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Journalism had to adapt to the Internet. We talk about paywalls for online content in our whitepaper about how we plan to decentralize the Web economy and help

by EGreg 5y ago

Journalism had to adapt to the Internet. We talk about paywalls for online content in our whitepaper about how we plan to decentralize the Web economy and help monetize journalism and open source through micropayments instead: https://qbix.com/QBUX/whitepaper.html#Paywalls https://qbix.com/QBUX/whitepaper.html#Paywalls The original Xanadu project had the concept of micropayments, but until now the only way to really achieve it was using lotteries (I think it was Ron Rivest in the 90s who suggested this?) The question is, how to monetize open source or journalism - online content that can be easily copied. Any sort of effective payment system requires a network effect. People could forj the system but they’d have to start from scratch, as no one would accept their payments. Imagine if every app and plugin on wordpress could have its own currency to earn money as people use it on various sites, and still continue to be open source. Imagine if social networks like Facebook were the ones paying for their users to read it, settling balances once in a while. Rupert Murdoch and News Corp fought for something like this in Australia and won. Would welcome feedback and thoughts. Why the massive amount of silent downvotes?

gnicholas 5y ago
I didn’t downvote, but I’m guessing others are doing so because this looks like self-promotion. You can mention a personal project on HN, but it’s best to do so only at the end of an otherwise interesting comment, so it’s clear you’re not just shilling.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Micropayments have an absolutely unblemished three decade history of perfectly and precisely failing to work. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4r683b/repudiation_as_the_micropayments_killer_feature/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4r683b/repudia...
  - EGreg 5y ago
    Thanks for that link! Very useful substantive analysis How does it apply in our case, by the way? In our case we take the payment decisions out of the hands of users and into the hands of community administrators.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Media payment systems work best with a clear transactional boundary and gatekeeper. Bundling models are vastly more successful than unbundling ones. In a tax-supported scheme, the tax collector serves that role. In a ticketbox, it's the literal gate or door itself. For advertising-supported media, it's the publisher or broadcaster, gatekeeping in a three-way branch between advertisers, creators/talent, and audience (similarly, cable providers). In donor-based broadcasting, the broadcaster intermediates between individual donors and content producers. As an alternative to a governmental progressive-tax-based system, a natural gateway exists at the ISP level, for which a sufficiently effective gating, revenue-collection, and content-payment system might work. I'd outlined that about three months ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26893033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26893033 There are access-based royalty systems such as ASCAP / Harry Fox, though my sense is that for more substantial text-based content (similarly: data-backed reporting, deep analysis, and probably a fair bit of serial media of the video or podcast variety), linking payment to publishers or studios, who can support a staff of creators (writers, artists, actors, directors, support personnel) would be preferred to the music/broadcast model. Your problem is you're trying to dam a flat plain. You need to find a suitable dam site, and it's probably the ISPs. On the other hand, they're going to need systems for that service: content negotiation, payment collection, royalties or subscription payments, etc. The distinction my model has from a traditional micropayments or subscription model is that the provision level is universal. A service subscriber pays in a flat fee, they get an all-you-can-eat plan. The payment differentiation is between the aggregator and the creating studio (somewhat similar to current cable subscriptions). Note that total OECD content spend is roughly $100/capita. Advertising runs many times that, at ~%$600 billion for the 1 billion inhabitants of the OECD, about $600/capita. "Free online content" costs the average household of 4 over $2,400 a year.

by EGreg 5y ago

gnicholas 5y ago

I didn’t downvote, but I’m guessing others are doing so because this looks like self-promotion. You can mention a personal project on HN, but it’s best to do so only at the end of an otherwise interesting comment, so it’s clear you’re not just shilling.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Micropayments have an absolutely unblemished three decade history of perfectly and precisely failing to work. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4r683b/repudiation_as_the_micropayments_killer_feature/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4r683b/repudia...
- EGreg 5y ago
  Thanks for that link! Very useful substantive analysis How does it apply in our case, by the way? In our case we take the payment decisions out of the hands of users and into the hands of community administrators.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Media payment systems work best with a clear transactional boundary and gatekeeper. Bundling models are vastly more successful than unbundling ones. In a tax-supported scheme, the tax collector serves that role. In a ticketbox, it's the literal gate or door itself. For advertising-supported media, it's the publisher or broadcaster, gatekeeping in a three-way branch between advertisers, creators/talent, and audience (similarly, cable providers). In donor-based broadcasting, the broadcaster intermediates between individual donors and content producers. As an alternative to a governmental progressive-tax-based system, a natural gateway exists at the ISP level, for which a sufficiently effective gating, revenue-collection, and content-payment system might work. I'd outlined that about three months ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26893033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26893033 There are access-based royalty systems such as ASCAP / Harry Fox, though my sense is that for more substantial text-based content (similarly: data-backed reporting, deep analysis, and probably a fair bit of serial media of the video or podcast variety), linking payment to publishers or studios, who can support a staff of creators (writers, artists, actors, directors, support personnel) would be preferred to the music/broadcast model. Your problem is you're trying to dam a flat plain. You need to find a suitable dam site, and it's probably the ISPs. On the other hand, they're going to need systems for that service: content negotiation, payment collection, royalties or subscription payments, etc. The distinction my model has from a traditional micropayments or subscription model is that the provision level is universal. A service subscriber pays in a flat fee, they get an all-you-can-eat plan. The payment differentiation is between the aggregator and the creating studio (somewhat similar to current cable subscriptions). Note that total OECD content spend is roughly $100/capita. Advertising runs many times that, at ~%$600 billion for the 1 billion inhabitants of the OECD, about $600/capita. "Free online content" costs the average household of 4 over $2,400 a year.