4 ms·

A Thought for Your Pennies: Micropayment and the Liberation of Content (2009)

42 points by j_s 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
zorpner 9y ago
I highly recommend this 1995 Wired article about Ted Nelson and the history of hypertext: https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/ https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/
- anotheryou 9y ago
  so good, just recently found it too.
equalunique 9y ago
Brilliant idea from 1960. Immediately I thought of Safecoin/SAFE Network[0] and Mercury Protocol[1]/Cyber Dust[2]. [0] https://safenetwork.wiki/en/FAQ https://safenetwork.wiki/en/FAQ [1] https://www.mercuryprotocol.com/ https://www.mercuryprotocol.com/ [2] https://interestingengineering.com/billionaire-mark-cubans-new-project-making-new-imprints-on-social-media https://interestingengineering.com/billionaire-mark-cubans-n...
jonah-archive 9y ago
Ted's sitting across from me right now! He says this article is old, and wanted to link to a video he recently made talking about his life and work, if anyone's interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmfjM-SGlGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmfjM-SGlGs We're also hosting an ongoing archival project of his junk mail that he's saved over the years: https://archive.org/details/tednelsonjunkmail https://archive.org/details/tednelsonjunkmail (more details on the project: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5206 http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5206 )
- hossbeast 9y ago
  What does he have to say about cryptocurrencies, and the impending possibility that they might make micropayments a reality?
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    In fairness, cryptocurrencies have become more like gold than pennies. I recently proposed someone pay me in Bitcoin for services rendered, and it immediately seemed like a bad idea. PayPal or Venmo is still where it's at, for better or worse. As far as "impending," well... Maybe if the lightning network proposal happens. Maybe. The other currencies do matter, but Bitcoin remains the granddaddy and has immense inertia. It's hard enough for normal people to acquire Bitcoin, let alone any of the others.
    - hossbeast 9y ago
      Yeah, lightning is what I had in mind. Next year is my guess, with SegWit now in place.
korethr 9y ago
The thought of some kind of micro-payment has crossed my mind more than once as a potential alternative to increasingly invasive and annoying advertisements when it comes to funding content creators. There was a time when I didn't mind ads. Hell, I've discovered some of the Internet content I now enjoy through ads. But now ads have become creepy, following me around the Internet, slowing down and breaking the rendering of sites, and acting as an avenue for the distribution of malware. I'd love to support the various webcomics, music streams, blogs, and other things on the Internet I enjoy without having to open my browser up to unscrupulous ad networks. Yes, now there's sites like Patreon, but that's still opt-in (though admittedly better than the fanclubs of the early 00s, with membership contingent on remembering to send a PayPal again this month). I'd imagined something automagic that Just Worked. You view a website, your viewing of that site shows up on your ISP bill. A hypothetical example I came up with went something like this: After doing an archive binge of some new-to-me webcomic, there was a slight increase of my ISP bill that month. This reflected the additional load I put on the author's over-worked webserver while voraciously consuming in 6 hours the story this artist had spent 6 years producing. His hosting provider billed my ISP and then my ISP billed me. But then I realized, for that to be practically implementable, my ISP would have to know who's looking at what on the Internet at what times. How else would Comcast know the bill they got from Joe Webcomic c/o Bluehost should be billed to me, and not someone else? Such a system could be abused to be an invasive privacy nightmare just as advertisements have become. To say nothing of how governments would love to abuse such. If my ISP knows I visit nifty-webcomic.com and can send me the creator's bill, then so could authorities in Egypt know who to arrest for visiting gay-rights.com. I have yet to come up with a solution for this :/
- ex3xu 9y ago
  As a theoretical solution to what you are saying, you could implement this in aggregate -- the ISP accepts a flat "content" payment from all its subscribers, sums the time spent on each site from each user, and then pays out micropayments to each content provider as a percentage of the total content payments received from all subscribers. Sort of analogous to how the Tor network prevents deanonymization. You could even implement it as an open-source browser extension in the same fashion as Tor. Ultimately however, this solution has two major flaws that I can think of up front -- first, it is too susceptible to botting, and second, it relies on a steadfastly privacy conscious central party (the ISP in this example) that never accidentally hires an Eric Schmidt-type who gives in to the monetary value of data. Having just read Tim Wu's "The Attention Merchants" I don't have a lot of hope for that.
smangat17 9y ago
This is what we're building at Stream! streamtoken.net
tpeo 9y ago
I think saying that people might trade arbitrary portions of data instead of some specified standard is missing the point. People already can trade arbitrary portions of data in the absence of previously agreed standards. The real issue, specially for curation, is how to choose standards for what qualifies as "content" within a certain medium in order to maximize the likelihood of meaningful communication occurring within that medium. Which doesn't seem easy.
josefwasinski 9y ago
Consider the success of Spotify over iTunes. People will always prefer an "all you can eat" approach, even if they don't end up consuming any more or spending more than if they bought individual units. You have the decision fatigue every time you buy content vs once when you subscribe. The exception to this rule is obviously for a platform like Patreon, where it is about the relationship.

42 points by j_s 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

I highly recommend this 1995 Wired article about Ted Nelson and the history of hypertext: https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/ https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/

anotheryou 9y ago
so good, just recently found it too.

equalunique 9y ago

Brilliant idea from 1960. Immediately I thought of Safecoin/SAFE Network[0] and Mercury Protocol[1]/Cyber Dust[2]. [0] https://safenetwork.wiki/en/FAQ https://safenetwork.wiki/en/FAQ [1] https://www.mercuryprotocol.com/ https://www.mercuryprotocol.com/ [2] https://interestingengineering.com/billionaire-mark-cubans-new-project-making-new-imprints-on-social-media https://interestingengineering.com/billionaire-mark-cubans-n...

jonah-archive 9y ago

Ted's sitting across from me right now! He says this article is old, and wanted to link to a video he recently made talking about his life and work, if anyone's interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmfjM-SGlGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmfjM-SGlGs We're also hosting an ongoing archival project of his junk mail that he's saved over the years: https://archive.org/details/tednelsonjunkmail https://archive.org/details/tednelsonjunkmail (more details on the project: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5206 http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5206 )

hossbeast 9y ago
What does he have to say about cryptocurrencies, and the impending possibility that they might make micropayments a reality?
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  In fairness, cryptocurrencies have become more like gold than pennies. I recently proposed someone pay me in Bitcoin for services rendered, and it immediately seemed like a bad idea. PayPal or Venmo is still where it's at, for better or worse. As far as "impending," well... Maybe if the lightning network proposal happens. Maybe. The other currencies do matter, but Bitcoin remains the granddaddy and has immense inertia. It's hard enough for normal people to acquire Bitcoin, let alone any of the others.
  - hossbeast 9y ago
    Yeah, lightning is what I had in mind. Next year is my guess, with SegWit now in place.

korethr 9y ago

The thought of some kind of micro-payment has crossed my mind more than once as a potential alternative to increasingly invasive and annoying advertisements when it comes to funding content creators. There was a time when I didn't mind ads. Hell, I've discovered some of the Internet content I now enjoy through ads. But now ads have become creepy, following me around the Internet, slowing down and breaking the rendering of sites, and acting as an avenue for the distribution of malware. I'd love to support the various webcomics, music streams, blogs, and other things on the Internet I enjoy without having to open my browser up to unscrupulous ad networks. Yes, now there's sites like Patreon, but that's still opt-in (though admittedly better than the fanclubs of the early 00s, with membership contingent on remembering to send a PayPal again this month). I'd imagined something automagic that Just Worked. You view a website, your viewing of that site shows up on your ISP bill. A hypothetical example I came up with went something like this: After doing an archive binge of some new-to-me webcomic, there was a slight increase of my ISP bill that month. This reflected the additional load I put on the author's over-worked webserver while voraciously consuming in 6 hours the story this artist had spent 6 years producing. His hosting provider billed my ISP and then my ISP billed me. But then I realized, for that to be practically implementable, my ISP would have to know who's looking at what on the Internet at what times. How else would Comcast know the bill they got from Joe Webcomic c/o Bluehost should be billed to me, and not someone else? Such a system could be abused to be an invasive privacy nightmare just as advertisements have become. To say nothing of how governments would love to abuse such. If my ISP knows I visit nifty-webcomic.com and can send me the creator's bill, then so could authorities in Egypt know who to arrest for visiting gay-rights.com. I have yet to come up with a solution for this :/

ex3xu 9y ago
As a theoretical solution to what you are saying, you could implement this in aggregate -- the ISP accepts a flat "content" payment from all its subscribers, sums the time spent on each site from each user, and then pays out micropayments to each content provider as a percentage of the total content payments received from all subscribers. Sort of analogous to how the Tor network prevents deanonymization. You could even implement it as an open-source browser extension in the same fashion as Tor. Ultimately however, this solution has two major flaws that I can think of up front -- first, it is too susceptible to botting, and second, it relies on a steadfastly privacy conscious central party (the ISP in this example) that never accidentally hires an Eric Schmidt-type who gives in to the monetary value of data. Having just read Tim Wu's "The Attention Merchants" I don't have a lot of hope for that.

smangat17 9y ago

This is what we're building at Stream! streamtoken.net

tpeo 9y ago

I think saying that people might trade arbitrary portions of data instead of some specified standard is missing the point. People already can trade arbitrary portions of data in the absence of previously agreed standards. The real issue, specially for curation, is how to choose standards for what qualifies as "content" within a certain medium in order to maximize the likelihood of meaningful communication occurring within that medium. Which doesn't seem easy.

josefwasinski 9y ago

Consider the success of Spotify over iTunes. People will always prefer an "all you can eat" approach, even if they don't end up consuming any more or spending more than if they bought individual units. You have the decision fatigue every time you buy content vs once when you subscribe. The exception to this rule is obviously for a platform like Patreon, where it is about the relationship.