<nettime> 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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