Stephan Vladimir Bugaj writes:
Setting a micropayment enabled web browser to automatically grant approval to payments of $.02/action may seem reasonable, but it depends on what the vendor has decided constitues an action. If somone charged $.02/nanosecond for retreiving shareware from an FTP library, and my browser was set to accept this as reasonable based on the fact that it was $.02/action,
You could also set a per-site limit, or a per-minute limit.
It took the industry long enough to get PCs and workstations to the speeds they're at today so people could do their own work on their own machines to go back to waiting in a queue for time on a centralized system so you can have the honor of paying someone a lot of money to run your job. As a programmer, I can see how I could make a fat chunk of change by bilking people through metered software usage, but as a software consumer it seems like a rotten idea.
Oh? Would you rather pay $5,000 for some vertical piece of software, or license its use on a $1/hour basis? Even if you used it every hour of every workday, that's only $2,000.
Looking at micropayments from the (economically) conservative element viewpoint within certain industries make them seem a lot less appealing, as well. Take television. If people had to purchase every TV show they watched, there would be a lot less TV production going on because there wouldn't be as much random TV watching.
Um, you *do* purchase every TV show. On the fly. 30 seconds at a time. Of course, some cheap people try to welsh [ see my hostname before taking offense ] on their payments by Going To The Bathroom during their payment periods! Disgraceful, just disgraceful.
Both micropayments and data mining require that the user give the vendor a level of trust which most vendors are not willing to repay with similar trust and customer satisfaction. Customer-users are expected to give vendors greater access to and control over their money and personal information, yet at best they can expect the same poor customer service and bureaucratic attitudes encountered when dealing with traditional transaction processing companies and at worst can expect to be swindled out of piles of money and/or have their privacy violated as a matter of course.
Hmmm... Sounds like a job for ... Super-Shameer! Profit-making super hacker privacy protector! His mail flies through remailers with the greatest of ease, he's invincible to flames, and and he is cute, too! -russ <nelson@crynwr.com> http://www.crynwr.com/~nelson Crynwr Software | Crynwr Software sells packet driver support | PGP ok 11 Grant St. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | It's no mistake to err on Potsdam, NY 13676 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | the side of freedom.