RE: free information

From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Sat Jan 18 2003 - 15:51:11 MST


On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Damien Broderick wrote:

> While it's true that I don't want people to steal my livelihood, I'm

Only fair.

> very eager to see them get hold of my writing cheaply while still

The distribution itself is virtually cost free; the cheapness comes in by
introducing fine-grained digicash. Whoever controls current monetary flow
sees clearly little incentive to offer true digicash infrastructure,
despite the fact that the hardware (smart cards aka usb dongles) is cheap,
and the crypto protocols are all known.

Once we can transfer a cyberbuck for a fee of a couple of cents in
realtime things will start rolling.

> passing along a modest, reasonable payment to me and anyone essential
> to the publication loop. Once we have digital paper and easy

Who is essential in the publication loop, I wonder? A good author could
exist solely by word of mouth, or by 'whoever bought this also bought
these" lists. If you need an editor or a sales agency you could pay them
in front, or make them get a cut on the issues sold (probably, more
rewarding).

> downloads, all this will be made much easier--except that few people
> will be inclined to pay the producers of the information or
> entertainment they can have for nothing by stealing it.

Either talk to the DRM PR people, or to the digicash people. DRM is not
going to fly, so unless everybody in content production is going to team
up and push forwards with digicash infrastructure they're going to suffer
pirate losses.



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