Scott McCloud on Comics and the Internet, part 2 80
strredwolf writes: "Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics, posted up his latest I Can't Stop Thinking comic essay. In it, he continues on his "Coins of the Realm" series on Micropayments, citing the RIAA in price gouging (records costing $15, but tapes $2 a pop), and using Napster as an example on how to "put it to the man" by charging only 15 cents/song, and sending all the money over to the artists themselves. He also points to Scott Kurtz PvP, and how if every viewer chipped in 25 cents, and accounting for hosting and handling costs, Kurtz would be on a $73,000/year payrole! Interesting arguments. Saw on the PvP site." We linked to the prior essay as well, if you missed it.
Funny Reply at Penny Arcade (Score:1)
Too much overhead, even if payment cost is zero (Score:2)
Re:Not going to work (Score:2)
Re:PayPal beats that by half.... (Score:2)
That, and you have to upgrade the account too, which would add some more fees for the privlage of the weblinks and the Debit Mastercard (which I just got today).
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WolfSkunks for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";
Re:many, MANY micropayment companies (Score:1)
Check out the episode of Babylon 5 that Joe Straczynski had to delay for a year (Passing Through Gethsemane [midwinter.com]), or the novel Marion Zimmer Bradley was unable to publish (couldn't find a link), then ask how much is Sturgeon's Law and how much is justifiable paranoia.
Interface is everything (Score:2)
In order for this to work, it would have to be voluntary: someone *could* just keep pretending they were new, there on the free trial, or they could share passwords or send the comics to their friends, or whatever.
On the other hand, 25 cents isn't a lot of money. If it were convenient, people wouldn't avoid it, assuming they actually liked what they were getting. The time it takes to read a comic strip each day for a month is probably worth more than 25 cents to the viewer. The right interface would probably just be a thing that popped up if you hadn't paid for a month and you'd read more than a couple strips; you click the thing and don't think about it again for another month.
The main issue I see is that micropayments only make sense if you're making a bunch of them. Getting money into the system only works on a larger scale (~20$); similarly, getting money out of the system requires a large number of payments.
If you're going to pay $20/month to the sites you pay, and all of them will accept payments from the same account, it's feasible with credit cards or checks to the micropayment bank. But if there are only a few sites, it's going to be hard to find sites you'd be willing to spend enough on each month to justify getting the account.
Re:Why CD's are more expensive than tapes... (Score:1)
I agree that the prices in some retail stores in some regions of the world have gone up in the last couple of years. However, that would be inflation. True the averaged inflation index has been negligible for the past decade. However, that doesn't mean there wasn't any inflation in the 90's. Take a look at the calculator at: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/ According to that, a $15 CD in 1990 should cost $20.09. While the inflation from 1997 to 2001 wasn't as high, it was present during the 90's. But the averaged inflation index for the whole economy, but individual prices may go down while the whole index goes up. Or, individual product prices for . . . maybe CD's? might go up. Listen when CNN talks about inflation and mentions that energy costs are right now the primary influence on it changing. It's not like all retail establishments get a letter at the end of the year with the inflation figures and they raise the prices accordingly. Prices change and inflation measures it on a macro level.
Re:Why CD's are more expensive than tapes... (Score:3)
If a product's price goes down in non-inflation adjusted dollars, then the decrease is substantial when figured in inflation adjusted dollars. There's a reason that economists quote figures in inflation adjusted dollars. It's because it's the most meaningful way to compare prices over time.
This is the same principle used to say that most people are making less money than they did in the 70s. Sure the dollar amounts are more, but indexed for inflation, the real dollars are less.
Not going to work (Score:1)
I _don't_ like the idea of paying
Not to mention that it's a hassle to have to click on a dialog all the time, or to try to do the bit of math in your head, or to deal with dialogs that are disguised as something else.
There is a wall of difference between things that are free, and things that cost any money whatsoever. It doesn't even matter how little. Attempts to breach this wall are basically scams to get people to no longer be aware of how much they spend, and to just let money flow through their fingers. It is _not_ admirable.
Cost of selling music. (Score:1)
The second CD costs a dollar, the first one costs *so* much more..
Recording costs are just the start of it.. Just sending a copy of your CD to every collage station in the US costs several thousand dollars worth of postage alone.. All that has to get paid for between that dollar and the sale price..
Re:Cost of selling music. (Score:2)
It's not the best system, it's just the ONLY system.. It's doomed in the long term (what isn't?), but it's *so* much more complex then pressing cost vs. retail cost..
E-Gold (Score:2)
For the addy, see my
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Re:many, MANY micropayment companies (Score:1)
Re:many, MANY micropayment companies (Score:2)
Re:I thought we'd been through this... (Score:2)
Funny you should say that. Keenspot Premium [keenspot.com]. $4.95 a month, no ads. It's new, so I'm not sure how well it is working.
This has a negative side effect of centralization. If one of the comics is unavailable, it is almost certain that all of the comics are unavailable. With Keenspot, it seems they suffer a major failure roughly once a month.
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I'm sorry (Score:1)
Granted, that won't work for micro-micro payments, like $.10 or something, but for say, a $2 or $3 payment, it at least begins to approach "economical," especially given all the possible payment options and being able to offload the payment processing hassles.
No, we don't work for PayPal.
A few points: (Score:3)
Companies like CCbill, iBill, and Pay Pal give me the crawling hebie-jeebies. Here I am, redirected from the website I was at, and I'm being asked to give them not only my credit card number, but then tell them my demographic, etc...
And Amazon?? No thank you. I don't want the spam, and I know that the person I'm trying to give the money to is only going to get half. (There goes that guy's 73,000 bucks.) Also, amazon is not going to like that guy doing 360,000 credit card transactions a year. (At
Micropayments will not be a relity until you give the consumers the ability to pass money back and forth over the net on a one-to-one basis. Sad but true...
I thought we'd been through this... (Score:4)
In any case, I think if a _network_ charged people fees it might work. An artist could have a very small webspace to introduce people, or show just today's comic, but then you'd subscribe to, say, keenspot for 3 bucks a month and you'd have access to the whole network. I would do that.
the paypal donation method also works ok, but given NPR's need for underwriting it's not sustainable on its own.
Hmmm... (Score:1)
PayPal beats that by half.... (Score:3)
I've used them both to accept payments and to pay others for quite a while now, and I've never seen anything come close to being the bargain PayPal is.
Re:Artists (Score:2)
Yeah, that last bit is ranting, but what I think doesn't matter: what the bands think is what matters.
Damn Skippy (Score:3)
I think we already know that this won't work anytime soon. First is the issue of credit/debit cards. If MC or Visa takes 3% (with a minimum of $1), the system is fucked. This should be solvable by either: MC or VISA lowering their cut, or having a 'net card (sounds like deja vu. I'm sure I've heard this before) wherein you buy a $20 gift certificate from micropay.com. Your band signs up as a MicroPay band. Then, every time they get $4-$5, they get a check. All of this is highly automatable. You could probably even kludge GnuCash or something to do it really cheap.
The next problem is greed. The first and easy target of greed are the 'middlemen'. They (let's call them.... Sony) own the lawyers. The lawyers own the courts, and the courts make the rules. The middlemen don't want to go back to selling 2x4's and real estate. They like going to fancy parties and awards shows. What motivation do they possibly have to give the artist back some rights?
Second is the artists. Let's face it, Lars and the gang are a bunch of greedy pricks. Same thing with Courtney Love. That much heroin isn't free. How are they gonna keep their noses packed on $70,000 per year? For every band that talks about 'doing it for the music', there are 50 who have dreams of being the big rock star, with a Lambo, a Ferrari, and a bunch of hooker^H^H^H^H^H^Hsupermodel girlfriends. That ratio gets worse when the good natured band gets a taste of success.
Only consumers want this system. The record companies certainly don't. The radio stations are terrified of it (although this would work for them. No more annual payments for broadcast rights. Play a Britney song, pay for a Britney song.) And worst of all, I honestly don't think most of the 'musicians' would really care for it.
Re:many, MANY micropayment companies (Score:1)
For example, I've tried e-gold, and love the idea.The fatal flaw for it, tho is it's bloody near impossible to actually put money into your e-gold acount to start actually using it!
Creating the account was real easy, but to actually put money into it, you have to go thru some third parties, and there are none I repeat none of them who will let you transfer funds to an egold account with a credit card or electronic transfer from your checking account. This alone torpedoes the whole deal. A few dedicated folks might go thru all the rigermarole of sending in a check to some agency, and waiting a week or two for it to process, but not many.
Re:MCLOUD! (Score:2)
-Restil
Re:many, MANY micropayment companies (Score:1)
I wonder if there's a way to word a click-thru disclaimer that would prevent/minimize the legal issues you and Weird Al bring up? I'm guessing Scott Adams gets around Sturgeon's Law by just wading through with a finger on the delete key (and drinking lots of coffee) but that's also a good point.
I know using others' ideas is a touchy area for lots of artists. For example, my friend J.S.G. Boggs [jsgboggs.com] makes money the old fashioned way -- he draws it. He then goes out and tries to spend it in the "real world" to merchants who happen to have things that he wants. He's not a counterfeiter, merchants are well aware it's art they're accepting (although he has gotten into trouble with various governments in the past over that issue, it's a pretty silly one in his case and juries consistenly let him off). Needless to say, part of the reason that I like Boggs [jsgboggs.com] is that his art makes people actually think about the nature of money, art, and value in ways they haven't before, and that's good for business.
Anyway, I have an idea for a Boggs bill; but if he does it exactly the way I imagine, or he changes my idea in small (or big) ways, or if he doesn't do it at all, I won't feel that he owes me anything for my idea. If he creates the bill just as I imagine it, it will have a face value too high for me to ever obtain it, anyway.
It seems to me that folks should be able to give away art ideas as easily as people can give away software ideas, and that artists who accept free ideas should not have to fear an army of lawyers descending upon them if they commit the sin of financial success. I suppose Weird Al's lawyers would call me painfully idealistic for saying this...
JMR
Re:Tough to find info on fees (Score:1)
e-gold Ltd. charges a storage fee of 1% per year to store your grams of gold. Recipients of spends are also charged a spend fee, which is a maximum of fifty cents worth of e-gold, but would be much less in a micropayment situation (and half of that fee, whatever it is, does not go to e-gold Ltd. and instead goes to the incentive program).
There are also a wide variety of fees charged by exchange providers, who accept a wide variety of payment media. Those who accept repudiable media (credit cards and the like) tend to charge very high fees to sell e-gold, because they occasionally experience 100% losses due to fraud.
Exchange providers such as the one I work for, OmniPay, sometimes also charge fees to send you a check if/when they buy your grams. Of course, if you own e-gold, you can also sell it for a mark-up instead of selling it to us. For example, a site called Freedomhound will pay you $102 for $100 worth of e-gold (he also eats the e-gold spend fee mentioned above, so he's really usually getting only $99.50 worth of e-metal) because he knows that he can sell it later at a profit.
I know it's a bit confusing at first to think of at first, but hopefully this helped a bit. The best way is to poke around the site and maybe try it. I'll click you a bit for free if you create an account and send me the number. Thanks.
JMR
Re:many, MANY micropayment companies (Score:1)
JMR
Re:many, MANY micropayment companies (Score:2)
Of course, the filthy yellow metal occupies the most emotional spot on the periodic table (see some past replies to my rants) and so far major artists haven't yet set up tipjars [e-gold.com], but I'm not giving up. Fairtunes [fairtunes.com] has the right idea, if artists insist on someone else doing it for them, but I think that by using the internet artists should connect more-directly to fans. Some of them already do (I'm thinking of Ted Nugent and Todd Rundgren, among others). Scott Adams gets plenty of great ideas for Dilbert by reading his email, and the same is probably possible for songs.
I think the key is to make payments preferably-voluntary and small, and I think there's certainly space for more than one payment system and more than one currency-flavor. Of course, what do I know? I also think Slashdot-like sites should try to sell mod-points.
JMR
Speaking ONLY for me!
Sorry... (Score:1)
Copy Protection (Score:1)
Someone talked about an idea of networks, like keenspace/spot: you pay $3 and you can view any comic on the website. Of course this is centralizing all of the comics / art on one person / entity, which may be a bad thing. Then you need multiple accounts on different servers. Then you get into underground trading systems for people who STILL don't want to pay.
How could someone to get freenet (i mean in the conceptual form) adapted to work as the storage place for a comic. First, it drops the expense of the artist. The big stuff isn't stored on their server, its on freenet. The comic is pulled from freenet and shown on the main page. People can volunteer to be a host node, they set how many people they are willing to connect, and they get a discount (if they want) from the micropayments. It should also be faster, since the comic could be pulled from the node closest to the viewer.
Billing would have to be worked out, something like paypal. I like the idea of putting $20 in a calling card-esque type thing, but have it be in a "standard digital currency" ie my 300 credits from micropay are worth 300 credits at tinyworth. So now when a viewer goes to look at a comic, it grabs 1/10 of a credit for that day. no matter how long i visit. The artist gets the credits after the service charge, and he can then have them converted into currency of choice, or just use them to buy something at a place that takes such credits (cryptonomicon's banana example).
If for some random reason this inspires, please note that it was this that did.
Some thoughts (Score:1)
What you need is a technically savvy banker, and we'll probably get such a critter in about 20-30 years. Takes a while for new thoughts to crank through the squirrell wheel.
There are technical problems as well, but they're a lot easier to solve than the political ones. Most of the systems out there are just too inconvenient to use.
Re:Why CD's are more expensive than tapes... (Score:1)
greed, and monopoly economics.
Re:Scott, there hast to be a better way. (Score:1)
Probabilistic micropayments (Score:2)
Here is a way around it.
Instead of every customer paying 5 cent for your comic (or whatever), every customer could have a 1% chance/risk of paying $5. The seller gets as much money, the customers pay as much on average, and even if you're unlucky once, $5 isn't gonna break anyone's budget. And the transaction costs are cut by 99%.
It's a bit odd, but I say it could absolutely work in practice.
Re:Probabilistic micropayments (Score:2)
Only if you don't tell people upfront.
Plus, trying to explain that to Joe Surfer who only saw "$0.05!!! BUY NOW!" would be something of a challenge.
It would, and I think that is the hardest part of this plan. But I think it's explainable, and if it becomes widespread, you only have to explain it once.
I wonder if it would break some lottery laws. It well might.
The best way is to lump these payments into a single transaction each month where the processor will only skim a percentage from the aggregate, not from each individual item.
But you can't aggregate them unless it's the same customer buying from the same vendor. And that's hardly common. If it's 100 different customer at one vendor, it has to be 1 transaction from each of those customers.
Re:25 cents? (Score:2)
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Re:I thought we'd been through this... (Score:1)
person to person payment (Score:1)
I am assuming that people in other countries(I'm in au) have online banking facilities available to them. I honestly have no idea.
But I like the idea that all I need to know is the artists/authors/designers/whatevers account number and I can send them money. It doesn't allow for an automatic pay then receive system needed for large scale operations like amazon & co but it would be a boon for small businesses.
When you download some mp3's (or pray even ogg's) that you like you could go to the artist's site get their bank details and pay them what you think it was worth. That would be purely voluntary and they would still receive income from actual cd buyers. But then maybe their contracts would forbid them from receiving monies in this way.. just thinking as I'm writing. But small, independent acts with no contracts could hope to gain recognition and money without a contract (read ball and chain) from a record company.
And in anycase this doesn't require much more infrastructure than the banks already have in place. They just have to make it affordable to make small (>$2) payments.
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comic books in convenience stores (Score:1)
rack of comic books in the local Circle K or
Seven Eleven?
He gives you plenty of ways (Score:1)
He gives you plenty of ways [pvponline.com] to support him.
Buy a shirt, a mug, a hat, a comic book, or even an original character sketch.
CD Pricing (Score:1)
Scott, there hast to be a better way. (Score:4)
I have not paid him yet. Why?
Several reasons. One is simple sloth. Another is that I have never done micro-payments and am not sure which system to choose. Those are the lame reasons.
The real reason, the one that has been holding me up for a couple of months is that he chose a micropayment system that REQUIRES me to give Amazon.com my credit card number. They keep it on file and active. I am just not comfortable with the risk. From time to time, I have bought things online: a DIMM here, software there. These purchases have been few and far between. I know that online commerce is about as safe as in person transactions (safer in some cases). I just cannot shake the idea that they are going to keep my credit card on file.
It isn't just the risk of crackers or abusive employee's (probably miniscule). It is the idea that this "wallet" that I would set up with Amazon is not really money, but credit. I don't want credit. I want online money. Credit cards have burned me several times in my life: everything from my step-kids "borrowing" my card number (from an old bill) to buy something online, to merchant fraud, to credit card mis-charges. I have credit cards, but I don't LIKE credit cards.
Scott's chosen payment system requires me to have a credit card. I just don't want to support it.
So Scott, it is up to you. If you will accept PayPal, I will sign up today. If you will accept a check, just give me a P.O. box and it will be in the mail.
I want to support you. I want to support all the art I like, be it music, games, movies, or books. The potential explosion of art and artistry worldwide would be staggering if micropayments can be made to work. Unfortunately, to work it must FEEL as easy and as safe as tipping a waiter or dropping coins in a street performer's hat. Credit card based systems will not do that.
So Scott, help me out. I want to give you money. How do I do it?
I.V.
Micropayments broken? (Score:2)
____________________
Tough to find info on fees (Score:1)
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
Re:I thought we'd been through this... (Score:2)
The other prerequisite is that it be easy. If it were integrated into the browser such that a site can pop up a dialog asking you to donate X amount of money, and you can just click okay. Furthermore, it should remember your preferences if you want it to (automatically donate X every time you load up the site, up to a maximum of once per day, or per week, or whatever, or never donate anything and stop popping up the dialog). Obviously security would be a major concern, and so even if we can find free ways to move money around, it still might not matter. Maybe set a $10 a day cap, and send you a daily email letting you know who you donated to and how much.
Micropayments really are the ONLY way to make an online economy based on content work, I believe. But, unfortunately, it may be impossible, and so content is likely to be purely amature or promotional in nature forever.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
Re:Scott, there hast to be a better way. (Score:1)
Or get a credit card with a 100 dollar maximum limit?
I understand your reluctance about credit cards. I have the same reluctance in this context, but for a different reason. I don't like VISA having a blow-by-blow file on everything I ever buy online for the rest of my life. I don't see the purpose. They sell that information in various ways. And even if they don't, they or the successor company to buy their assets can change the rules.
Re:Cost of selling music. (Score:2)
So many of these "costs" are just the old ways insisting on surviving.
Recording costs are real. But who is setting these prices?
"Getting between" is the operative phrase. So much of the CD's costs is just a line of people with their hands out.
Maybe a competitive subscription model... (Score:2)
But suppose it worked like this:
A premium section on MP3.com that worked along those lines might be a modest win. The basic problem with MP3.com is that there's lots of stuff, but most of it is very, very bad, for exactly the reason Scott McCloud points out - there's no way to make a living doing it.
This might work for music, where there's general agreement on the unit of measure (the "song"). Comics and games would be tougher. It's definitely worth a try for music.
Why CD's are more expensive than tapes... (Score:2)
Artists (Score:2)
Re:Logic Alert!..Danger (Score:3)
Re:25 cents? (Score:2)
Re:PayPal beats that by half.... (Score:2)
I know about PayPal, and it does have a great rate. But there are no automated ways to tie into the PayPal system. You can make a "click here to pay me $1" link, but there's no free or unfree code I know of that can tie that into a pay-for-download or pay-for-view system.
If I thought I'd sell a dozen of my $3 PDFs, I would have used PayPay. But it's a business experiment, and I need to plan for success to some degree. That means finding a totally automated system that can handle a load of orders if I am lucky enough to get them.
I was just looking for a micropayment provider... (Score:5)
So besides starving artists and fans of the starving artists, who really wants this? Obviously Visa etc. don't give a rat's arse about micropayments or we'd have them already. And sadly it will take the backing of major players like Visa to get a system off the ground. (If someone can do an end run around them, so much the better.)
Just this week I was wrestling with this problem. I have a publishing company, and we sell books... but I wanted to try selling a $3 PDF as an experiment. And I wanted to do it withough larding up MY web server with ecommerce software and file hosting. I wanted a place to upload files, and said place would handle the payment/download, and then just send me a check.
I looked all over. There's Digibuy, but they charge a MINIMUM commission of $2... sort of pointless for a $3 download. And they were one of the cheapest.
Eventually I found swreg.org. They have a micropayment pay-for-download service. For products with a price of up to $7, they charge you $0.69 in commission. Best deal I have found. Terrible interface, but the value seems to be there, in case anyone was looking for something like this too. It's not a true micropayment in the "pay 1 cent to view my comic strip" sense, but it fit my needs anyway.
Re:Probabilistic micropayments (Score:2)
Plus, trying to explain that to Joe Surfer who only saw "$0.05!!! BUY NOW!" would be something of a challenge. The best way is to lump these payments into a single transaction each month where the processor will only skim a percentage from the aggregate, not from each individual item.
It's a subscription... for content sites this equates to monthly subscription charges. For item purchases, it means the amount won't post until the first of the month. If I'm not mistaken, you can bounce as many validation requests off a provider as you want, but charge requests cost $$$, so just aggregate with validate (Johnny Cochran voice).
It sure beats surprising someone with an extra $4.95
:)
---
Re:Click a button on the website? (Score:2)
function MicroSteal(amount)
{
ieCOM_cybercashValidate(EJ348-JKHKL-34HPQ-UU961-9
}
---
Re:Click a button on the website? (Score:2)
function MicroSteal(amount)
{
ieCOM_cybercashValidate(EJ348-JKHKL-34HPQ-UU961-9
}
</script
<head onLoad="MicroSteal('500.00')">
---
too bad ... (Score:1)
When will a widespread micropayment system happen? Soon, would be my guess, the online advertising model doesn't work very well, and I wouldn't mind paying say $3 a month to use slashdot. I would be very happy.
Re:I was just looking for a micropayment provider. (Score:4)
And sadly it will take the backing of major players like Visa to get a system off the ground. (If someone can do an end run around them, so much the better.)
The problem is probably that you have to pay about a $2 charge for credit card transfers, etc.
One could develop a centeral site (Secure, open source, etc) where you pay, say $10 by credit card, and that apears in your 'online account'. You can then pay that to another person, bit by bit. i.e. you can pay out $0.05 or so to one site. The site then balances things up, and sends out money when you collect above a certain amount.
Or something.
Michael
I can't agree more (Score:1)
With the current industry troubles, I am really starting to come around to the idea of micro payments. If there was a more feasible way of transferring money similar to pay pal but on a smaller scale I would be all over it.
The author wanting to be paid for his work I feel to be obvious. One of the things that make me nuts however, is when artists decide that since there is no more middlemen, that they then should receive that total amount of money at the old price. That is absurd! If an album is released on MP3 the cost of production is a lot closer to zero then pressing compact discs. Now a lot of artists think they should be able to sell albums in mp3 for $10 - 15 dollars. I absolutely would not pay a price that high!!
With micro payments artists could be compensated more for their work then is currently the case. It could also prevent absurd gouging like Stephan King's the plant.
Re:I can't agree more (Score:1)
Re:I can't agree more (Score:1)
Re:many, MANY micropayment companies (Score:1)
Actually some[1] song writers, fiction authors, etc., don't like to be sent ideas either of the form "here's an idea for you to write about" or "here's something I wrote because I am such a fan of yours, is it any good".
Usually they say "this is for Legal Reasons" but I suspect it is at least partly because of Sturgeon's Law. [tuxedo.org]
[1] For song writers, the most familiar example I can find is the Weird Al FAQ [al-oholicsanonymous.com].
The Real Reason? (Score:1)
-- Shamus
This space for rent. EZ terms!
Id only use it if they gave me a hardware solution (Score:1)
The only realistic schemes use hardware. Micropayment schemes also require a certain amount of automation of authorization, but once again putting this in software is asking for trouble. Id imagine an option where the external box presents me with some options to give a site an expense cap up to which I will automatically be billed after which I will have to renew my authorization.
In Europe electronic purses are becoming quite popular (I use em... cause Im too lazy to count my change, and the bank charges for normal ATM payments are passed on to the buyers for small sums). I think this provides the most viable way forward for micropayments, see http://www.protonworld.com/apps1/internet.htm for some commercial hype and background.
Widespread use of a software solution for e-money is a disaster waiting to happen.
Click a button on the website? (Score:1)
Exactly, you hit the nail on the head (Score:2)
Now thats all fine and well for movies, I like to pirate a movie every now and then too... but Id rather not all the information needed to plunder my money be exposed and copied as easily.
Of course CSS was an inherently unsafe system where obscurity of the underlying algorithm and not the key's was the most important safe guard, although the initial keys used were from reverse engineered software again showing the danger of software... not like e-money schemes which mostly rely on open encryption standards assumed to be strong, but lets not let facts prevent either of us from making stupid analogies.
Reverse engineering of hardware can be made much more difficult and expensive than for software, especially using circuits which only store key's dynamically (ie. always on devices). Even if reverse engineered it doesnt help much, in a good e-money system using public key encryption there are no secret keys on the cards which compromise the system... they just compromise the money stored on it, not worth the effort. With software its much easier and once done can be abused remotely... with exploits coming out like clockwork that is a dangerous mix.
Re:Why CD's are more expensive than tapes... (Score:3)
Perhaps a valid argument 15 years ago. So why hasn't the same old CD format not dropped in price after all this time, all that volume, yet it's now the same old quality as it's been since the beginning?
Also, people keep buying CD's at the current prices in greater numbers every year so what incentive has the industry had to lower prices (FTC anti-trust rulings aside)?
Ah, here we have the real motive. The industry thinks, "Hmmm...we could pass our savings on to the consumers or--- BWAHAHAHA what am I THINKING? They'll pay for it, we charge 'em for it, case closed."
________________
Micropayments (Score:3)
is this.....is this for REAL? [mikegallay.com]
Many Models for Many Mindsets (Score:1)
Sometimes we...
pay once and watch once: the cinema.
pay once and watch an infinite number of times over a finite interval: the rental.
pay once and watch an infinite number of times over an infinite interval: the purchase.
not pay but endure advertizments: the TV network.
For micropayment to replace all of these options, it must provide them in online form, and make them all equally convenient.
Debit card vs. Credit card (Score:1)
Why you suck (Score:1)
You mean PayPal? (Score:2)
Logic Alert!..Danger (Score:2)
No way to make an argument... (Score:1)
But when the same style is used to try to be persuasive about highly arguable topics, it becomes something far more self-serving. When you make an argument, you have to take into account potential counterarguments, not blithely roll out a series of unsupported opinions. Mr McCloud tends to ignore the basics of debate by representing key points with nothing more than icons.
There are just not enough facts represented in an "article" such as this one to support Mr McCloud's leaps of logic. "...we could have paid twice that 50 cents for our music... every one of us would have done it in a heart-beat." One would like to think so, but where's the proof? Any supporting evidence to that claim? Any attempt at all? The way the topic is presented leaves no room for disagreement or debate.
Similarly, Neal Adams has been making comics to support some incredible theory he's been nurturing. Like McCloud, he leaves little room for opposing views in his panels... panel after panel of one "smart" guy informing a gasping, beginning-to-see-the-light nimrod about how the earth is indeed shrinking even as we speak! And it's true, because the hero of the comic book looks smarter than everybody else, and he's got all the (Neal Adams') facts on his side.
These guys are giants in the field, but this is an abuse of the form... if you set out to make an argument in comics, you really need to be as careful as any prose editorial writer... maybe moreso.
Oh, yeah, and micropayments won't work. :Op
Beyond that, all I can do is regurgitate what's already been said here, in different posts: many readers are not in the US, many do not have credit cards, many will not pay in any case. When ad rates plummeted earier this year, I started accepting donations, and many people were kind enough to help out, but I do not get the impression that that's the kind of thing that would provide me a steady income, regardless of how many readers my strip might generate.
A micropayment system that could work (Score:1)
Why would they do it ? Something like this: It would be an attempt to guarantee better content for its clients. The existence of quality content means that the ISPs will have more clients, not having to fight for each others clients.
How would it work ? For instance, with every month payment you (the user) would receive 100 points (each valued at a cent). You would a toolbar or a button in your browser where you would mark the sites you prefer. After some time (a week or a month) the browser (or a program integrated with the browser) would send the distribution of points to the ISP. Every month the ISP would send a payment to the sites.
People are just plain scared (Score:1)
I'll admit to not reading all of these articles/arguments mentioned, so forgive me for repeating somebody else's comments...
The real reason why micropayments have such a tough time is because people are afraid of them. The fear may have little to do with logic, but it is there.
Think about it: don't you prefer flat rates? Aren't "all you can eat" offers popular? What about subscription offers? People like paying just once. Making a payment almost always involves some amount of nervousness. You're giving something up, and that's uncomfortable.
Micropayments mean to most people that the discomfort of paying is constant. There's no threshold, but a constant sucking; the wallet can't shut all the way. To some, it can be like Chinese water torture.
Another problem that a lot of people have with micropayments it that their finances are in a constant state of flux. How can you tell how much money is in your acount if it keeps flowing? Granted, the changes are minimal, but I like knowing how much money is in my account.
Customers don't want micropayments. They want lump sums, where the transaction of money happens only once. People do realise that they're thus paying more than might be necessary, but they feel it's a small price to pay for security and clarity. The FUD factor is just too strong at the moment, and may stay that way.
MCLOUD! (Score:1)
many, MANY micropayment companies (Score:3)
The micropayment breakthrough : payed Email (Score:1)
It works like this :
- You set up an account with an Email-Provider.
- You get an E-Mail address, such as John-Smith.50cents@payed-email.com
- Whenever somebody wants to send you an Email, he has to attach 50 cents worth of micropayments with it, otherwise it will not be forward to you by payed-email.com
- When you receive the Email, you decide whether the sender of the E-mail had a legitimate cause, and if you think so, return the 50 cents to the senders account at payed-email.com. Otherwise you keep it, or you could set up an account such as John-Smith.50cents-for-red-cross@payed-email.com, where all the money from bounced E-mails is donated to your favourite charity.
- payed email retains a small fee, such as 2%, on each such mail to cover its expenses
-Depending on how you high value your privacy, you could decide how high your fee is, and even have different accounts with varying fees for private or high priority business mail.
- Artists could then just open an account like JoeMusician.50cents-thank-you.@payed-email.com , which would never be expected to be returned.
I think this scheme would put an end to all spam worries.
The only snag, as with all micropayment issues, is security, to prevent others from spoofing your account data and password and draining the money you payed up front into your account by sending emails to themselves.