Thanks for that link! Very useful substantive analysis
How does it apply in our case, by the way? In our case we take the payment decisions out of the hands of users and into the hands of community administrators.
How does it apply in our case, by the way? In our case we take the payment decisions out of the hands of users and into the hands of community administrators.
In a tax-supported scheme, the tax collector serves that role. In a ticketbox, it's the literal gate or door itself. For advertising-supported media, it's the publisher or broadcaster, gatekeeping in a three-way branch between advertisers, creators/talent, and audience (similarly, cable providers). In donor-based broadcasting, the broadcaster intermediates between individual donors and content producers.
As an alternative to a governmental progressive-tax-based system, a natural gateway exists at the ISP level, for which a sufficiently effective gating, revenue-collection, and content-payment system might work. I'd outlined that about three months ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26893033
There are access-based royalty systems such as ASCAP / Harry Fox, though my sense is that for more substantial text-based content (similarly: data-backed reporting, deep analysis, and probably a fair bit of serial media of the video or podcast variety), linking payment to publishers or studios, who can support a staff of creators (writers, artists, actors, directors, support personnel) would be preferred to the music/broadcast model.
Your problem is you're trying to dam a flat plain. You need to find a suitable dam site, and it's probably the ISPs. On the other hand, they're going to need systems for that service: content negotiation, payment collection, royalties or subscription payments, etc.
The distinction my model has from a traditional micropayments or subscription model is that the provision level is universal. A service subscriber pays in a flat fee, they get an all-you-can-eat plan. The payment differentiation is between the aggregator and the creating studio (somewhat similar to current cable subscriptions).
Note that total OECD content spend is roughly $100/capita. Advertising runs many times that, at ~%$600 billion for the 1 billion inhabitants of the OECD, about $600/capita. "Free online content" costs the average household of 4 over $2,400 a year.