Joseph Beckmann wrote: >Micropayments cover microbills and micromeals and microcars. And all those >lovely payments add up to the oh so lovely standard of living in rural India >or, perhaps, a phonebased sweatshop in Shanghai. It's all the more >intriguing when places like the Berkman Center hesitate to put such talks on >the net because of copywrite issues which those micropayments might actually >address, if, that is, people would be willing to make them.... Ah, there may >be the rub! > >Joe Beckmann > > What's funny here is that in the Caribbean, internet micropayments are impossible for the majority because of the limits on the financial infrastructure. So while academic discussion at the Berkman center may be useful for theorists, the practitioners are severely limited.
One of the issues with micropayments that people do not seem to understand is that micropayments do not have to be direct. Most of the internet is covered in websites that generate income based on micropayments. Click-through advertising is a wonderful example, as are affiliate businesses. Copyright has little to do with it, I think, unless one is trying to use a paper-subscription business model in an electronic world - which is exactly what most of the traditional publishers are trying to do. This obviously puts them in competition with no cost resources which provide comparable quality and information. A marketing person for a traditional publisher suggested not too long ago that I take a Marketing 101 course, when I advised the company of the same. So if anyone knows where I can sign up for that, don't tell me. ;-) Where the pressure is needed, though, is on financial infrastructures to support such things. Consider this - to wire money to Bangalore, India from Panama City, Panama - two financial hubs in the world, albeit not as large as New York City - an intermediary bank was needed. Why? And to Western Union the money, there were less problems BUT the money 'could not be used for commercial purposes'. While the transfer I dealt with was not a micropayment, it certainly demonstrates the *practical* problems. Why aren't Guyanese hammocks - some of the best in the world - sold on websites from Guyana? Ahh, well, that's the same problem. It's time that academic discussion be shelved for more practical pursuits. I realize that this may leave some people unable to write about theoretical things, but where the rubber meets the road that hasn't shown any significant progress. Show me a SMB from the any country in the world able to be started and accept micropayments completely locally, and then I think the academics can then discuss something more tangible. Right now 'micropayments' seems to be a marketing word crafted by marketers and supported by academics who think the world has the capacity to do so because of the neighbourhood they live in. The Emperor has no clothes. Micropayments do not happen for the majority of the world, though I imagine that at the Berkman Internet Center they are tangible. -- Taran Rampersad Presently in: Georgetown, Guyana [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.knowprose.com http://www.easylum.net http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/Taran "Criticize by creating." — Michelangelo _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
