Slashdot Mirror
Ex-Pirate Bay Admin Launches Micropayment Service
spyrochaete writes "Peter Sunde, formerly 'brokep' of The Pirate Bay, recently launched a beta version of Flattr — a micropayment service enabling internet users to tender cash payments to any participating content publisher. Its model enables users to divvy monthly subscription fees as donations awarded to the musicians, bloggers, photographers, or other publisher of their choice.
Sunde tells the BBC, 'We want to encourage people to share money as well as content,' and asserts, 'people love things and they want to pay.'"
Sounds pretty nice as long as it doesn't commercialize things that are already free. I like it because you wouldn't think about each individual transaction since you pay a flat rate.
The good thing about this arrangement is that it will make it easier to donate money. It doesn't matter how many Flattr I click I still have the same cost, I do not have to keep track just to know I have the money on my account. I also don't have to take so many decisions, like how much to I think this song/game/application/book is worth or do I really going to enjoy it so it is worth anything at all, I just click.
So there are clear advantages of this arrangement. And I do not see it as a way to charge for a product, but as an alternative to the PayPal donate button.
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.
Hi,
As far as I know Sunde has never been accused of pirating anything. ThePiratebay was and still is legal in Sweden.
Just because you can use their service to illegal distribute content does not make the creator a pirate. This would be the equivalent of calling the city a 'drunk driver' because it builds the streets that can be used to facilitate drunk driving.
This.
If an actual media producer decided to distribute via BT, they could even get paid for it. Combine it with a market system where the punters decide what to (micro)pay for their torrent, and some extensions to BT software (perhaps similar to the rate selector, you have a $ selector), and you've got a brilliant means of distributed media distribution that can completely bypass big media.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
For example: If you have 5000 people a month visiting you and you get Flattr revenues from 1/4 of them between the amounts of $0.01 and $2, with the average being $0,25 you would net $312,5 each month. That's a decent help with the server & hosting bills. How many sites with Paypal donate buttons can claim similar figures? (I agree, my figures are just random figures, but not entirely unrealistic, given the proposed system)
Another counter argument I guess is "Will people use it?" .. that is anyone's guess, but I would totally put some money into the account and whenever I saw something interesting or worth supporting, I could put my money where my mouth is. This instead of saying "If only paypal wasn't so much of a hassle and require so big an investment to donate, I would help these guys". Imagine what this'll do to small pieces of free software, many of which die of neglect because of lack of incentive.
Lots of popular sites right now run on good will of the owner, some individual donations and ads. And in many cases ads that are not very benign in nature. This Flattr system seems to offer a way out of this. Hell, it could probably be expanded to be a payment system for fixed-size payments.. like "Click here to pay $1.99" -> Goto Flattr site to confirm -> Get authenticated as paid customer.
I guess it remains to be seen if this system is any good. But I don't expect it to fail on the willingness of people to pay.. if it fails it probably fails on lack of participating sites or problems on making a deposit. I will sure as hell give it a whirl.
I get that, but it seems arbitrary to me. I don't want to pay X$ for the sake of it, perhaps to ease the admin/banking hassle, or because the punters see it as a donation rather than a fee. Mostly though, I value some sites more than others, and I also don't want sites to get Y$ for 1 visit this month while getting the same for 200 visits next month.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
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.
yes, much safer to stick to a respectable banker... er wait...
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.
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...
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.
*Clears throat*
http://xkcd.com/610/
That is all.
What people must go through these days to earn the title of pirate...
In Sweden the cake is a pie.
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).
The key here is to eliminate the role of the recording industry execs. In the digital age, the only real service they provide is marketing, and if you're already interested in paying money for someone's music, then those marketing services don't really add any value to the product you're paying for.
I disagree. I think that if the "recording industry" has a chance of survival, it needs to convert to pure marketing. Along the way it needs to convert to becoming a service where their customer is the artist - not the end-user. That means abandoning their weakening grip on distribution where the value they provide is solely the result of the artificial scarcity they create in controlling distribution channels.
As a music buyer, I need marketing even for bands that I know about. I need to be informed in a timely fashion when they have new music or are on tour or do things like spin-off projects and collobrations. I would really like to be able to subscribe to the equivalent of an RSS feed for each artist that I already like (and that's not limited to musicians either - it can just as easily apply to writers, directors, actors, even painters and artists that work in less digital mediums like say fireworks crews).
What I don't need is hype - which I'm sure is the last thing those marketing execs will ever be able to let go of. And to be honest - a lot of the hoi polloi DO need hype - in the same way that the majority of the population are content to be lead rather than think independently for themselves in terms of politics or even the way they live their lives (go to college, get a job, get married, raise a family, die - the great american dream).
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
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.
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.