[e12e]

First, I didn't realize the first link was by you - I did read it prior to my previous response.

I think you overestimate the complexity of refundable (for "regret" reasons) micropayments. Both Amazon and Google play handle this fine.

I don't see why one would need to go back and get a refund for a quarter or dollar spent weeks ago; have a "pay to access - refunds as wanted (imediatly) after reading. In essence keep payments un escrow for 24-48 hours; with buyer opt-out.

> How do I keep you from copying my book, or music, or photos, or movie?

Why would you care? Go after systematic/for-profit copyright breach through the legal system - enjoy the rest as free publucity? If a link to pay could be embedded (eg: a pay:<content-hash> url scheme - it might be easy (enough) for readers (both in the people sense and application sende) to opt-in to paying. Register the hash in your library when you've decided to pay or refund; have the app commit to paying based on the list that's maintained in your account. The account could be with a payment broker, like itunes/amazon/google - or just a file. In case of a file you'd need to have the/an app look up the hash and follow some instructions for payment.

Your concerns wrt monitoring are valid; but not sure they're worse than what we seem to be moving towards.

[ed: re failure of micropayments - wouldn't someone not buying/paying for something they do not want be a win for micropayments? This would be similar for ads anyway? No view; no ad revenue?

But with ads, I can't get back my "ad view". If I read something (or started to) - and realised this isn't interesting - I could "unspend" a micropayment - let those that like content support it - but stop rewarding "eyeballs". Because that seems like a terrible quality measure (or measure of value-add/price).]

[dredmorbius]

I can't get back my "ad view".

Irrelevant.

That's not the payment transaction. You are not paying for content with ad views. You're paying when you buy products and services which advertise online.

Why would you care?

Because unlimited recourse to view, then withdraw payment, torpedoes the system.

You've also got the matter that under a syndication system, all views are retail views, regardless of source. Where advertising promotes piracy schemes benefitting publishers at the expense of authors, a Syndication scheme would fairly benefit both.

A "net traffic" based system would eliminate this concern: it simply doesn't matter where your work is served from, so long1as it's served. And no, it's not necessary to measure via privacy-invading mechanisms:

1. Zipf power functions mean that a small number of major sites are the bulk of traffic. You monitor these.

2. You're concerned with served traffic volumes. Other than eliminating suspect traffic, it doesn't matter who is accessing content, only how many. Yes, you've got a views-inflation issue to deal with, there are methods for mitigating that.

3. Sampled traffic estimates are used to model total traffic. That's apportioned across total funds for apportionment.

There's probably going to be some level of bundling, and it may be that specific creators market through specific syndicates, rather than directly. But in general, you're going to end up with payment based on actual access and funded through an indirect, general, tax or fee.

Google and Amazon serve only specific markets. There are large parts of the world with some Internet access but limited payment or finance systems. Credit card fraud is a thing, $11.3 billion worldwide in 2012, up 15% from prior year, and breaches of credit and payment data details are running to the hundreds of millions if not billions[1]. Individually transactionalised online payments are a considerable risk. Ecommerce for all its touted benefits remains a modest fraction of total retail, favoured strongly in B2B space, that is, established relationships and regular transactions.

Also noted that you've failed to address access issues for the poor, children, researchers, and creatives themselves, all of which a general fee would cover.

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Notes:

1. "Skimming off the top" http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21596547...

[e12e]

>Why would you care? > > Because unlimited recourse to view, then withdraw payment, torpedoes the system.

This sounds a bit like saying libraries are bad for authors? Why would this torpedo the system? Do we know that people would "freeload" to the extent that the system would break down?

> Also noted that you've failed to address access issues for the poor, children, researchers, and creatives themselves, all of which a general fee would cover.

How so? A child can use a parents account, researchers and creatives can certainly pay? Researchers might get remimbursed of course -- but that's immaterial.

Certainly poor can pay some -- granted, many will not be able to. Let them read for free (by "abusing the refund") -- and start paying when/if they're no longer poor?

I don't see how a flat tax would be any better for the poor, than direct payment? If a person can afford to spend a dollar, or a thousand dollars on content each month -- that doesn't change just because you collect a fee based off of bandwith rather than per-item?

Re: payment fraud -- sure, that's a real problem, and fraud is something every pay system need to account for. I'm not sure that credit cards/micropayments would be more expensive in this regard than tax -- there's plenty of tax fraud too.

I'm mostly concerned with that your model would appear to me to extend the status quo -- where a lot of low quality content get a lot of views, and generate a lot of the profit -- while it'd be better to have a system that promoted more diverse and "better" content -- generally that'd be a slide towards more decentralized publishing/more personal publishing.

This is of course entirely subjective.

[dredmorbius]

Libraries don't allow for unlimited frictionless reproduction. Digital data does.

(Libraries providing content in digital form also do: CDs, DVDs, eBooks).

I don't see how a flat tax would be any better for the poor, than direct payment?

I feel like I'm repeating myself. Oh, because I am. Information is social infrastructure, benefitting all:

● Information goods typically have very high positive externalities -- they benefit those who don't directly consume them.

That is, a tax, particularly one scaled to income:

● Captures the otherwise uncompensated benefit to those who benefit by information even without directly paying for it. Among the benefits I'm referencing is living in an accurately informed public, which requries accurate, relevant, and timely news. Problems with compensation of news media are an ongoing problem. But entertainment matters as well: here's looking at you kid, whether you've paid to watch Casablanca or not.

● Is scaled to income/wealth. Just as the wealthy have benefitted more from society, they're paying on that basis. Dittoes for information.

● Information is raw material. Any denied access is lost social potential and deadweight cost.

your model would appear to me to extend the status quo -- where a lot of low quality content get a lot of views

That is a concern, and something I'm concerned with. It's addressed in a follow-up article (not listed above):

"Specifying a Universal Online Media Payment Syndication System" https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2h0h81/specify...

"Some level of price tiering. Seems that there should be a recognition that some content is considerably more cost-intensive than others. I've been pondering how to address this, and don't have a good metric, though assigning either authors or works to specific categories, and setting compensation tiers appropriately, could help. This might also be a way to avoid the Gresham's Law dilemma of crap content driving out good. If crap content has zero (or even negative) prices, then there's no (or at least less) economic incentive to produce it. Rewarding highly complex work based on its inputs would also be of benefit. To be developed but several models exist."

There are a number of related articles found searching for "content sindication" on my subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=content+syndic...

At the very least, you're breaking out of the blockbuster model and restrictions imposed by advertisers or agents on what gets created in the first place. We're already seeing this to some extent now. Sturgeon's Law applies: 90% of everything's crap. But with sufficient filter and recommendations systems, the good stuff can be found (though addressing that is another challenge).

There's also the issue of addressing quality and especially truth/relevance in informational content (news, research results). That's something else I'm kicking around. It's largely independent of content syndication, though possibly not entirely so.

[e12e]

Thank you for your patient and lenghty replies. I still think we disagree - but I think I'm getting a better grasp on your view/ideas.

How do you see taxation/fees working across borders? Clearly agreements can be made, but it seems much more feasible to piggyback on trade agreements than to erect a new international body of law just for digital content? How do money paid by a Chinese factory worker find its way to an American poet? And vice-versa?

[dredmorbius]

Addressing a different aspect, the Ashley Madison incident is another argument against micropayments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083536

[dredmorbius]

I get the sense I'm not selling you on this, but the conversation may end up getting FAQed ;-)

How do you see taxation/fees working across borders?

Good question, and one I hadn't really considered, but I'd divide it out into respective chunks:

1. Let's get back to the goal here: it's to provide sufficient compensation to authors and artists of works distributed in electronic form with a minimal of interference, overhead, control, cencorship, or privacy invasion, while enabling, facilitating, and encouraging open distribution of such works. It's not "build a perfect utility-capture system", and it's not "prevent the least amount of unauthorized / uncompensated use."

To that end, a first-order solution to foreign use is "it doesn't matter.

But let's say that's not quite satisfactory.

2. The total global GDP is presently about $70 trillion. Roughly half of that by nominal GDP is contained within the G7 nations: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US.[1] The G20 (20 largest economies) are 85%.[2] The OECD -- 34 nations -- ⅔ of global GDP.[3] Again, Zipf power functions are your friend. This puts the lion's share of interest in a subset of the 206 sovereign states of Earth.

As with other international tariff treaties (postal, telecoms), most are based on bidirectional rights. If your country's producing significant informational goods, you'll have higher incentives to strike a deal with other countries. States which produce little by way of intellectual property would of course have little incentive. Most of these would be developing nations.

Note as well: this scheme would be fully compatible with CC or Free Software/OpenSource licensing. Authors/creators could register and be eligible for compensation.

3. And as with broadcast, your interest is finding a representative population to sample*. The largest providers, servers, or ISPs within a given nation. If this is based on some sort of licensing arrangement, you'd be looking at those parties to set up monitoring and enforcement.

So: first approximation, don't worry about it and treat each nation independently.

Second: scale out among largest economies first.

Third: approach largest broadband / connectivity providers first.

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Notes:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G7_(major_advanced_economies)

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oecd

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states