For those who participate in this discussion following a post here on aov about the death of the free web, you may find this comic interesting as it deals with the topic of file-sharing and micropayments.
The comic, by Scott McCloud is interesting for what it says and for how it says it. Check out I Can’t Stop Thinking #6.
oh god, do we ever need a good quality micropayment system…my mind is going nuts with the possibilities. this sort of system really does have endless apllications, not to mention providing flexible creative control to artists – the people that deserve it in the first place.
my question is: what’s it going to take to get this off the ground?
The comic, by Scott McCloud is interesting for what it says and for how it says it.
As opposed to written things which are interesting for other reasons. Like maybe you spilled some ketchup on it or something.
Sorry.
The challange is to make people want to do it. All people see is spending money, they don’t realize how much good it will do them in the long run.
The reason Napster was so popular was because it was free and easy. Micropayments will never be that huge, especially if they do it by credit card.
Maybe it could show up on your internet bill, much like a long distance bill. Who knows? I just can’t see it actually working.
And speaking of free music, WinMX is the program I’ve been using for the last two days, and I do believe it is a better program than Napster ever was. All types of media and a huge database. Check it out, it’s worth it.
here’s what i think would be neat: a file sharing client that searches on a central server and charges micropayments for each download. all of the user’s billing information could be stored on that server, or a third party micropayment business. searching would be free, but each time a download was initiated the user would be charged and the payment would be made to the artist.
i think the biggest question of micropayments is whether they will be handled directly by credit card companies and banks, micropayment companies or a combination of both. perhaps a better question is, who will do it best?
if you want a good file sharing client, try kazaa. you can even get full length movies.
yes, i see the irony in suggesting ways to get free media in a comment on a post about micropayments. perhaps this highlights the need for a viable micropayment system.
Hey will. Wouldn’t micropayments render much file sharing useless? Why search napster for Rage Against the Machine and paste together an album from three different users when you can get it straight from the band?
steven, the first use of micropayments would be directly to the artist, but that’s not the only way they could be used. yes, micropayments could cut out the file sharing middleman, but they could also be used together…
file sharing provides a flexibility that could be extremely useful to many users. perhaps a user wants to download only one song by an artist, multiple versions of the same song by different artists or simply songs of a certian genre. i can’t count how many times i have searched for something on napster and ended up downloading something related by artist, genre or title that i was glad i found. (for music lovers: try searching for “african drumming”) one advantage is that the same people that would need to jump on the micropayment bandwagon to make it a success are already familiar with napster.
food for thought. what do you think?
Will, there was a piece of really early P2P software, where the idea was you set a price for a file on your computer, and anyone who wanted it transfered that amount of credit to you. Then you used this credit to get other things. None of this was real money, but it created an intresting dynamic for trading files.
I don’t remember what it was called, and i never could get it to run, but it was an intresting idea.
Will, I agree that file sharing can be a cool way to find stuff you weren’t looking for. However, being able to see what other users are listening to doesn’t required the file sharing model.
The software isaac brought up is interesting, but not too useful. Aren’t you just creating an artificial barrier to file sharing? I guess it would prevent freeloaders, like public FTP sites with upload/download ratio requirements.
I think the software developers were coming from the standpoint of an ideal world, where you happen to have a essay you wrote on hambergurs on your drive, and someone out there is bound to be intrested.
The idea is, the boundaries are there, but any who shares their intellectual property will pretty easily by-pass them. Plus, you get to set the cost for your own information.
Its almost communist!! But like communism, it relies on the idea of an ideal work.
In case anyone cares, i finally found the poeple who i was talking about.
http://www.mojonation.net/
Again, intresting idea, but i never could get it to work.