---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ted Nelson <tandm@xanadu.net>
Date: Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 9:18 AM
Subject: :tco: Richard Stallman-- more on content micropurchase
To: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
Cc: Ted Nelson <tandm@xanadu.net>
Dear Richard:
I am very happy that you are turning your attention
to the issue of payment for on-line content.
And thank you very much for crediting me--
>Ted Nelson proposed it in Dream Machines in the mid-70s, too.
(-- except I believe that was my proposal from 1960,
though I didn't get a chance to publish it then.)
There's one more aspect I'd like you to
think about, and that's payment for quotation--
especially, to enable people to quote in quantity
with no negotiation and a fair system of reward.
I may have tried to tell you about this
payment and permission model the night
we walked on the beach at Hackers 1,
in 1984, when you told me about
- a recently-ended romance (I was sympathetic)
- your scheme for your own version of Unix
(I was sympathetic but incredulous)
- your proposed permission scheme,
now called copyleft (which I think I had
trouble understanding).
Anyway, the Xanadu payment model (at least
the one I advocate-- note that there have been
about a hundred people in with the Xanadu
project, with many different views), was as follows--
A proposed micropayment scheme whereby--
1. Not just a whole article or object may be purchased,
but parts of it, down to the character level.
Which Bitcoin, for instance, can now enable.
2. Anyone may quote parts IN ANY QUANTITY
by reference, provided that the downloader
purchases the quotes by dereferencing from
the original.
3. The purchaser now owns that content;
if any other document is sent for that quotes
part of that content, it is plugged in from the
already-purchased cache (OR the server
recognizes it as pre-purchased-- but that
involves tracing mechanisms, which we don't like.)
4. Nothing can be "quoted out of context"--
in the sense that the original context is
"right there", only a click away, presumably
under the same micropurchase scheme.
Naturally, there has to be a license or permission
scheme. The matching permission scheme
(called "transcopyright") is as follows:
"I, as rightsholder, allow any content of this work
to be included by reference in any new context,
provided
- that the content is obtained from my server of choice
[which may or may not impose payment,
no reason the content can't be offered for free]
- that the address of the content, including the
surrounding addresses of its original context,
remains available as part of the document."
This has several powerful advantages--
- it allows a system of commerce beneficial
to creators (as you are advocating)
- it frees everyone to quote huge chunks
without permission or reproach
- it assures the availability of the original
context, for study and understanding
- it assures the 'moral right' of the creator--
(not to the degree the French would like,
to veto any new context, but at least to
make available the real original context
without red tape or difficulty).
- it allows someone to start reading something
without having to pay for the whole thing--
since many of start reading more documents
than we finish.
Please consider the equity and generality
of this approach.
With continuing admiration and best wishes,
Ted
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
Date: Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 11:21 AM
Subject: Re: [EE CS Colloq] Fixing media's business model * 4:15PM,
Wed May 01, 2013 in Skilling Auditorium
To: Frederic Filloux <frederic@filloux.com>
Cc: drallison@gmail.com, tandm@xanadu.net
As far as anonymous micropayment system applied to a paid-per-article is
concerned, the idea dates back to the late Nineties (Nicholas Negroponte
advocated it)...
Ted Nelson proposed it in Dream Machines in the mid-70s, too.
The point is to implement it.
-- In a complete news information system, some pieces of news "subsidies"
others -- like a well-read sport article will "pay for" an expensive
reporting produced by a foreign correspondent that will catch much less
readers.
I believe you, but I don't think that relates to this issue.
If a company publishes both sports recording and foreign reporting,
it can use income from one to support the other
regardless of the business model it uses.
It is equally true that, regardless of the business model used,
we cannot assume that company WILL make any effort to support
more important but less profitable kinds of articles. I expect
that most news publishers nowadays don't care.
-- The second thing is a news organization needs to establish a recurring
relationship with its readers ; hence the subscription models which worked
quite well for the newspaper and the magazine industry
If the reader expects to find interesting articles on a site,
that alone creates a recurring relationship. I have a recurring
relationship with commondreams.org, for instance, although they
do not know which articles I am reading.
But yes, we need to have strong rules for all the information collected.
That is ineffective. No organization in the US is in a position to
have "strong rules" about the use of personal information, because the
PAT RIOT would not allow it to carry out those rules.
More generally, the only way to prevent data from being abused is not
to collect it in a form that invites abuse. (See
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/privacy/lein1.htm, for instance.)
Society has needs too -- for instance, freedom and privacy.
Especially privacy about what we read.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/law-professor-makes-case-legally-recognizing-dangers-surveillance
Our political/ethical needs trump media companies' "needs", especially
since they are not really needs (businesses will adapt to lots of
things). Subscriptions are not the solution.
--
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call
--
Theodor Holm Nelson PhD
Designer-Generalist, The Internet Archive
Distinguished Professor of Computer Science,
Chapman University
People seem to be enjoying my YouTube series,
"Computers for Cynics." Start with #0,
"The Myth of Technology".
•
--
Theodor Holm Nelson PhD
Designer-Generalist, The Internet Archive
Distinguished Professor of Computer Science,
Chapman University
People seem to be enjoying my YouTube series,
"Computers for Cynics." Start with #0,
"The Myth of Technology".
span: