> blog post typed in a few minutes has a different value then a game that
> might have taken month or years to create

I don't know about games specifically but I have seen many works that took months or years to create that were of negative values. One pays for results, not effort.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[AniVisual]

In Sweden, your pie rates the content.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[pigphish]

Why couldn't you flatter one site 20 times out of the 100?

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[Hatta]

Sounds fine to me. I have only so much attention in a month. If my attention goes to one content provider, they should get all of the compensation. If my attention is split between 5 content providers, they should split the compensation.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading his Twitter, the answer to that seems to be no, and it seems to be this way by design.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[sopssa]

Its an abstraction of money, a flattr is not an amount of money until the end of the month.

That is a funny sentence.

Money itself is an abstraction, and usually backed up by gold. What is gold worth? Peoples thought that it's a rare metal and worth something. What would flattr money be worth? The thought that its worth of money (probably US dollar), which is worth of other currencies like Euro compared to USD, which again is worth something in gold, which in turn is worth of peoples mindset it actually being worth something.

I would understand seeing this kind of ignorance of how finance works on some teenage girls forum, but slashdot? :)

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[GuldKalle]

How about clicking 2 times on the sites you like the most?

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[Weezul]

I'd hope they add features for browsing your flattr history and repeating the best sites. It'd also rock if they set up a system for giving larger sums to non-profits.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[Jane Q. Public]

Worldwide, with few exceptions money has not been backed by gold for many decades. That was provably a mistake, but that's the fact of the matter.

Re:I am not so sure about this.

[mrrudge]

You seem to be implying that money being an abstraction itself stops Flattr being an abstraction of money, which seems unlikely.

OMGwheredyagetthoseshooooes....

Peter will be able to pay off Paul after all, then

[macraig]

It's a good thing if Sunde gets this off the ground and profitable, because he's gotta having something to pay off that judgement to Big Media....

I'd like to see this connected to ThePirateBay

[erroneus]

Connect the micro payment system to the torrents and any registered individual human parties that can prove identity and/or copyright ownership and is not big media.

This could give opportunity to actually pay the actual artists who want to get paid for the sharing that is going on. This should really serve to piss off the big media publishers who are essentially pimping the work of others for huge personal gain.

Re:I'd like to see this connected to ThePirateBay

[BiggerIsBetter]

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.

Re:I'd like to see this connected to ThePirateBay

[naz404]

From the article:

Initially, Flattr plans to take a 10% cut of any cash paid as an administration fee. But, said Mr Sunde, it hopes to push that percentage lower as people sign up.

Nice try, Mr.Sunde. 10% is a lot of cash!

Re:I'd like to see this connected to ThePirateBay

[Jugalator]

I can sort of understand it now. Just imagine the Slashdot bandwidth cost for him now, and the maintained costs to run that service with the media attention, with a minimal number of actual users. I think he's thinking of this when making that statement, and that's why he's saying the costs may be lowered in the future. He quite obviously realizes it is a high percentage, but how is he otherwise going to get it on its feet?

Re:I'd like to see this connected to ThePirateBay

[aliquis]

"I downloaded this film, I liked it, *click*"

Re:I'd like to see this connected to ThePirateBay

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but while the user base remains small, the cost to administer remains high per user. This is why micropayments have been so difficult to achieve in the past - the high cost per transaction makes payments under a few bucks unprofitable to the recipient (who is usually on the hook for the transaction fee). The only way to do micropayments profitably is to have a large user base so that at the end of the month (or week, whatever your payment cycle), each recipient is receiving the sum of the micropayments from hundreds or thousands of customers, totaling up to a payment that is economically profitable for the recipient.

For this service, Sunde is flipping it around and charging the sender rather than the recipient, and so the x%/y cents (whichever is greater) per transaction has to come from your membership. When 95% of the payments use the more reasonable x% because they are large, the administrative fee can drop, but while a significant majority of payments are charged y cents, which can be 50% or more of the total transaction, the administrative fee must be high to cover that. In the earliest stages, it is even possible that the service will need to operate at a loss as the 10% might not even be enough to cover transaction fees.

Re:I'd like to see this connected to ThePirateBay

[sopssa]

For this service, Sunde is flipping it around and charging the sender rather than the recipient

Actually, I think it will be exactly the opposite, but the system just makes it more transparent.

Consider this scenario: User creates a subscription to pay a total amount of $20 per month. Along the month he browsers and clicks the Flatrr button on 4 sites. The payment amount is now $5 for every site. Now the 10% administration fees are added, which makes the payment amount $4.50 for every site. The seller is still charged directly, but its just more transparent than lets say PayPal because of the percentage system.

Re:I'd like to see this connected to ThePirateBay

[Reziac]

I've suggested something like that before -- a micropayment made for downloading, AND a micropayment received for being a seed, all dependent on actual use. As you say it should be fairly easy to connect to a BT site; after all some of them already track ratios, and this is pretty much the same thing.

Re:I'd like to see this connected to ThePirateBay

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Consider this scenario: User creates a subscription to pay a total amount of $20 per month. Along the month he browsers and clicks the Flatrr button on 4 sites. The payment amount is now $5 for every site. Now the 10% administration fees are added, which makes the payment amount $4.50 for every site. The seller is still charged directly, but its just more transparent than lets say PayPal because of the percentage system.

Do you work in retail? :-)

Let me correct you, please.

User subscription = $20pm

User clicks flattr x 4

flattr charge is %10 (charged to user)

flattr processing fee = 20 x .1 = 2 (leaving 18 for donations)

Site donations = 18 / 4 = 4.5 (never 5 for every site)

There is no charge to the seller.

Re:I'd like to see this connected to ThePirateBay

[sopssa]

Wheres the correction? You just described exactly the same as I did, but just prove that its more harder to see as it's not a charge per transaction.

The user is going to put the $20 in donation amounts nevertheless of the administration fees. He wont be trying to calculate that 10% and making a $22 donation instead. The seller/donation receiver is still getting less than without the administration fee.

Also, both technically and psychologically it makes more sense to take the charge afterwards than when the user is paying it and won't go "whoa, theres lots of overhead costs".

But no matter where they technically take the administration fee, it's still always off from the seller, so yes, there is technically a charge for the sellers.

Re:I'd like to see this connected to ThePirateBay

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Wheres the correction? You just described exactly the same as I did, but just prove that its more harder to see as it's not a charge per transaction.

Exactly means "exactly". Whilst the maths maybe the same - the conclusion is different. Perhaps you are very, very tired??

Let me put it another way - this posts is taking me time to write... if you read it the amount of time it took me to write it means nothing to you - it "costs" you nothing.

The payment amount is now $5 for every site

No! (don't you get it?)

You then follow that erroneous presumption with

Now the 10% administration fees are added

No - it's a flat rate.

The rest of your post is too sophistic and wrong to warrant further comment. Good luck with your business plan.

Trust me, would this face lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

""We're not really in this for becoming rich," he said. "We're doing it to change things and making people get money they never got before."

"I know that people are nice enough," he said. "People love things and they want to pay." "

Well three things. One the guy has trust issues. Two the history of micro payment is a troubled one. And three the shear irony of that man saying "people want to pay" considering his original customers is black hole awesome.

Re:Trust me, would this face lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

well I am one of the ones who wants to pay, just not that much and I don't want my computer getting fucked up by some DRM crap.

Take Fallout 3 for example, one of the buggiest games I have seen in a long time. Oblivion runs stable on my system but Fallout 3 will CTD 100% of the time at random times.
I would have been pissed if I had to fight with the retailer about returning this game. But I downloaded it so it was as simple as hitting the delete button and cursing at it for a sec.

Looks like I get the equivalent of a "keep it button", I like it.

Re:Trust me, would this face lie?

[Vintermann]

Well, people don't want to pay. But they want to show their approval - even on Pirate Pay you see that plainly enough. Now they can do it in a way that is easy, will be taken sincerely (since it costs the approver some money), and will benefit the recipient financially as well as emotionally.

I think this a great idea. To be honest, I didn't think I would say that about any business model proposed by a Pirate Bay person... but I want to give this a chance.

Currency

[symes]

They'll only be excepting pieces of eight and dubloons... aghghghrrr me hearties

Re:Currency

[Anonymous Coward]

Real pirates would also accept parrots, grog, booty, and wenches.

Re:I am so sure about this.

[dgr73]

I think it's a great idea, it allows you to control how much you give. Sure, there may be cases where your donation may be 1cent, but it's a MICROpayment system. And if you run a decent site with a dedicated following, it'd be easy for people to click on your "Flattr" button to say "Thanks", which in turn creates a much bigger revenue stream than single donations would.

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.

lol - never would I trust them

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, mr. criminal expects me to give him my credit card number and/or money. sure - why not!

Re:lol - never would I trust them

[Jalfro]

yes, much safer to stick to a respectable banker... er wait...

Richard Marx Stallman is a pedophile communist

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing."

--Richard Stallman

Re:Richard Marx Stallman is a pedophile communist

[SigILL]

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing."

--Richard Stallman

That's pretty insightful of him!

Cut out the middleman

[Dachannien]

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.

Aside from that, recording industry execs hinder creativity by stamping out cookie-cutter artists who are forced down the public's throat until they burn out in a blaze of drugs and/or stupidity. Music wants to be free (as in speech), and the recording industry is the single biggest obstacle to that.

Re:Cut out the middleman

[symes]

Yes. I completely agree. Except similar services through the years have not succeeded. The reality is, unfortunately, the masses want to feel part of the heard and this is managed through select media outlets and well-trodden marketting techniques. We are where we are at because it works so well. It would be fantastic if struggling/new artists could push their work onto the masses for approval and find their work is reciprocated financially. But they cannot compete with the big music lables in terms of quality and, lets face it, listeners would just be continually bombarded with thousands of spamming musicians trying to get thier song on mp3 players. Sheeple need some way of simplifying the world and the big labels do just that. Flattr is a nice idea, but like a lot of nice ideas it'll be scuppered on the rocks of herd mentality.

Re:Cut out the middleman

[fenix849]

*Clears throat*

http://xkcd.com/610/

That is all.

Re:Cut out the middleman

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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).

Re:Cut out the middleman

[Vintermann]

I've looked at the "similar services" (Sprinklepenny, Kachingle, Contenture) and they suffer from a critical fault: They want to track your likes automatically rather than just explicitly. This system is simpler and better.

Re:Cut out the middleman

[Hatta]

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.

What.cd does a really good job of doing exactly that without any help from marketers.

Re:Cut out the middleman

[Squiggle]

There are already a number services that provide a "RSS feed for each artist that I already like" in a sense.

• LastFM
• Songkick
• tourfilter

I see the development of these services and other recommendation services as far more important and useful than marketing, so the recording industry really has few places to go. What I'd like to see them evolve into is a focus on artist support and development services, where the artists are their customers and they help them prosper artistically and financially. Theoretically this is already part of the service the recording industry provides, and perhaps this side of it will improve when the corrupting influences of distribution control and marketing fade. Many artists need someone to help them deal with finances, the stress of the job, set up collaborations and inspiring life experiences, etc. It is very valuable for everyone (fans, artists, etc) to let artists focus on what they do best. The real trick is to protect artists so that when they let someone manage the finances the accountants don't take all the money for themselves (i.e. the current situation).

Re:Cut out the middleman

[fbjon]

You're right but...

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).

NASA doesn't need Ares, they can just use your horse, jeez.

Re:Cut out the middleman

[MacWiz]

The key here is to eliminate the role of the recording industry execs.

iTunes, Amazon and other services have already done that. Anyone can now release their music directly into the largest music retailer's inventory, something that was pretty much impossible without a record contract 15 years ago.

I think the idea is to create a competitor for PayPal, something that is long overdue.

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.

Re:This might explain why he was working with AES:

[mrmeval]

Kind of sad performance but maybe someone can fix it.
http://math.ut.ee/~uraes/openssl-gpu/

18.5Gbps?
http://developer.amd.com/gpu_assets/AES.pdf

Re:This might explain why he was working with AES:

[Big_Mamma]

Try a processor with AES-NI. Tom's Hardware got 3570MByte, or 27Gbit/s out of a single Intel i5. With the new Xeons in March, you'll get x3 cores, x2 sockets in a single system.

What I don't get is how you can have such a high requirement for bandwidth but not the budget for enough hardware to just bruteforce this - even a single gigabit connection worth of traffic costs much more than a stack of 1u servers every month.

Re:This might explain why he was working with AES:

[gaqzi]

I think that has to do with his work to try and avoid the Swedish mass surveilance: http://blog.brokep.com/2010/01/09/fra-to-hell/

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.

Re:Beautiful

[Reziac]

I completely agree. The most benefit for the least trouble and bother. And if the rates are as low as TFA indicates, very well worth it.

BiZ8atch

[Anonymous Coward]

I'M DISCUSSING Unless you can work WASTE OF BITS AND RECENT SYS ADMIN Official GNAA irc base for FreeBSD Faster than this anOd as BSD sinks

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...

Re:Excellent idea, if....

[oh2]

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.

Re:Excellent idea, if....

[Demonoid-Penguin]

F..ck major content producers,

Agreed!

they have other revenue sources.,

What? You mean like "get a real job"??

Being able to support small FOSS projects financially in an easy way and expressing appreciation for thinghs like XKCD is whats its about.

Agreed. And the critical thinkers can fund (and thus promote) good independant journalism. Developers (FOSS and other) can get an income. Call it "direct funding". Money spent on direct funding could be money not spent on corporatised crap.

It'd truly be a New World Publishing Order. Discerning consumers could fund better content - and without the robber barons acting as middle men, the producer (musician/author) could get more money, more control and satisfaction, and, the consumer gets a better and lower cost product. The uncritical can watch re-runs of Big Brother and Australia's Biggest ArseClown Videos...

Given those outcomes, I, still, think it won't happen. Too many robber barons know about tipping points... Hope I'm wrong.

Just saying....

Re:Excellent idea, if....

[Anonymous Coward]

XKCD deserves no appreciation. The guy is unfunny and hawks t-shirts... I haven't heard someone fantasize & bitch about their sex life since I was in University. Grow up Randall and grow up college nerds on slashdot who suck your dick.

Re:I am so sure about this.

[oh2]

Its a nice idea, making it easy to support stuff like FOSS-sites and other things that you like with just a click. Sure, Paypal exists but its not as easy to use and ill equipped for small donations.

Translation

[syousef]

'We want to encourage people to share money as well as content'

I'm done working that side of the fence. Now I'll work this one and make a mint here too.

'people love things and they want to pay'.

I want people's money.

Why not name it "The Pirates' Gold"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I'd been toying around with a VERY SIMILAR idea - I even had the good peeps & their servers @ The Pirate Bay in mind! Telepathy? Perhaps, but it seems some packets were lost on their way... You see, I thought a major Hook (Cpt., I presume) in the concept's genius would come from the fact that the service was called "The Pirates' Gold"! And as an equivalent to a digg-like button I was thinking a classic black salty liquorice candy "pirate coin" (salmiakkimerkkari in Phinland) icon should be used as "the token of appreciation"! (I wonder if the Swedes have these too?)

OK pirates, feel free to pirate - or whatever it is that you do - these ideas and exploit them as your own!

Great idea!

[hatten]

I think this is a great idea. If one have a system where you pay a set amount of money for each click on a website one might stop for a split second and think if it's really worth it, and if you can afford it. With this you know you are going to pay a set amount of money each month, so you don't lose anything on pressing a button somewhere.

Good ol' buying vs. downloading revisited

[Anonymous Coward]

And three the shear irony of that man saying "people want to pay" considering his original customers is black hole awesome.

Not necessarily.

You often hear "There are no (or at most, little) losses of profit from piracy because people wouldn't have bought the music/games/software/movies/etc. anyways". That is only partially true, however: People wouldn't have bought the products for the price they would have had to pay. A college student might want to try out some nice game that people are talking about but he usually only has two options: "Pay 70 dollars (the PC games cost about 50 euros where I live) or nothing". Now, it might well be that they don't have the 70 dollars so they can pay nothing for the game. At that point the situation is "I can't pay anything, so the authors/developers/artists gain nothing and lose nothing based on what I do. The question of whether I download the product is entirely irrelevant to their profits. I have thus feel no moral obligation to not download" and then they download. It's the same thing with paying 30 dollars for a CD, especially when you know that most of the money wouldn't go to the artist you want to support even if you paid for the product.

Now, micropayments offer you the possibility to give less but still something. Perhaps you can't afford to give a few dozen dollars for a CD, but can afford to give a few. So you can act just like you did before, except now the artist gets what little you can pay instead of the "all or nothing" policy. I think it is awesome idea but like all concepts like this one, it needs a critical mass of people to succeed and I'm not sure if it can achieve that. But in theory, it's great. Now, as for your other things...

One the guy has trust issues.

That's irrelevant to everything. I don't care if he is there out of love towards creative commons or to become rich. If he offers a great service, awesome. If he earns something in the progress, I don't mind.

Two the history of micro payment is a troubled one.

True, but this might be able to circumwent that. In Flattr you (apparently, I haven't RTFA yet) pay flat rate each month and then your donations are just divided to artists in the form of micropayments. It has some problems of it's own but still, it might well be the solution for many problems concerning micropayments.

-AC

Re:Good ol' buying vs. downloading revisited

[cdrguru]

The problem is that you are describing an environment where the buyer gets to set the price rather than the seller. Sure, if we could turn commerce around on its head and walk up to someone in a store and say "I'll give you $5 for that." when the price is $10 it would be great, right?

Except in some parts of the world, that is exactly how it works already - pricing is well, flexible. Negotiable. Go to any third-world marketplace and that is how things work. How come it doesn't work that way in the US or Europe? I don't know the all the complex theory behind it, but it has to do with a maturing marketplace.

I don't think we want to go back to haggling and negotiating in neighborhood market - the supermarket and Home Depot are a lot nicer and have better hours. But that is exactly what you are proposing. And it doesn't work very well in a "mature market".

Re:Good ol' buying vs. downloading revisited

[mrrudge]

The store owner is unlikely to accept the deal as he will lose money on the sale, and he may get a buyer at full price later.

What if the store owner has a copying machine, and so an infinate amount of the item ?

What if everyone else has a copying machine also.

This is a new type of market, and this is an attempt at maturing. The problem isn't how this can be equated to a traditional 'thing' marketplace, it's how you get people to pay when they can get the same item for free.

Re:I am so sure about this.

[laederkeps]

Also, You should consider who you trust more with your money/transactions. Paypal or Pirates? I know who I prefer

Tax?

[PhilHibbs]

Governments are going to want to tax this.

Here comes McCarthy!

[Cruciform]

A micro-payment system that prevents corporations from getting in there and taking the money they deserve?
Sounds like COMMUNISM!

Or at least that's how it's going to be played out in the media.

Re:Here comes McCarthy!

[AniVisual]

But in communism there can be no competition to the monopolistic corporation taking the money they deserve. There is a possibility for this one.

Re:Here comes McCarthy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh, communism is old and worn out. Can you try linking it to terrorism or pedophilia?

Re:Here comes McCarthy!

[maxwell demon]

Meh, communism is old and worn out. Can you try linking it to terrorism or pedophilia?

People might use this for payments to terrorism or pedophilia web sites.

Yes, and no

[Mathinker]

> That's pretty insightful of him!

But what I find most interesting is that most people learn, after a certain age, that it doesn't pay to say everything you think, no matter how insightful it actually is.

Re:Yes, and no

[lordmetroid]

Richard Stallman says so many outrageous things that it has become socially acceptable for him to say outrageous things.

Re:Yes, and no

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow!

What a wonderful world we'd live in if everybody with something insightful to say would just shut up because they're afraid of what society might do or say... certainly not the world I'd want to live in.

Posting AC because of having done lots of moderation in this thread already (sadly, not include parent post).

Re:Yes, and no

[Thoreauly Nuts]

It's rather ironic that you have used up a lot of censorship points to attempt to bury other people's opinions through promoting those opinions you do approve of and hence burying those you don't, if not burying them directly, and then turn around and post anonymously to say people shouldn't be afraid to say unpopular things.

The fear of being modded into oblivion stifles unpopular speech on this forum, doesn't it?

Moderating is ultimately the same kind of social tyranny you say you don't want to exist in the world and yet you admit to having done lots of it...

Re:Yes, and no

[Anonymous Coward]

I have admitted to no such thing, and I will clearly say that I do not moderate in that way. I know my last remark makes it look that way, but it was more of an "empty threat" to vent my frustration at the OPs apparent ignorance.

For the record, I do follow slashdots moderation guidelines pretty well, most of my moderations are upmods and I really only mod down stuff that is of no value to the discussion. If someone is misinformed I'd rather have a clear response out in the open than just bury the ignorance. If I just bury it nobody will ever get to see the proper response to whatever bad stuff was being posted.

Sorry for having to respond to my carelessly written post.

Re:Yes, and no

[Anonymous Coward]

JSYK, I'm not GP. But I am moderating in this thread (a completely separate discussion thread if you must know), so I'm posting anonymously.

Moderating is ultimately the same kind of social tyranny you say you don't want to exist in the world and yet you admit to having done lots of it...

Nice try, champ, but wrong, wrong, wrong. Freedom of speech is NOT the same thing as "entitled to audience". Slashdot merely makes it easier to ignore twits, if you so choose. If slashdot had a mechanism where you could be moderated below anyone's threshold (which would be basically the same as deleting a post), you might have a point. But some people (including me) read at -1*, which is as low as a comment can go.

Also, GP did not say he was down-modding, you just assumed that and went on a totally unfounded spiel. I can now see why you think "freedom of speech" = "entitled to audience" - you're the kind of assuming jackass with a mouth for ears.

*Mainly because it disrupts the flow of conversation, because most people don't bother quoting properly, especially when replying to flames/trolls. Why is netiquette so hard for some people?

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.

Re:Fine, another target for exploits

[thegnu]

You think maybe if they receive 10000 complaints that end users' funds went to some site they don't recognize wouldn't be enough to initiate a freeze on the site's account, pending an investigation that would probably take all of 15 minutes before refunding all the money?

Re:Fine, another target for exploits

[Kjella]

Here's the thing about spammers, they don't play nice. They'll happily give some fake clicks to legitimate sites, causing a support nightmare trying to figure out which are legitimate and which are not. Then there's be some false positives and people will howl over lost money and frozen accounts and either they'll have to create too many cracks for the spammers to slip through or they'll kill themselves on support overhead and bad reputation. Ad companies can live with a certain level of clickfraud, I'm not sure a micro payment company can.

Re:Fine, another target for exploits

[thegnu]

Here's the thing about spammers, they don't play nice. They'll happily give some fake clicks to legitimate sites, causing a support nightmare trying to figure out which are legitimate and which are not.

This is a great point, and I hadn't thought of it. The asshole cloud IS working 24/7 to think up new ways to exploit the system. However...

Then there's be some false positives and people will howl over lost money and frozen accounts

This is not so much of an issue. You can implement a "report click error" button, and people can review their monthly statement summary and click off things that they don't recognize. This is somewhat mitigated by your first point, but if the spammers shotgun clicks out to legitimate sites, they will still have a point of concentration of reported errors around their account, unless they actually have useful content on their site.

Because even if I didn't flattr the onion av club, if it showed up on my statement, I wouldn't click it off, because they deserve my money. The same goes for xkcd or slashdot.

Also, you could look at the ratio of valid:invalid clicks, because someone busy gaming the system is not going to have enough time to produce valuable content.

Re:Fine, another target for exploits

[Staale Nordlie]

A simple way to avoid some scams:

Pay out once a month. One week before any money is actually transferred each subscriber gets an email with the previous month's clicks. Scammers can be detected and reported. You could have the subscribers confirm each click in the list after logging into the website, or just pay out the money unless the subscriber actively says otherwise.

Re:Fine, another target for exploits

[GuldKalle]

Give flattrs the option and reminder to review their monthly contributions, and maybe use a crowd-sourced system to weed out hijackers.

That way you only had to arm the big encryption-guns once a month, and users could flattr with a single click.

Re:Fine, another target for exploits

[AliasMarlowe]

Pay out once a month. One week before any money is actually transferred each subscriber gets an email with the previous month's clicks. Scammers can be detected and reported. You could have the subscribers confirm each click in the list after logging into the website, or just pay out the money unless the subscriber actively says otherwise.

That's a partial solution at best, and would still degrade the intended simplicity and spontaneity of flattr, since it would involve an extra effort by the donor. In many cases, the email would simply go unanswered, either through laziness or procrastination or lack of time or being rejected by a spam filter. Whether you set the default to paying or not paying, the whole objective is undermined.

Realistically, scammers will each have a long list of scam sites, so the typical email to a donor with an infected PC would have hundreds or thousands of sites listed. Most such sites would only have one or a few flattr clicks from any infected PC, and many scam sites would have names/domains almost like legitimate sites. Who's going to take the time to pick out the intended target such as google.com from a long list which also includes fakes like qoogle.com, gooqle.com, or qooqle.com? Having to go through a long list will generally result in either (i) all sites accepted, (ii) no sites accepted, (iii) first few sites examined and the remainder left at default, or (iv) email ignored with consequent payment or nonpayment to all.

Expending effort is the antithesis of the intended flattr method, so the scammers will win this one. The bastards.

Re:Fine, another target for exploits

[Demonoid-Penguin]

If, as suggested, payments were monthly, and the list of sites and amounts to receive payment were posted on the flattr home page.... and I had a site - I'd be checking my income against the amount that flattr claimed to have paid me.

In combination with the suggestion that flattr emails donators with their donation details, the system could work well. Hell - many sites (ego bloggers too) would use their flattr stats as a measure of their appreciative audience, and to garner more visitors.

Just a thought... I wonder how many bloggers, marketer etc would donate to themselves just to inflate their own status (if they could display a real-time link to their flattr status in their blog)?? If this applied to twitter - how many "twits", desperate to be "followed" would spend their entire welfare cheque on "flattr-ing" themselves?? :-)

The cake is a lie!

[Anonymous Coward]

'nuff said.

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

[noidentity]

Wow, I really like your refinement. The idea (I take away from this) is that you have a limited amount to spend on this sort of thing. Until you've seen what all potential things to spend this on for the month, you don't have a good idea of how much you want to spend on any specific recipient. Once you've got a lot of candidates, you can then go back and decide which ones still stand out, and how much each gets.

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

[Reziac]

That's a really good idea. And people who can't be arsed to twiddle the amounts wouldn't have to bother, either.

Tho I would ensure that it isn't some flash app that not everyone can use -- a text interface where it automagically juggles the total as you change the sub-amounts would be nice for non-flash types. (This can be done easily enough; survey sites do it regularly with javascript.)

Another option might be customizable default account settings, where I could weight movies, music, or whatever, higher or lower as I see fit, then not have to juggle anything again.

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

[Cruciform]

I emailed their beta team. Maybe they'll like the idea too :)

Flat - flatter...

[MindPrison]

...FLATTR!

Of course - I'd run faster than light to give my credit-card information to the Pirate Bay Pirates, that only makes perfect sense in bizarro world!

and?

[Anonymous Coward]

tl;dr

So where are the demands...

[John Hasler]

...that Flattr be "regulated as a bank"? After all, we can't have people going around doing things without permission now can we?

Re:So where are the demands...

[cpghost]

IMHO, considering all the abuses of non-banks like PayPal, being subject to bank regulations is actually a good idea and one of the very rare occasions where oversight by the State may be desirable.

Re:So where are the demands...

[John Hasler]

DO you seriously believe that the regulators would permit this sort of innovation? DO you have any idea what the requirements are to start a bank?

Genius idea

[horza]

This is a great idea. One thing that I would really like to see is an AJAXy tree of categories where I can give a fixed budget to site categories. Eg News->$10, Software->FOSS $40

Phillip.

Lets all Fucking worship sunde

[Anonymous Coward]

More interested to know as to how the fuck the video was made. Looks similar to the old "Sub prime mortgage" video. Mother fuckers, with this kind of talent I'ma worship Sunde instead of the sun god.

Charities

[Anonymous Coward]

This can be especially useful for managing recurrent donations to various charities etc...

Who's using FLATTR?

[hoggoth]

I love the idea.
I am ready to sign up when some of my favorite content creators are using it. Until then, however, there is no reason for me to join. I know... chicken and egg...

The Flattr web site needs a list of content creators using the service!

XKCD?
Cory Doctorow?
Jonathan Coulton?

Nice try.

[poofmeisterp]

When you're being paid by someone to do something like this, it's hard to disguise the moves.

I give him a B-. lol

"Pirate Pay"?

[John Hasler]

Interesting slip.

Great

[countertrolling]

Can I do this without a PayPal or a bank account? Because if I can't, forget it. I can already pay for airline tickets at the convenience store after ordering them on the net. They need to come up with something similar for this. And in this case it needs to be anonymous. Otherwise, "guess who" will using this to track people.

I think this is a good idea

[aceofspades1217]

I do plenty of piracy, not because I don't want to pay but moreso because I don't want to play big record labels. I always buy artist's T-Shirts so that I can give money directly to artists. I would gladly put $10 a month into this and "Flattr" a couple of my favorite artists and websites.

I mean...anything to stick it to the record labels. I don't want to give my money to terrorists.

I hope he makes a lot of money.

[MarkvW]

I hope he makes a lot of money so that he can compensate all of the people he ripped off. He's a criminal, pure, simple, and convicted in a fair court of law.

His behavior in the TPB litigation indicates a lack of forthrightness and honesty. This doesn't bode too well for his new business, either. But, hey! A slashvertisement can't hurt!

But why would I want to pay...?

[Terminus32]

I love The Pirate Bay and I love torrent sites - because I can get movies for free! I don't have enough money to give to Hollywood to keep making trashy films, so I download them for free, burn them off onto a DVD and laugh at them in the comfort of my own home cinema... :-)

Re:But why would I want to pay...?

[maxwell demon]

Where did you download your home cinema?

Already Been Done

[brit74]

Back around 2001/2002, someone tried doing this exact same thing. They shut down after something like 18 months, and didn't receive that many donations. I'm pretty sure they had less than $100,000 in donations.

I can't remember their name, and I'm doing google searches to track down the information about them, but yeah, they created a donation website where you could pay the musician if you downloaded their music. I want to say they were called "fairplay" or "fairpay" or something like that, but I haven't found any articles about it with google. Will re-post if I can track down information on them.

Re:Already Been Done

[Reziac]

Methinks success hinges on getting enough content owners to play ball that it becomes THE place to Find Stuff. Even if it's all indie bands -- that's a decent sized market, that I'm sure would love to get a zillion micropayments rather than selling a few hundred CDs.

Fairtunes

[future assassin]

This seems very similar what Fairtunes was doing years ago.

Oddsock even had/has a Winamp plugin for it http://www.oddsock.org/tools/gen_fairtunes but seems fairtunes.com is no longer and just a parking page now. Here's some more info from 2000 http://www.bizreport.com/news/66/ and some google action http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=fairtunes.com&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Wow! Judge first, think later?

[Mathinker]

My observation that RMS is not "most people" was not judgmental, merely observational; actually, I hold him in very high regard. And when I wrote the post, I was thinking exactly what you posted (that it is lucky that there are some who have the balls to say things they believe in without regard to the whims of society).

I do my fair share of moderation, but I try to be careful to mod down only the posts which I feel do not add to the discussion, regardless of whether I personally agree or disagree (my apologies if the meaning of your post was that you wanted to mod me down as Offtopic).

Re:Wow! Judge first, think later?

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that I was jumping the gun a bit there, my apologies. And thank you for not being a dick in return, that's refreshing to see.

Regarding my moderation habits, I doubt that I'd actually have modded you down even if I had mod points left. I usually only mod down stuff that adds no value whatsoever (and I really don't care if it's on topic or not), or something that is clearly a troll (or written with so much ignorance that it amounts to trolling just the same).

While I did disagree with the sentiment of your post (the way I read it anyway), I felt it was something that was worth responding to rather than simply mod into oblivion :)

People love things and want to pay

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume he said that realising the irony of having been involved with Pirate Bay...

Avoid cliffhanger subject lines

[noidentity]

Your subject line is a cliff-hanger. Why not just summarize your idea rather than require the reader to read your post to even know what the overall idea is? Suggestion: "Excellent if it becomes popular".

What content?

[mwvdlee]

Which content providers are signed up with Flattr.com to provide content? Or are they just taking in the money and hoping content providers will retroactively sell their content for whatever Flattr.com is willing to pay them for it?

Re:I am so sure about this.

[dgr73]

Well, looking at all the recent articles of Paypal shutting down accounts one-sidedly, I would say the Piratebay founders have a much better track record of doing exactly what they say they would.