[Melbourne-pm] Meeting Reminder (TONIGHT): Wednesday the 13th of February, 2013

[Sam Watkins]

Michael G. Schwern wrote:
> PayTron

Good name.

> an API to answer the question "tell me about this file (or
> other digital thing)" which includes "how do I pay for this digital
> thing".

Sounds interesting.

Would that include supporting free software authors?  I think it useful
to provide a "pay once, support many" feature, so e.g. I could donate
$100 to be spread somehow among the many project I'd like to support.

My take on how to do that, is just choose a random project from my list
and give the whole $100 to that project, that prevents people getting
annoyingly small donations, and tends to be fair on average when there
is a large number of supporters.

> The meeting turned into a huge discussion about how one might make it
> distributed.  That would be neat and protect it against the inevitable
> subpoena from the MPAA/RIAA/USgovt ("hey look, its a database of
> piracy!").  I'm interested in the shortest technical, social, economic
> and legal path to getting it off the ground, which means side-stepping
> interesting but difficult problems like how we make it distributed.

If such a subpoena is undesirable / potentially disasterous for the service,
then it would be important to deal with that (perhaps by being distributed
right from the beginning).  I would not use a service, if as a result I
might get sued by the MPAA or whatever.  But using the would not necessarily
imply that you pirated the content in the first place...

I don't think you'd be able to give money to publishers, only to the
original artists who are willing to accept it.  I don't think publishers
will accept small donations in lieu of normal payment, but most artists
will say "thanks for the support".

I think you should not take a cut.  Just allow people to support your
service if they choose, as they would support any other creative content.
Seeing as every user is thinking "thanks for this service", you'd be likely
to get plenty of support - even too much - that way.


Sam