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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!"
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!"
I actually admire rms and regard him as a great man, but probably for smaller values of "great". In particular, he has little conception of money and his financial models have never demonstrated anything approaching viability or critical mass.
In years past I actually ran a few alternative financial models past him. He did ask an extremely perceptive question in one exchange. The question led me to a significant improvement in a financial model, but mostly he convinced me that he never has understood money, and probably never will. He wouldn't even be interested in whether or not he helped out, but he lives in a kind of money-free fantasy land, and I think his latest suggestion is just more evidence. Yes, he sees part of the problem, but his idea of anonymity as the solution is completely half-baked. If someone is motivated to donate, why would that motivation be affected by anonymity?
What the online media needs is a focus on SOLUTIONS. How many of us are sick and tired of reading about problems without solutions, and the media should earn a kind of tithe for helping to SOLVE the problems. The articles should be followed by links to some solution projects, and if enough readers (or viewers of a video) agree to support a project, then it would get funded, and the website would get a percentage for (1) publicizing the problem, (2) bringing donors to the solution project, and (3) evaluating the results and reporting them.
The details don't really matter to me, so in that sense I might be as bad as rms. You can call it an agent's fee if you prefer, though before that discussion with rms I mostly called it RACS (for Reverse Auction Charity Shares) and at some point afterwards I favored the idea of a charity share brokerage. DAUPR.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
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 readership 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?
That sounds pretty much like his jihad against software writers. Initially, he used to say that they should make money selling documentation, then he demanded that the documentation be free, er libre, while he continued to rail against companies that made money w/ FOSS like Tivo and Google.
Right now, the choice he's talking about exists. There are 4 types of people:
1. People opposed to both advertizing/surveillance as well as paying for it
2. People opposed to advertizing/surveillance but okay w/ paying (e.g. RMS above)
3. People okay w/ advertizing/surveillance so that they needn't pay for it
4. People who don't care - okay w/ both advertizing and paying for it
Category 1 is a can't win situation, and not even worth chasing. Right now, a lot of online publications cater to a combination of categories 2 & 3: you get advertizing if you wanna use the free stuff, but register/pay, and the ads disappear. Category 4 is the dream scenario for publishers, they get paid AND they can advertize.
The question is - who on earth uses GNU Taler? How does it work? Only way I can think of is taking x amount of CASH, giving it to someone working in Taler, and they'll put that $x into an anonymous account which they then give you. Otherwise, how is it different from any debit card?