Bernie Cosell wrote:
> In addition to things like FTP archives, online software/patch
> distribution (and IRS tax forms :o)). YMMV as to whether web pages with
> 1 meg of graphics or streaming video and audio are good things or not,
> but they probably would hardly exist if the sender had to pay.
For most webpages, FTP sites and mailing lists, I think the receiver would
have to pay the transaction fee, but that could vary as well. I would
think most sales.com sites would be more than willing to pay or split
the access cost to get the business. And if I can buy from foo.com
and they pay the web access charge, or from bar.com and I pay it, and
the merchandise price is essentially the same, who do I buy it from?
Next question?
This might put streaming audio and video at risk, but they represent
rather high bandwidth-per-user use of the Internet anyway. And I should
add that I'm a _user_ of streaming audio, to do things like listen to
sportcasts and classical music, I'm just not sure what pricing model makes
sense for these, or what transaction fees would work. But I'm willing
to pay $12.95 to watch a PPV football game on TV, would I pay $2.00 to
listen to it on realaudio? Probably. And would I pay that same $12.95
to get a streaming video feed of it when my %$#@ cable company chooses not
to carry that game? You betcha! But I think the satellite folks will lock
up the video/audio segments of the streaming feed marketplace in the long
run, so it may become a nonissue through the evolution of technology.
> This is the obvious solution and the only problem with it is that there's
> no real infrastructure for it [and everyone will jump up and down and
> complain that "the net has always been free"].
Of course the net has NEVER been free, it's just that for most users the
big bills go to somebody else. But I remember widespread predictions of
the death of the net when the NSF funding dried up, and that didn't happen.
> Folks running
> mailing lists would have to handle billing and cost-allocation in a means
> very much like the way in-print publishers do.
Not if a true transaction based transfer of payments system could be set up,
like long distance phones. If I run a website or an information repository
of some kind I get a fraction of a cent per hit from the user, then the
business of PROVIDING information starts to pay for itself, even for some
mailing list owners, most of whom aren't in it for the money.
The Chicago Tribune is apparently in the process of changing its website,
articles more than a day old will cost $1.95. At that price, they'll never
get any money from me. But even at a couple of cents per article, I'd be
more than willing to continue to browse through their archives daily.
> bandwidth limits [else some hacker could run you broke by just running a
> bot to access your web page ten million times].
On a recipient-based payment site, let 'em, and when the bill arrives by
Brinks truck at the end of the month, that's the end of that! On a
sender-based site, some kind of limits would need to be in place, but I
believe that web server techology has already addressed this issue somewhat.
And since the END USER needs to be identified somehow as part of the billing
process, rather than just the IP address, it should be possible to
discriminate between a horde of AOL users and a hacker.
There are privacy issues to deal with, as well as identification,
authentication, and security issues, but I think they are all resolveable.
Most are issues that people are trying to solve anyhow, it just requires
enough people with a vision of what to do with all the pieces and enough
people who have influence to make this the next generation of the net.
And there WILL be a next generation, for a variety of reasons, and a
generation after that, and in one of these transformations maybe we
can make this part of the model. I'm patient, the net isn't going away,
nor are the problems this attempts to address.
> there'd be a lot of changes in the various details [e.g., unrestricted
> mailing lists would probably be a thing of the past: no matter who pays
> for it, when someone actually has to *pay* if some bozo sends a megabyte
> attachment to a list that goes to a thousand people, folks will want to
> have some kind of control]
Somebody has to pay now, it just isn't always me or my subscribers. And
yes it will require beefing up mailing list software, but that's not a bad
idea even under the current pricing model. (And that's a different thread.)
> relatively easy to do: every router and gateway already keeps enough
> statistics to be able to generate bills for the next person 'downstream'.
> Scary/intriguing thoughts, but it ain't gonna happen, more's-the-pity,
> and so we're still left with the mess...
I'm not so sure it's an impossible task, but it is going to be perceived
as an unreasonable one, especially at first. But as someone once said,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
I'm kind of a broad concept guy on this, I have little if any of the technical
knowledge or skills to make it actually work, and am probably too old to
master all the internal details, too.
But I think I see the possibilities here, and will even be in a position in
a few weeks to devote some time to structuring the concept to the point
where the real technicians can start to think about it.
And it's interesting, the last time I floated this idea on this list I was
roundly shot down by most everyone else. Either they've given up on me as
being a crackpot or just maybe the idea isn't so stupid sounding this time
around?
Norbert Bollow was willing to set up a forum for discussing this idea
last summer, but I was tied up on some other projects and unable to do
it justice at the time. It sounds like we've got two or three other
people willing to be involved, maybe we can start to get something going
this time, at least to the point where we can attract the interest of
people who do have enough influence or see the commercial potential here.
(The person who figures out how to make it work and lands the contract to
run the transfer of payments clearing center could be the next Bill Gates.)
A question for those of you who are academics or conference attendees on
a regular basis. Is there some technical or academic conference where this
might be a viable session topic?
--
Mike Nolan
