I think micropayments are a good idea- not that I want to pay for everything I access online, but if it enables new and quality services (from small-ish companies, hopefully) I'm all for it.

However, what about a system of micropayments that can go the other way as well, to the average/intelligent Joe?

Say I read a well-written, insightful article about X. I give the author a micropayment to read said article. Now, say I write an email back to the author bringing up a number of good points- should I get a micropayment back?

Assuming easy, transparent micropayments to those providing some sort of service / insight is a good idea, are easy, transparent micropayments paid to "consumers" a solution in search of a problem? An enabling step to certain good social/economic structures?

Who knows. Certainly not me.

RD

In the U.S. we have numberous places to donate physical goods which are no longer needed; Goodwill, The Salvation Army, and so forth. These places then either
1. Donate the items to folks who aren't well off and can benefit from such, or
2. Sell the donated items and use the money for charity.

It's a well-functioning system that does a lot of good for society through providing an outlet for the donation of unneeded property and the charitable redistribution of that property or the property's value.

Now, the same doesn't exist in the so-called 'Intellectual Property' realm, even though 'IP' is even easier to transport and hence donate than physical property.

I think it should; I'd happily donate the Windows and MS Office licenses I got from Dell on the computer I installed Linux on to charity, as I would donate licenses for movies I've gotten bored with (destroying or including the media a license was on would be part of the donation). It'd be great; schools, for instance, would get costly licenses of Windows, I get a tax writeoff, and I do something good for the world.

Of course this is only part of the issue, and one side of it at that (is every donation a lost sale? I don't think so but an argument could be made- as is made with copyright infringement). But I think there's a place for this. Perhaps the charity angle could convince governments that licenses should be easily transferrable. Everything else is, why not licenses?

Right now the 'Intellectual Property' market is bloated in places. Let's let donation / resale make it more efficient.

I spent an hour or so (weird connection due to Comcast, so I'm not sure how meaningful 'an hour or so' is) moderating- my first mod points. Exciting.

This made me think about those posters who, in their .sigs, state that they will meta-moderate all downmods as unfair, to promote upmods. This is frustrating.

Rant:
I would meta-meta-moderate those who catagorically meta-moderate all negative mods down. Doing so
  1. Is an abuse of the system (catagorically penalizing certain users) through a loophole (no infinite-regress moderation).
  2. Hurts the success (S/N ratio) of the moderation system.

Yes, sometimes moderators are swayed by grandstanding, keywords, rehashing, or spurious 'facts' the poster made up. These posts are noise- noise much more harmful to the S/N ratio than AC trolls- and should be dealt with through peer moderation. As was intended.
End Rant.

Random Thoughts:
That said, I wish we of the community could also rate .sigs- just today, I saw someone post with

'I am a citizen, not a consumer.' and
'I am a human being, not a revenue source.'

Very cool.

I also wish we could footnote things; a completely flat mode of presentation, as slashdot-text is, is limiting to certain aspects of communication. Yes, we can probably do the same things in a flat-text communication than a footnotecapable-text, and it might even promote better writing style through the challenge (see Apple's rationale for one-button mice) but I'd still like to have it available.
End Random Thoughts.

---------- UPDATE ----------

After having it pointed out to me, I've really noticed that many people rate down comments as 'overrated' if they don't like the comment but don't want to get caught by M2. Evidentally 'Overrated' can't be M2'd. Sneaky and low; I pledge not to mod things as overrated until this gaping hole in the mod system is fixed.

Please fix it, eds.

At this juncture I'm not sure if this is plausible or not, but here goes:

Premise 1: The constitution deals with timeless ideals- which are then realized in various and diverse ways in different stages of our society.

Clarification: Much as biblical interpretation necessitates that we look beyond particular historical context-dependent words and phrases to see the spirit of the bible, so must we look beyond the particular way an ideal is expressed in the constitution to find the ideal itself- and then examine our current society to find a good current application of that ideal.

Premise 2: The second ammendment, 'The Right to Bear Arms', is an application in late 18th century America of the timeless ideal of giving the populance significant and real power to act positively in a society *outside of the rules of that society*, potentially in a manner contrary to how those in political power would like.

Premise 3: The most meaningful application of this ideal to our current society is not 'The Right to Own Guns'; with the power and organization of the police and the stigma raised against fringe militants such as Ted Kazinski, the right to own guns is a pointless right in that one cannot effect meaningful positive change using guns nor successfully defend oneself against the authorities with guns, rightfully or not.

Premise 4: The most meaningful application of this ideal from Premise 2 is found in the so-called digital realm, in projects such as FreeNet, Gnutella, DeCSS, and so forth.

In Summary,
Battles are not waged with guns anymore, and oppression no longer takes the form of the enemy marching through our towns and taking our womenfolk. FreeNet, Gnutella, and DeCSS are the 'arms' of the 21st century, and the Second Ammendment gives us the right to bear them.

Work In Progress-
Feedback in commands would be *very* appreciated!

I had my first rating as flamebait, added my first sig, and hit excellent karma today! I was excited ;) ... as a little writeup regarding my sig, "The first step to accepting a viewpoint is accepting its implicit ontology or framework. Beware of poor frameworks." I'd offer that: (was going to have this as a journal in itself but it fits in well here)

As a philosopher I find it very interesting to see the interplay on slashdot between various competing or complimentary conceptual frameworks or philosophies. Often people enspousing these philosophies don't see what's going on- they just see that some people are right and some people are wrong. Thankfully most modded-up comments have at least a degree of or intuitive appreciation for what goes on 'behind the scenes' in a discussion.

After writing my last comment, on 'Digital Shoplifting' (people taking digital photos of books in Japan and hence copying the information contained in them) I didn't proofread and just posted. Big mistake; what was supposed to be the heart of my argument is a sentence fragment.

Next time I'll proofread, I swear!

Having just graduated from college and not searching too dilligently for gainful employment just yet, I've a little time on my hands and have decided to truly join this community which I respect and have been lurking around for years. It's a different feel when one has made the plunge than when one is safe, cocooned, and anonymous, for both good and bad, but I'm excited about it.

I welcome and appreciate feedback and discussion.