Richard Stallman: Online Publishers Should Let Readers Pay Anonymously (theguardian.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader mspohr writes: The Guardian has an opinion piece by Richard Stallman which argues that we should be able to pay for news anonymously. From the article: "Online newspapers and magazines have come to depend, for their income, on a system of advertising and surveillance, which is both annoying and unjust... What they ought to do instead is give us a truly anonymous way to pay."

He also (probably not coincidentally) has developed a method to do just that. "For the GNU operating system, which was created by the free software movement and is typically used with the kernel Linux, we are developing a suitable payment system called GNU Taler that will allow publishers to accept anonymous payments from readers for individual articles."
Publishers "can profit from defending privacy rather than from exposing their readers," argues Stallman, ending his article with a simple plea. "Publishers, please let me pay you -- anonymously!"

Comments

Yes! wait No!

[thegarbz]

So online publishers who are struggling to scrape money together with journalists being let go from every corner, cutbacks in every department, poorer and poorer quality editing, shit fluff pieces about lost dogs to try and drive readship who couldn't care less about what's happening in the world, all should now further gut what little income they have?

Richard Stallman why not just straight go out and say you think online publishing shouldn't exist?

Completely correct but too expensive

[Antique Geekmeister]

"rms" as he's preferred to be called for decades, has repeatedly proven quite correct about technology freedoms. This seems to be another case where he is correct, but will mostly be tuned out becuase publishers think that they, individually, will benefit from reducing their client's freedom and protection.

The individual data of purchases and of personal interests and subscriptions, and even data on interest in particular articles, is being collected and analyzed to tune advertising and to provide links to content the publishers wish to highlight and wish to ease the reader's access to. The data is also being resold, allegedly as metadata but far too often as raw data, to anyone who can pay for or _trade data_ for it. The result is a quite amazing loss of privacy due to this data harvesting. This loss of privacy is _dangerous_. Government interest in political speech and membership always has to be balanced between a good government's desire to know the citizen's real needs and desire's, and a dictator's need to strangle opposition of any form.

Unfortunately for what rms proposes, targeted advertising _is_ effective for increasing advertising effectiveness for the businesses that provide it. It does not necessarily increase _profit_. Many such schemes are done quite poorly, so poorly that subscribers leave the site. Slashdot almost fell prey to this kind of advertising over content approach to publication, when they tried the new layout and it was roundly rejected. But there are _many_ jobs of advertisers, and a _lot_ of marketing money, tied to targeted advertising. Buyer anonymity interferes profoundly with that and will be battled in the boardroom and in the courtroom. If it goes to court, it will be battled with "think of the children" and "war against terror" claims that genuine reader anonymity cannot be permitted.

Glad to see more ideas entering the arena

[TrimTabTim]

Look, I know Stallman is a public figure who's history means some folks are already rolling their eyes before he gets a word out. But none of the comments here actually address the merit of this thing yet, or the fact that this problem exists to start with.

Regarding the post summary, let's evaluate the current situation. We have a world where media is beholden to advertisers and the public is the product. Injected with "flavor additive content" as tastes dictate, monitored, recorded and demographically categorized for convenient sale to 3rd party interests. I may sound overly dramatic but I don't think I'm exaggerating. The true customers for all ad based media are advertisers. Data aggregators then sell it all onward to corporate and nation state interests. I doubt any right thinking person would say this is a good state of affairs unless they've got vested interests in this particular food chain.

So a solution is necessary. Reading the FAQ blurbs about GNU Taller from the link given though, and as a self proclaimed monetary history and economics buff, I'm not convinced this is the best way forward.

I kind of like how they describe the difference between "sharing" which is anonymous and free as in speech and "transactions" where the income side is somehow not anonymous for businesses. This could be conducive for abolishing income taxation (an immoral action easily evaded by rich people) and moving to a pure consumption tax. Such as:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax
Which I would support wholeheartedly. I don't see anything though which would stop GNU Taller from only perpetuating the income tax, which I am morally opposed to.

Lastly I see no mention of micro-payments. We need an anonymous way to issue fractional payments to content creators which doesn't require private details to set up, and which doesn't have service fees that would make arrangements like "a few cents per article" impractical. Bitcoin's upcoming micro-payment channel and side chain ideas are promising, but GNU Taller doesn't seem to touch on this. On this front GNU Taller looks like just more of the same whereby anonymity isn't a real thing: make an account at their site, accept cookies, sign in and be tracked as you use up your deposit.

To get back to the summary of this post, consider this question: Would you give a street musician money if they wanted your name, address and credit card details? No, but you'd toss a little cash in his hat gladly. Some of the improvements planned for bitcoin do have this future in mind, so I'll keep my bets on that square for the moment.