OT * cAPSLOCK: You might be interested in this as an approach to managing digital intellectual property rights in P2P environments.
Wave Systems Corporation (http://www.wave.com) has a patented system for E-commerce called EMBASSY (http://www.wave.com/technology/Embassywhitepaper.pdf). It combines programmable encryption and metering capabilities to provide a comprehensive solution for the secure distribution of digital content to users at their personal computers, set-top boxes, or other devices. It enables microtransactions at the point of consumption. Amounts can be computed down to a fraction of a penny. Content can be distributed by wire, over the air, or on physical media. Users need not be online or tethered to a network. When they find content that interests them, they can try, rent, rent-to-own, or buy.
The central principle of Wave's solution for secure e.commerce in all things digital -- regardless of delivery mechanism -- is transactional control at the point of consumption. The "meter" will reside on the client side of a network, whether that network is the packet-switched internet, or a broadcast system, or the post office delivering DVDs. And the client side scales itself.
Flexible usage models and payment schemes work on the client side. Superdistribution of self-merchandising objects is possible. Untethered use is possible. No constant pinging of farms of servers. No big, juicy, central transactional node to hack. Distributing security and transactional control on the client side spreads (and thereby reduces) the risk of fraud. A hardware solution on the client side forces a hacker virtually to destroy a platform to hit just one user's account. Physical burglary, confined to individual scale, and likely to no avail at that.
This system for secure microtransactions in digital content represents a new distribution channel marked by the economic virtue of distributed metering. A fair and efficient meter is good for everybody. Wondering whether people will use the system misses the point that users will go after the content they want. The real point is to provide a distribution mechanism that produces secure microtransactions that are so efficient that everybody benefits -- content seller, platform seller, and end user. People do not drive around looking for parking meters. They look for good parking spaces. Build fair and efficient parking meters and they will be used by people acting in their own interests. Wave's chip-based, client-side solution creates a win-win-win-win for content provider, platform builder, end user, and Wave. The value of the efficiency it brings to the distribution process can be shared among all sides of an e.commerce transaction. Content sellers can price their stuff as they wish and disseminate it as broadly as they can, secure in the knowledge that only those who choose to pay for it will be able to decrypt it.
Let me use some non-music examples.
Suppose that the Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM costs $300. Suppose that you have a genuine need to use it five times each year. If you can rent it for a reasonable cost-per-actual-use, you will. But if the only way you can access it (outside a well endowed library) is by buying it outright, you might just make do with something else. Thus, if it were WaveEnabled and available for, say, one dollar per use, you would spend $5 per year where you might not spend $300 up front. The publisher wins, Wave and its platform-partners win, and you win.
Suppose that a certain CAD/CAM application costs $300,000. Suppose that you have a genuine need to use it for perhaps 15 hours each year. If you can rent it for a reasonable cost-per-hour, you will. But if the only way you can use it is by buying it outright, you might just make do with something else. Thus, if it were WaveEnabled and available for, say, $500 per hour, you would spend $7,500 per year where you might not spend $300,000 for all the years to come. The publisher wins, Wave and its platform-partners win, and you win.
Some people question the commercialization of digital content. The Wave system should not raise frightening specters of nothing's remaining "free" on the net. The ordinary forces of economic incentive and disincentive -- supply, demand, competition, innovation, aesthetics, regulation-or-not, taxation-or-not, etc. -- will operate to make digital things flow according to their economic value just as material things do. The Wave system will make digital content that is worth paying for flow more efficiently than it has in the past. Things will be more readily available, on more flexible terms, with better protection of intellectual property rights. The economies induced by Wave's new distribution channel will yield savings that can be shared by all players in e.commerce transactions.
Best wishes,
John
parlex.tripod.com |
