Pay-per-Browse Part 2
Mood:
quizzical
Now Playing: Pay per web page you view?
Topic: Technology
....
Hole #4: Downloads and StreamsSo you visit Disney's official
"Chronicles of Narnia" web site. If you knew the URL to the site (vs. having to browse the Disney site) there's a penny. No big. Then you have to browse the Narnia site looking at everything that looks interesting. But wait... the site is done in Macromedia Flash! Will the penny-per-page idea work with Flash sites? Something will have to be programmed to know when I've gone to a new "page." Then I browse to the downloads section (assuming the previous works out, ther's a couple more pennies). How does this work? Do I pay a penny for the page that is loaded and save the picture like normal, or do I get charged for the picture as well? Will being charged for the page that opens (with the picture on it) cause every other person who has pictures (or even other files) to open a new page before linking you to the file you want to download? If you are charged an amout per file, then how do you price this? By file size? By file type? A combination of both? I'm sure a compromise can be reached for this problem, but when I browse the site further, I run into another dilema. Streaming audio and video. How do I pay for this, and doesn't it seem like a cheap move to make me pay to visit a site that contains video that they are going to charge me for? Again, how does streaming media get paid for? How Stuff Works has a simple solution: pay-per-view (they must really like "pay-per-" stuff). But even with a pay-per-view setup who do I pay? Do I pay MSN to view it's files, Disney to view it's files, Quicktime to view it's files, and so on? There has to be a company who will handle the pay-per-view setup, to keep prices similar and payment streamlined. I don't want to pay ten different companies, on top of the 20 different web sites I will pay each month. I visit the internet alot, but I don't want people to know that.
Hole #5: Who will govern penny-per-page?Like I just said, I don't want to have to pay 30 different people for stuff, reguardless of how much cheaper it would be to get subscriptions to web sites now. [Which is a moo point, because right now I am not paying
anything at all and even though it would only be a penny to view one page, that
will add up over time and I always prefer free over not-free.] Oh ya, and what about that company called ISP...? To connect to the internet I need an ISP, an Internet Service Provider, which means coughing up $20 a month, plus, just to get me connected to the internet. Then, after I am connected, I have to pay for each
page I view. Sounds almost like a scam.
One way to take care of this: (as How Stuff Works points out) give the ISP $10 more and they will keep a small fee and give the rest to the sites you visited, dividing the money based on the amount of times in percent that you visited a site in a months time. Ok... I pay ISP $20 dollars now, view pages for free VS. pay ISP $30 dollars, view pages for free. Still not good, the price went up.
But who will be in charge? Who will take care of dividing the money? Who will I pay, and will I pay different sites or companies for pages versus video streams? Who will govern pricing? Will I end up paying Disney, MSN, HowStuffWorks, Yahoo!, Ebay, and Amazon separately? How Stuff Works thinks they have the solution to the penny-per-view governing problem: let the top 1,000 web sites decide. More on that later...
Hole #6: What about yen-per-page?As you may or may not know, the Chinese have a different money system than ours. So does England, Canada, Europe, Australia, Mexico, and so on. How much do they pay "per-page?" Do we assume the penny is the standard and all other countries must calculate their money to equal one cent? By the way, money flucuates enough in one country alone, but one day a page could cost you 1.25 yen-per-page and another day cost you 1.50 yen-per-page, that is if we assumed the American cent stayed constant. So how do we adjust for the difference in countries money systems?
Hole #7: Top 1,000 sites, eh?Ok, so How Stuff Works says the top 1,000 sites should govern the penny-per-page system. I guess that's fair, but how do we determine the top 1,000 sites? Do we go strictly by numbers of visitors to the site? Just because you visit a site once, does not mean you liked it, or meant to visit. So then we should go by number of return visitors. But still we have a problem. The only people who know how many visitors a web site has is the person or company who owns the server, or possibly the ISP. Should we trust them to send in correct numbers? Or what if Amazon, Ebay, MSN, Google, etc. got together and voted out Lycos, saying it just wasn't popular enough of a site to be considered one of the top 1,000. Maybe they just don't like Lycos. So Lycos gathers it's own 1,000 best sites and they create their own version of penny-per-page.
What about international web sites? Not Google-like sites with a Spanish version also, but sites that exist in Japan, are very popular in Japan, and are only useful to Japanese, but rake in mucho grande visitors and qualifies as a top 1,000 site. [By the way, who is deciding who is a top 1,000 site again?] Do you think American buisnesses want Japanese, or German, or Italian, or even British people deciding what it will cots Americans to view their web sites? Do you think the British want Americans deciding to use the American cent as the norm while thier pence flucuates according to the cent?
Yet, the biggest problem with this is the "1,000" sites. You realize that it says one thousand, right? That's one hundred (100) sites from America, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Japan, Spain, Mexico, China, and Great Britain. And the theory is that they can all get along and decide on a system of payment to use for viewing of the internet. Keep your fingers crossed.
Hole #8: The Napster GenerationI'm sure you've heard of Napster, but do you remeber the original Napster? Napster (named after the college kid who created it) was a revolutionary piece of software that allowed people to do something new to the music world: get songs for free. This was an awsome idea, but it is also theft (by American Copy Right laws). Napster lost the battles but won the war by coming out with a Record Company freindly pay-per-song version of the Napster program. However, many people were getting sued by the RIAA for having 1000's of MP3 files on their computer which they were sharing on, or had downloaded from peer-to-peer networks through programs such as iMesh, Livewire, and the ever famous KaZaA.
Through these legal battles 2 good lessons were learned: (1) the world of digital media is changing the way people get music, movies, and tv shows, and (2) if it's free, people will take it. For example, there was a girl who mentioned to MSNBC that more than half the songs she had downloaded she did not even like. She simply downloaded them because they were there. If she had to pay for them, she would not have them. And this brings up an important point. For every iTunes, there is a KaZaA; for every OS you must buy, there is a Linux that is free; for every web site that starts charging users to visit, there will be one that gives information away like it's the end of the world. They may be small in numbers, but they will be there. They will be a collective that will call themselves the Free Information Web Ring, and they will not stoop to the level of the big companies that back the sites which contain the same information but charge you for it. How long will they survive: always. There is always somebody going against the grain and they are the ones we remember; the rest just looks like smooth wood.
Hole #9: Publicity, Marketing, Profits, oh my!Let's go back to the subtly mentioned Quicktime. If you go to the Quicktime web site, you can view many movie trailers. So with the new penny-per-page system in place you will pay to see a preview of a movie Disney paid Quicktime to place on their site, so you can decide whether or not you want to see the movie. I smell another scam... I might as well just watch the commercials on TV and wait for the preview to come on. This way, if I choose not to see it I have wasted no money in my decision. But seriously, why would someone go to a web site which promotes movies or events: Publicity/marketing sites. If I really want to know what the movie is about, I could walk to the Library and read the newsaper review for free. If I am going to pay to view a web site, it must have something I cannot get that easily from any other source. Example: I cannot go to the Library and lookup the 10 most realted sites to "kite-boarding." That is something best left to Google. However, if I really want the movie times, I can look up the theater in the phone book and call the theater on my cell phone which gets free weekend calling; versus paying to look it up on the internet. I can also get the weather, news, and sports from TV, information better than that of the internet from the Library, and event times by looking up numbers in the phone book and calling the restaurant or establishment. I don't want to pay to get things I can get for free, including previews which I can already watch for on TV (even though I may pay for cable or the dish).
Little HolesThe fact that I pay for internet access right now encourages me to use the internet as much as I can. But if I was paying for internet access and on top of that had to pay for each page I viewed, I would be more careful about the number of pages I viewed. I would also choose my results from Google, or MSN more wisely than before, knowing that a link may look good but then take me on a web page viewing spree, robbing me of my pennies.
Another thing is the way pay-per-view works on cable. You may say I pay for cable and then if I watch a pay per view channel, I will pay per movie I view. Similar to the penny-per-page idea. But again, if I can find the information for free somewhere else (borrow the movie from a freind vs. paying per view) then I will go with that.
What will happen to ads? Will they dissappear, or still be used to supply free information to people who are a little slow to jump on the bandwagon? You can bet your backside that if I have to pay to view a web page
I don't want to see even a small ad. That would be the only good part about the penny-per-page system; no more ads, no more pop-ups, because the money being collected should be enough to pay for the site.
ConclusionMy English teacher always said not to state that this is my conclusion with a title such as "Conclusion" but I wanted to make sure you know I'm done. - Penny-per-view: good idea or bad idea, or bad idea with good intentions. How Stuff Works points out one semi-moo point that is almost worth mentioning. If we pay a penny per page we view (it's only a penny people), coupled with the number of hits Google gets in a month, that means that Google would profit near $1 million dollars a day or $350 million dollars a year. So if web sites are going to be making from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars per day, then I better see something that makes it worth my penny, or you can bet I'll be the first one joining the Free Information Web Ring.
Some items are linked to as a courtesy. Others I actually like; such as How Stuff Works.
Posted by Big the Fat Tiger
at 5:09 AM CST
Updated: Saturday, November 26, 2005 5:11 AM CST