::scr Paying for It

[Simon Wistow]

On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 12:15:31PM +0100, Simon Batistoni said:
> All this will mean that some sites aren't popular enough to survive,
> sure. I mean, you don't buy 46 magazines a month, and you're not going
> to buy 46 website subscriptions. 

But it works the other way on the web. The shit sites stick around
because they can afford the hosting - my little home on the web can cope
with the traffic I get (and I get a surprising amount, mostly because I
used to be a fairly high hit for the word 'cunt' - now I'm only number
21 or so. I'm number 6 for 'wank stain' though) because it's not that
good and I don't get that much traffic. Certainly compared to, say,
Slashdot or Salon or Penny Arcade.

The really good sites often can't even afford to stay alive but let's
say that they do. What we're left with is the sites whihc are neither
good nor bad - those that are getting better and becoming more popular.
Suddenly they're bandwidth has gone through the roof but they don't have
enough people hooked to pay for them. So they fold before they reach
that stable plateau and we're left with free dross or expensive pay-for
stuff which is getting worse because there's no competition which isn't
backed by VC or a parent company.

Put it this way - can you imagine the IMDB getting done nowadays?
Doesn't that make you sad?


> So who gets paid? I mean, this reads more like the current system for
> reimbursing authors of books based on where and when they've been
> photocopied for use in schools, colleges etc. It's a very scattershot
> affair, which sort of works.

And it works better than nothing at all.

> But do I get a cut of the ISP tax because I have a personal homepage,
> and people come and look at my photos? If not, why not? Am I any less
> legitimate than another site?

I haven't thought about this fully but ... you register with some
central authority. Web servers (or routers or something) securely (hand
wave over the details) monitor traffic to your site. 

ISPs pay a percentage of thier takings to this central authority and
also send off total traffic through their routers and how it breaks
down, this gets tallied up and 

cash you get = total worldwide cash * 
		amount of traffic you got/total worldwide traffic
                                     
[DISCLAIMER : I know that there are serious flaws and security holes in
this but ...]




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