Few notes: On 'micropayments'
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| hkwint Jul 02, 2010 9:02 PM EDT |
First of all, most of the time when 'stealing' is involved, property is involved.
Normally you have to define property before discussing stealing, but I won't touch that topic as it's been chewed out too many times. One of the most important reasons it's difficult to directly award the creator, IMHO is micropayments. If I had to pay €0,20 to read a good article, I'd be willing to do so. If I had to pay the same amount for a song, I might do so either. And I'm not the only one, I bet more people who currently don't buy that many content are willing to pay these amounts. Even if voluntarily. But it should be easy, and most of it should go to the artists, and not to the banks. Credit cards are the most insecure way of paying, apart from that you're paying with wealth you haven't earned yet (the current crisis clearly shows this is wrong), and it's more expensive than paying with debit cards. Moreover, not everyone is entitled to have a credit card (at least not in this country). So, given the costs and disadvantages, credit cards can't serve as micro-payments. GoogleCheckout relies on a creditcard, and so does the AppStore AFAIK. Credit companies - moreover - are exactly the parasites mentioned, the ones we should get rid of. We have a nice system in this country - involving debit cards - which is quite cheap, and you only pay for the bare product, and no fancy stupid insurances like with the creditcards (why the hell would I want to insure a song I buy? Is it going to be stolen?). But it's only in NL (and in Austria IIUC) currently. Just like the newest creditcards, it uses two-factor authentication, so it's pretty safe. Then there's PayPayl, but I'm not to sure about that one either, since it relies on a password only IIRC. It doesn't have the same 'safe' feeling as two-factor authentication using a token device. And it's not that cheap either, I understood. It's also pretty prone to phishing / social engineering. So it's no real alternative. So that's why I don't pay for content currently: Most of what I want is on Youtube for free, or already on my PC. Apart from that, there's no convenient way to pay €0,20 or so. Something like Magnatunes - with a subscription - might be a nice idea. But only if I consume a certain amount of content per month, not if I only download one song per month. There are a multitude of websites providing paid content, and it would be pretty clumsy to have to arrange a subscription for all of them. A "pay €0,20 to view this article" button would be more convenient for people like me, who might only read one WSJ / NYT / The Times / Science article per two months or so. Unless there's a cheap way for micropayments, parasites like the creditcard companies will keep existing, and I'll still wonder how to reward artists. Currently, everytime I see a 'you have to pay $1 with a creditcard to read this article' message, they lost me as a customer. |
| klhrevolution Jul 02, 2010 11:42 PM EDT |
I have to agree with the above. A subscription is a nice way to go not that I've used netflix but they seem to have a good model. Concerning paying for an article.. I've subscribed to snail mail newsletters because I enjoyed the content from certain folks as well as magazines so it really boils down to which media your attempting to subscribe to on that. As for music, magnatune, jamendo or even u-one I'd like to subscribe to and receive in return a fair amount of musis depending on the tier I choose. I think jamendo already offers that but I'd have to visit to see. end rant.. Choice out there but of course there are gonna be some who don't play by the rules. Oh well.. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 03, 2010 3:13 PM EDT |
Some of you are going to loath this suggestion, but how about a tax or a mandatory subscription? I highly recommend this article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/23/orlowski_interactive... Andrew Orlowski calculated that with a "tax" of $27 per household per year, everybody can download whatever they want and the music business would make more money that they have ever made. This is, after all, what people have always done when new media threatened the old. We set up some independant body. We make a big pool of money and we find some way of dividing it. We did that with radio licenses, TV licenses, air play for bars and discos, mandatory performance licenses, etcetera. |
| gus3 Jul 03, 2010 3:24 PM EDT |
That couldn't fly in the USA. Poll taxes are forbidden by our Constitution. |
| hkwint Jul 03, 2010 3:44 PM EDT |
Sander: I'm all for it. Someone calculated if we all pay $5 a month to RIAA/MPAA & co, they still earn the same, though I'm not sure where the calculation is. Problem however is how you share the income between the creators. |
| Bob_Robertson Jul 03, 2010 4:21 PM EDT |
> Problem however is how you share the income between the creators. Just let creators charge what they want. People who want it will pay for it, those who don't, won't. Edit: Please let me elaborate. I've seen an argument that those who copy consider themselves "entitled" to the work of others. Having a tax to pay the RIAA is justified by considering the RIAA "entitled" to the money of others. If one is wrong, why is the other right? |
| klhrevolution Jul 03, 2010 11:38 PM EDT |
No! No! & H%^& NO! |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 04, 2010 4:25 AM EDT |
@Gus: I just read up about Poll Taxes on Wikipedia. I don't see how this is a poll tax. It's more like the levy on blank CDs and DVDs that currently exists. @Bob: Levy pools should be managed and distributed by an independent body. The RIAA isn't independent so it wouldn't manage it. It would receive a portion of the pool though, as they are the rights holder for some music. |
| azerthoth Jul 04, 2010 5:17 AM EDT |
Simple solution, make copyright non-transferable, turns RIAA into a clearing house and musicians retain control over their distributors. |
| bigg Jul 04, 2010 5:53 AM EDT |
> Someone calculated if we all pay $5 a month to RIAA/MPAA & co, they still earn the same, though I'm not sure where the calculation is. Considering that I currently spend $0 per month, I don't have much desire to move to that system. A bigger problem is that we'd hear about starving musicians and all that jazz, and all of a sudden it would be $100 a month. |
| hkwint Jul 04, 2010 6:06 AM EDT |
Quoting:Considering that I currently spend $0 per month, I don't have much desire to move to that system. True. That's why you might have different description models. The ones who download 100kB per month don't have much desire for a system which offers a 20Mbit connection either. So I think that problem can be solved. |
| feistyfeline Jul 04, 2010 9:03 AM EDT |
Personally, with this recession in full swing deceptive recovery and all, I am guilty of listening to radio. I know for a fact that the artists I listen to get nothing! I think we have an economic reorganization happening here. Technology stimulated the economy as service and industry became more efficient, and now we are seeing the same happening for music. There are a number of viable solutions out there. I personally do not think the tax model is going to work. You have to account for greedy people, the birth of new talent, and that "landlords" don't like rent control. Every solution I can think of means some middleman or other needs to retire and another more efficient one replace him/her. I see many great ideas here. What we have today is revolution, with misdirected anger and punishment. Perhaps economics of ownership is not the thing, because we want content on all our devices. Maybe tiered subscription service is the deal. I'd say HULU and company are onto something, hopefully it doesn't turn into the cellphone company charging mess. You can have a balance that allows you to have golden oldies on tap as you have today's hits, and achieve worldwide releases at the click of a button without coordinating expensive logistics. We are not without solutions. |
| gus3 Jul 04, 2010 11:00 AM EDT |
@Sander: His suggestion was a flat fee "per household", not "per blank CD spindle". In the USA, taxes must be based on money valuation (salary/wages, possession, or expenditure). "Per household" becomes a "per person" tax, with single-occupant dwellings having the highest rate per person. However, I over-spoke: Poll taxes are prohibited from being a precondition for voting. (Amendment XXIV) |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 04, 2010 4:08 PM EDT |
Quoting:I personally do not think the tax model is going to work.[...] What we have today is revolution Radio was a revolution, so was TV, so was the tape recorder. I'm not saying that the levy system is perfect. But a system doesn't need to be perfect, as long as it's "good enough". Quoting:"Per household" becomes a "per person" tax, with single-occupant dwellings having the highest rate per person. You could do it "per connection", with higher speeds of broadband being levvied more. After all, how much music and movies are you going to download when you only have 256Kb down? As above, "good enough" will suffice. It doesn't need to be a perfect system. Perfect systems just fail anyway, they get waaay too complicated (micro-payments, I'm looking at you). |
| gus3 Jul 04, 2010 5:40 PM EDT |
"Per connection" translates into a sales tax, not a poll tax, so that would work. |
| hkwint Jul 04, 2010 6:45 PM EDT |
Radio is interesting, the part which I don't get: Based on the assumption radio stations pay artists for airplay I'm not all too sure about that; Once I calculated how much some radio station earns. Than I tried to calculate how much of it goes to the right holders (half?), and how many people listen. In such a way, one could calculate what it costs per person to listen to that song. Only several cents, it seemed. However, a song at iTunes is about a whole Euro. The interesting thing about the radio song is, the more times I hear it, the more the artists end up receiving. With iTunes and traditional albums, not so much. |
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