[Nettime-bold] Oh, the micropayments!

[Quim Gil <qgil@metamute.com>]

Remember the micropayments? They were announced years ago as the
solution for people creating content and escaping from (or looking for
complements to) advertising.

Amazon has presented its Honor System (TM) based on volunteering
payments available on websites that have joined this system. It's easy
for the user, it's easy for the webmaster and it's easy for Amazon to
get a commission. You can also fix non volunteering payments to access
to pay-par-view content.
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/subst/fx/home.html/ref=gw_m_ln_os_new/107-5672100-6974942

As simple as Amazon's Associates program, spread in many websites that
are currently selling Amazon books. As the Associates program did, the
Honor System will possibly become popular between webmasters and will
force us to make a thought i take a position: stay apart of corporate
marketing strategies like this, join them and earn some cash or
contribute to the creation and consolidation of alternatives.

Amazonīs Honor System is based on a very simple idea (pay for the
contents only if you want) and it's implementation is not that complex
in technical terms. But its strength is based on the prestige and
accountability of Amazon as a brand and as an efficient service able to
reach huge audiences.

What can do independent media projects with regard to this? Possibly
take advantage of this kind of user consciousness campaign Amazon (and
other big dotcoms to follow) will generate, experiment with our own
systems and, once more, collaborate between us in order to find proper
solution sooner and wasting less energies.

(more about micropayments, just in case:
http://www.openp2p.com/lpt/a/515 )

Quim Gil
http://metamute.com


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