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Amazon Starts 'Tip Jar' System 130

Posted by michael from the spare-some-change-for-a-hungry-web-site dept.
BeFiend writes "Looks like Amazon is trying to develop a "micro-payment" tip jar system for Web sites. They're calling it the Amazon Honor System and looks like you can give as little as a buck, while that's not really a micropayment it is a step in the right direction. I've only seen a couple of sites BBspot and SatireWire with the pay box already, but I'm sure we'll see them popping up all over the place with banner ad revenue plummeting." Amazon says says they don't track you on sites that use this system, even though since the payment box is served from their servers, they easily could (indeed, Amazon's regular No-Privacy Policy directly conflicts with the above page - which one controls?). And Amazon takes a hefty chunk of each payment in processing fees. But perhaps this model could be useful for sites which need cash but don't want to serve advertising.
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Amazon Starts "Tip Jar" System More

Amazon Starts "Tip Jar" System

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  • Re:charities, donations (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Amazon has set up an interesting paralell

    PPPP&nbsp&nbsp&nbspA&nbsp&nbsp&nbspRRRR&nbsp &nbsp&nbspA&nbsp&nbsp&nbspL&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspL &nbsp&nbsp&nbspEEEEE&nbspL
    P&nbsp&nbspPP&nbspA&nbspA&nbsp&nbspR &nbspRR&nbsp&nbspA&nbspA&nbsp&nbspL &nbsp&nbsp&nbspL&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspE &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspL
    PPPP&nbspA&nbsp&nbsp&nbspA&nbspRRRR &nbspA&nbsp&nbsp&nbspA&nbspL&nbsp&nbsp &nbspL&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspEEEE&nbsp&nbspL
    P&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspAAAAA&nbspR R&nbsp&nbsp&nbspAAAAA&nbspL&nbsp&nbsp &nbspL&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspE&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp &nbspL
    P&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspA&nbsp&nbsp&nbspA R&nbsp&nbspR&nbsp&nbspA&nbsp&nbsp&nbspA L&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspL&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp E&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspL
    P&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspA&nbsp&nbsp&nbspA R&nbsp&nbsp&nbspR&nbspA&nbsp&nbsp A&nbspLLLL&nbspLLLL&nbspEEEEE&nbspLLLL


    Sorry to be a bastard, but that really bugs me. I guess you could just call me the spelling nazi.

  • If this thing takes off, I'm going to have to delete my amazon cookies. The last thing I want is to have my attention drawn to advertisements.

    Can I prevent payboxes from greeting me by name?
    Yes. You can determine whether the Amazon Honor System payboxes greet you by name. If you would like to turn off name recognition, please visit Your Account at Amazon.com. Under "Your Account Settings," click on "Updating your communication preferences." Then, simply click the appropriate check box.

  • I think it would be better for them to send a check in to the people, despite the convience of this type system. That way you are sure all the money goes to the group it belongs to.

    The people you're donating to have agreed to pay Amazon a percentage in exchange for the service. It would be irrational and self-destructive for Amazon to provide this service (which costs them) for free.

    And I wouldn't trust their privacy policy as far as I could throw it.

    Why? The reason Amazon can offer this service is because they have a large user database to offer to their business partners. If the database is stolen, their partners have no more reason to deal with Amazon. The donations are just as safe as buying products on Amazon, and I've not known anyone who had problems with them.

    It would be rather easy to slip a web bug into an image for the "donation system."

    If someone is too stupid to check the URL of a web site before typing in his credit card information, he's probably too stupid to have money to steal.

  • You pointed out something we should take care about: Privacy.

    Surely, every electronical transaction is logged, and might be analyzed to get user profiles, and so we need good laws to give us back our rights to privacy and to have something to fight missuse of the logged data. But I don't think we shouldn't use the technology available, because that means SURRENDERING to those that might missuse the technology.

    Current law (which was made in the past) can't foresee the problems that arise with new technology becoming available, and if we don't use the technology, there will never be the need to change the law, and so we are stuck in a doom circle.

  • nice work. really enjoyed that with people loitering around my desk.

    i don't read slashdot so as to view those kinds of links.

    i wait until my own time for that :)
  • Actually you can. You just need to know how to do it. You normally can not take funds without some sort of trouble but putting in funds is very simple.

    I have done it several times. Usually through a wire. I can go to my bank and ask the to wire funds to acount "x". In about 4 hours they have their money.

    However, if you do this I strongly suggest that you have an account just for wires. Any instance of fraud and someone could possibly wipe out your entire account.
  • If the use of your nickname is annoying, Amazon tells you how to turn it off here [amazon.com].
  • And the #1 girl on the site [bangable.com] is a pic posted by a guy, as are most of the other pictures. They are taken from softcore porn and or famous model glamour shots.

    Oh dear. :>

    --
  • Heck, pictures don't even show up with a recent mozilla build. I'm certainly going to pay for that kind of quality.

    --
  • Amazon does track you, and says so [amazon.com].

    What it doesn't do, it says [amazon.com], is tell the web site you're paying who you are, or remember what sites you paid (or considered paying).
  • first: paypal is not yet universal
    second: people won't pay for something unless a. they can't get it free (or it has some advantage over similar things they can get free) or b. it tickles their charitable side -- something tells me that 'rate the chick' isn't charitable -- 'feed starving children' is charitable, 'save acres of rainforest', 'give us money so that we can hold a dance for queer youth' -- not 'rate the chicks'

  • Amazon does have two things going for them a wide assortment of books and book reviews. Whenever I need to check out a new book I look at the book reviews. The reviews are generally quite useful and help me to make more independent choices. They also include info on related book; of course i then look for the cheapest price but i always start at amazon.
  • So, instead of a banner ad a site owner places a small box (quite similar in appearance to a banner) that effectivly links to amazon.com and serves as a direct revenue machine for the same. Thank the lord for visionaries! Patent it!
  • > Why do you call yourself shoe boy? Because you wear shoes?

    Maybe he has a super power that uses shoes. Like he can charge his shoes with psychic energy and then kick you.

  • Maybe it is counting the pictures. 99.9% of the hits to the site are to the index page since everything goes back to it, it seems to be somewhere near 30k, + whatever the size of the picture is that gets downloaded.

    Anyway, doesn't matter. If anyone has any real success with Amazon or Paypal donations, I'd love to hear it. I've had other webmasters contact me and see how I was doing, and I was sad to report back that it was a dismal failure. Good luck.
  • Yeah and I stopped using McDonald's because they're popular, too. Now get off your elitist high horse.

    -Chris
    ...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
  • Why don't sites just use PayPal? They charge a whole lot less!
  • I wouldn't know what Amazon is up to because I'm still boycotting them!
  • Even if you don't donate, Amazon will know you were viewing a page with the donation button; as explained by jakob nielsen [useit.com], they use your amazon.com cookie (if you have one) to embed your name in the graphic. Even if you're not registered with the site asking for the donation, your amazon.com cookie gives you away.

    However, if you are using the Internet Explorer 5.5 Advanced Security Beta (formerly available at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/download/previ ew/privacy.htm [microsoft.com] but now seemingly removed) you can disable 3rd party cookies and block amazon.com from identifying you (unless you decide to donate), of course.

  • They are killing off small, independently-owned specialty bookshops.

    No, unfortunately that happened several years ago when Barnes & Noble opened a few stores in town. Along with the other mall bookstores that where already there, they wiped them out.

    That seemed to be the final straw for my favorite little bookstores. Sad, I used to love to shop in them.

    It seems strange, but those tiny stores seemed to have the same selection as the massive two story B&N... just about.

  • Yeah, but they could require a small membership to read anything +4 or above! ;)

  • I'd happily donate to slashdot on occasion, it's one of the three websites I make a point to read every day.

    But I sure would not pay $2.00 per week, or any required payment for any web site. There's just too much free information out there, and I'm certain that it will stay that way. Too many people enjoy giving to the community (yes, I run several free web sites myself), and when they get tired, others will be glad to take over.

    I tried this for BBSspot, and it was quite easy, I'll be inclined to do so at any web site I like, but probably only a few times a year.
    --
    Jim Buchanan
  • > I for one am heading over to Amazon right now to
    > check this out

    Check out their affiliate program too. It's the *only* thing I've made money worth speaking about on my several web sites recently. (No I won't list them here! (you can find one really easily, it's the personal one)

    I'm thinking of dumping the other ads, they don't really do squat anymore. My sites do seem to attract people who like to buy books, and someone bought a VCR last week!

    Their 1 Click patent does bother me though, but I'm not quite as against such things as the average slashdot reader, I only feel that they went a bit too far with that one. :-)


    --
    Jim Buchanan
  • > Even if you don't donate, Amazon will know you
    > were viewing a page with the donation button

    Despite their mediocre privacy policy, I tend to believe their statement that they discard these logs. I would not be surprised if they changed that policy in the future though. They have a record. :-)

    I've got very mixed feelings about this sort of thing. One part ofme agrees with the popular attitude that this is a serious privacy concern, and I don't want greedy corporations collecting files on me.

    OTOH, when I first gt on the 'net back in the '80s my "Mentor" explained to me that once you left the local network, anything you did/wrote was at least possible to observe. Remember, this was back in the '80s!

    I took that to heart, and have always assumed this was possible, so now that we know it's happening, I'm not too surprised. I'm not happy, but it has not changed my notions of the 'net at all.

    BTW, I donated $2.00 to BBSspot, I really like their site. I discovered it a few weeks ago and was laughing for hours. I intend to do this at any site I like a lot which uses this "tip jar".

    --
    Jim Buchanan
  • The US is completely backwards in its banking practices. The scenario you describe cost (on average) $10 to $15, and is known as an electronic transfer of funds. We also get slammed with charges from banks to use atms. That part makes no sense to me. They're saving money by not having to pay tellers to serve you, but they're going to charge for atms, as it costs them (on average) $7000/yr to operate? That's still a lot less than a 24 hour teller!


    Sorry, had to explain part of the 25 pound fee.

  • I think we should resist "micropayment" by any means necessary. Why? Simple. No such system will be put in place nowadays without massive government involvement, monitoring, and tracking, to say nothing about credit bureau involvement.

    Like credit cards?

  • I'm paying out a fair bit of money having a site hosted, which is indexing GNU [gnu.org] software - for Windows.

    I'd like to recoup some money - but I think that visitors would be turned off by even seeing a "donate-money" button.

    So while I would like the cash I'm not gonna do this because:

    • I'm cynical that people would donate.
    • I'd hate to lose traffic - by having people go elsewhere.

    Steve
    ---
  • Opera 5.0 [opera.com] (which is now free, kinda) can keep you well informed about 3rd party cookies too. And at ~2megs, its a lot quicker to download than IE5.5...
  • Not likely, unless you went to a 'pay-to-play/post' system. Reading could still be free.
    There'd always be the idiot with nothing but time and money on his/her hands. They'd pay the $ just to troll for the heck of it. I don't think you'll get rid of that social class/species/??? anytime soon.
  • I can't get excited about a company who will change their privacy policy after-the-fact to create a revenue stream at my expense.

    They didn't ask me for my buy-in, and now Amazon is selling my name and purchasing habits to anyone in their third-party scheme. I now get spam from Amazon's corporate buddy list.

    I have no interest in Amazon or their latest attempt to become profitable.

    As for the concept of tip jars, I'd like to see more companies (or web operators) put limits on how their information is used and make it binding on THEM to let you know *ahead of time* how that information will be used - in short, an opt-in program that has some force of law.

  • The scary part is when you see people lined up outside the bank in order to pay to use the ATM, while there are idle tellers inside.

    You've seen idle tellers? OMG! What did they look like? Where can I see one?

  • Thats 'cause your site is just like every other 'rate my...' site out there, sure its got some extra features but its not very unique. I have had a similar idea for a variation on the same old theme that I might put up in a couple of weeks, but unlike you I don't expect to make a million of it. These sites are first and foremost for fun, not profit.

    www.dirtyeye.com

  • free? (Score:1)

    by radish ( 98371 )

    How ironic, the code may be free (speech) but the site sure ain't free (beer)!

    Who would be the first to start freeslash, of slashfree, or slashzero, or ? I have a feeling that as well as reducing the troll/junk level, it would kill off the site totally. This is a (largely) tech savvy crowd - why would they hang around if there were alternatives?


  • Why on earth would someone from a mortgage company care that I had spent $1 on pr0n?? They could stand by the newstand and watch me buy penthouse for (shock horror) $5. What a waste!! I'm obviously not responsible enough to buy a home. Which is annoying, cos I need a new place with enough space to hold all those darn magazines...

    Privacy is great, I am all for it, and I'd be against a system which erodes it without the user being well aware. But this seems like a very strange example ;-)

  • From the satirewire tipbox:

    "Shoeboy, you CAN save a dotcom. This is one."
    That's truly annoying.

    For what its worth, you can turn off this "feature."

  • You got free advertising thanks to posting on slashdot and the momentary insanity of a few moderators who didnt quite realize what you were doing. Kudos to you for screwing the system

    I posted a story a few weeks ago about an auction I found on Ebay, and everyone accused ME of being the seller and trying to rack up free advertising. That wasn't the case at all.

    Everytime someone posts on here, it's not an advertisement, "nor are they necessarily screwing the system". The cynacism of this forum frightens me.
  • Cookies don't have to be used for traking, they are mainly used to keep "state" across pages. At least that's what I use them for in my ASP pages. The cookies is only used to hold a small marker that expires almost instantly. No tracking involved what-so-ever. So cookies don't = tracking as you say. that's just one of thier uses.
  • The dot com scam I'm refering to has nothing to do with running cables. Lines are being run because it's profitable on it's own, not because some buzz word marketroid has convinced people to fund his money loosing scheme. More choice is comming, and I'll be happier when the greed heads loose interest.
  • .85(withdrawn)-.15=(donation)
    Can I conclude you gave them .70,
    or 1.3529411764705882352941176470588 ?

    I gave them 1.6775. I hope it helps their
    noble cause.
  • Sounds a lot like the "PayPal Tip Jar" icon I've seen on a few sites (like Mikodocs Guide to HTML [idocs.com])... Doubt that will keep Amazon's hunger for patents at bay, though. Either way, it's a really good idea and I hope to see it on more sites-- I know I would use it.
  • I always go back to that mysterious place called the 'real world' whenever I'm trying to figure out whether or not a product or service is worth paying for.

    Let's say you walk into a store. On the counter is a photo album full of pictures of ugly-ass people. There's a button on each page of the album that lets you vote on how much you'd like to have sex with the people in the photographs. The icing on the cake is that the coin slot is labeled '25 cents, but free if you don't feel like paying'.

    Sure, I'd walk up to it and press a few buttons and say "wow, that sure is neat!", but pulling a quarter out of my pocket, just so I can look at people I see on the bus every day? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

    The fact of the matter is, bangable.com isn't very highly marketable. If you're expecting to read the fortunes of the endless thousands of visitors who are sending your URL to all of their friends with notes like "Look at this stupid fucking site" then you're living in some sort of dreamland...

    --
    this is not a sig!
  • Fairtunes [fairtunes.com] now mentions the new Amazon "service" on their forum, followed by a quick comparison between both systems.

    I'll shamefully copy/paste this comparison here, because it's worth it :

    • 15% transaction fee (Ours is 3.5%)
    • Receive money only if you're American (We don't discriminate)
    • Lose your privacy (We respect it)
    • $1 minimum transaction (Ours is $0.25)

    Fairtunes rules.

  • Why do you call yourself shoe boy? Because you wear shoes?
  • This is also useful for sites [slashdot.org] which need money to fight plummeting stock value [kuro5hin.org] and possible legal action over IPO irregularities.
  • ... they could have named the new system "Jar Jar" ;-)
  • ... was dealt with some time ago at that site.

    The decision at that time appeared to be that advertising, though annoying, was important if the site maintainers (rusty and Inoshiro primarily) were to have the ability to maintain and upgrade the site. And anyways, surely something like PayPal [paypal.com] would be more useful? They only take a small cut of the money (though the cut on $1 would be pretty big, I admit).
  • to see the tip jar, and I couldn't find it!

    I've almost forgot that, for the past year or so I've been using a banner ad blocker!

    I don't even see the Slashdot banner ads anymore. Good riddance!

  • Check out Fairtunes [fairtunes.com]. The name implies music but it's a voluntary payment system for virtually anything and we do not track you or your users. You use your own html and post to a form back on our site. Plain and simple.

    Matt.

  • Re:charities, donations (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Checks require a fair bit of overhead on their end. I would rather receive one lump payment a month from Amazon (even losing 15%), than to have to process a few thousand (hopefully) checks a month.

    The 15% overhead protects me from bounced checks, and lots of work on my end. It's a good deal.
  • That implies an upfront fee. Both because there are no karma points to begin with and because people have to develop their ability to properly communicate their ideas. I'm for lowering the entry level to getting more people online and not raising the bar.
  • I disagree. It'd limit stupid posts to the people with extra cash to throw around while also limiting useful posts from those who don't have the extra cash. Tip jars are just the newest stupid money making gimmick on the Net and even worse than advertising banners. If Slashdot or any other site I use starts using these Tip Jars I for one would stop using the sites. However if they put a 'donations' link in an obvious place I might donate to keep them running from time to time. If the sites I like start adding to many lame features then I can always open my own similar site w/out said lame features and let the users decide which they like better. I think most users will gravitate to free as long as the quality isn't shit and we've all seen that most the really good sites on the Net are free I'm sure. How many of us bother with sites that even ask for online registration to view articles?
  • "This"--Amazon's tip jar, the system described in the article--is a purely voluntary payment mechanism. The only people who would pay for it are people who already "care" about Slashdot. They wouldn't care because they were paying, they would pay because they care. The trolls and the goatsex would continue, because they wouldn't be forced to "tip".

    As it happens, I don't think Slashdot should force subscriptions either--Slashdot is what it is because of the chaos it allows, and its moderation system is a fascinating experiment in balancing free speech with the desire to separate wheat from chaff. But if you did want that, you couldn't get it from the system under discussion.
  • No offense lad, but
    a) the html is a bit too garish for my tastes and
    b) it's truly sad that this [bangable.com] is the #1 ranked guy on your site.
    It's possible that your site just isn't a good test case for this idea. Satirewire [satirewire.com] on the other hand...
    --Shoeboy
  • Well, you're wrong. I'm pulling in a fair number of page views (300k a month) and pushing a good amount of bandwidth (over 2 gigs a day now, and that doesn't count the pictures), and still no one donates.

    As for moderation, I'm at the cap, so I don't need your moderation points to begin with.

    The fact of the matter is it's still too hard to donate. Not everyone has a Paypal account, and to them it's too much hassle to go through the sign up process just to give someone a quarter. People are lazy, and they are cheap. With those two traits characterizing most all web surfers out there, I don't think donation systems will work unless they get a LOT easier.
  • I totally agree. I play hockey, and I got started way too late in life to ever hope to do it for a job. I love it, I play constantly, it costs money, etc.

    My point is that eventually, the monetary drain of running a website with no income is gonna shut sites down. SomethingAwful nearly closed, and seems to be on a month by month death watch now.

    "When the dot com scam dies off".. it's amazing how people forget what got them here. Competition among corporations has led to lower access rates to the internet, lower bandwidth/hosting costs, etc. You want things to go back to being MORE expensive, and lessening even more the number of personal creative web sites out there?

  • So how many slashdot users use them and care that they are being sold as stats?

    I bought one book from amazon about 3 years ago, but after seeing the directions they were going in, have sworn off them ever since. This is for various reasons, including:

    • The diversifaction of their services from just books to a million kinds of other crap.
    • Rampant reselling of customer data
    • They are killing off small, independently-owned specialty bookshops.
    • Patent issues
    • Aggressive marketing that means I can't surf the web for ten minutes without seeing an amazon logo. ("Spamazon")
    • A general uneasy feeling that they are one of the worst offenders in the trend to transform the web into a garish, dumbed-down AOLian pit where things have value only as commodities.

    Do I still use amazon? Sure, they're a great source of book reviews, which I frequently consult before heading down to the local used book store or independently owned bookshop. As always, I browse with Junkbuster [junkbuster.com] so my machine remains amazon-cookie-free.

  • For those, like me, who choose not to do business with amazon in any form, it appears that one can add 's1.amazon.com' to one's Junkbuster [slashdot.org] blockfile, and it'll replace the whole 'tip jar' banner with a broken link and an ALT tag reading "amazon honor system". Much less obstrusive, and it still lets you browse amazon.com normally, as far as I can tell.

    I have mixed feelings about micropayment systems, but one thing you CAN do to encourage and reward people's efforts is to take a minute to send fan mail to sites/artists/musicians that you really like. Personally, a few meaningful comments about my work [prmsystems.com] give me a lot more encouragement than the few bucks a month a micropayment system might result in.

  • The folks at Modern Humorist [modernhumorist.com] are going to use the money collected to buy a Weber grill for Jeff Bezos, under the assumption that he'll then invite them over for a barbeque. I gave a buck...
  • We also get slammed with charges from banks to use atms. That part makes no sense to me.

    No. The scary part is when you see people lined up outside the bank in order to pay to use the ATM, while there are idle tellers inside. If you are a banker it makes very good cents to charge $1.50 to give someone $20 of their own money. I'll never figure out why the people do it, though.

    NOTE: WAY TO SAVE $1.50:
    Go to the grocery store and buy a pack of gum with your ATM card and get $20 back. You still spent $.50, but at least your breath don't stink anymore 8*)

  • I know, I know, why is AOL.com still up, go figure

    Possibly because they do have redeeming quality? Such as ease of use? Those of us who are technically literate don't use them, because we don't need/want out hands held. But AOL comes closer to passing the "mom" test than any other site out there.
  • I think we should resist "micropayment" by any means necessary. Why? Simple. No such system will be put in place nowadays without massive government involvement, monitoring, and tracking, to say nothing about credit bureau involvement.


    Do you want a mortgage officer to be able to see that you "micropaid" for a pornography site three years ago, or that someone visiting your home did so, and you had 'auto-micropay' turned on, and now it looks like you did it? Say you are a firearms owner who visits gun-related sites. When your next employer demands to see your micropay list, and refuses to hire you because you are a "gun nut", how will you feel about micropayment then?


    Make it anonymous, secure, and throw the records out every six months, and I'll do it... but nobody will be willing to meet those conditions.

  • Chank (Score:2)

    by cetan ( 61150 )
    This isn't spam,but Chank [chank.com] a very interesting and good font creator is using the system too. I won't be sending him any money due to how I feel on the amazon patent bit, but I thought I'd point it out.
  • How ironic, the code may be free (speech) but the site sure ain't free (beer)!

    In a way yes, but in reality that's how most everyone trying to make money in the open source world is doing it. You give away your code and charge for a service that goes with it. RedHat et. al. give away their code (and even binaries) but charge you for services such as putting it in a box with a CD and manual or for telephone support. /. provides a service (collecting technical news and discussions) that people may or may not consider worth paying for. Being that there are so many people here who insist that they could do a better job (spelling, editing, choosing stories, picking color schemes, generating html, etc.) than Taco and co. it probably wouldn't be too long before a good portion of the /. audience moved on. But, I'm sure that there are some people here who do really value what they get from /. and would be willing to contribute toward the cause.
    _____________

  • I played with sponsorpool [infamous.net] for a while. I was one of the only ones using it while Tom was first trying it out. After using it for a few months, the donations started picking up. I eventually sold the site, but I think that after a while this type of scheme could have at least payed my hosting/bandwith bill.

    I guess the point here is twofold. It takes time for the donations to ramp up. And you're not going to make a million, but it might be worth your while.

    If you're interested in sponsorpool, drop Tom Swiss a mail and ask him about it. It's kind of a cool project.

    All your dangifiknow [dangifiknow.com] are belong to us.

  • Mr. Pink: I don't tip...
  • OK folks, the ice is definitely melting on this concept. In a world in which you can't prevent people from copying your work, once it's been converted to a digital format, then the only way you're going to get them to pay is on a voluntary basis. We don't think much of the term "tipping" - it might be taken to imply an unequal relationship - we just call it "paying." The fact that it doesn't happen under threat of incarceration is irrelevant - it's still just a payment. Which requires a payment mechanism - some type of negotiable currency that can be transmitted in arbitrarily large or small amounts.

    Amazon jumping into this space is clearly a direct attack on paypal's dominance in "what-passes-for-micropayments-nowadays", which is in turn a validation of what paypal is doing. The two biggest problems with the first generation of micropayment systems was

    1. ease of use (not)
    2. proprietary and patented "standards"
    Among on-line payment systems, paypal has done the best job so far of making it easy to send and recieve money - which isn't saying much. As for standards - who knows what patent horrors await us? Presumably one or another of these titans will begin some massive strategic litigation and try to clear, or at least clog up, the field. But while dinosaurs fight, there's some mammals somewhere eating their eggs.

    The open source community and the independant music scene needs to join forces. Here's a quote from a recent post to the Pho list:

    "I don't know any hacker who doesn't think that musicians should get paid for their music. Some of my hacker friends compose music. I don't know any musicians that aren't excited by the subversive nature of the Internet and peered distribution mechanisms and, consequently, who don't respect hackers. Why don't we both work together, put down our swords, figure out how to put bread in each other's mouths (yes, even hackers are having a harder time than usual with that these days) and subvert the structure that has caused this unnatural schizm between us?"
    So what is the nature of this schism? It seems to be related to the fact that the captains of the entertainment industry have emphatically and to a man (I'm betting they're all men) declared an undying jihad against "wholesale copyright infringement", and are willing to, in John Gilmore's words [toad.com], "... destroy the future of free expression and technological development, so they could sit in easy chairs at the top of the smoking ruins and light their cigars off 'em." Why is it that the media industry has such power that they can appear to dictate the very laws of nature if it is necessary to protect their interests? Do they really stand to lose so much money from file-sharing? (There's not much evidence of this yet...) And why is it that the tail of entertainment is wagging the dog of commerce?

    Because it's not about money, it's about control. Culture is the most important commodity because it's the one that sells all the others, not only overtly through advertising, but implicitly, by establishing "social norms", subtle biases, and hidden assumptions. As the content and ads, news and entertainment blend and become one, the public is immersed in a bland and shallow "reality" in which they pretty much go along with anything.

    The internet gives independant culture a chance, however slim, to reach a large audience without having to go through the mediation of "the industry" - and this is the greatest terror of partisans of the neo-feudal "new world order". For similar reasons, 'anonymous cash' micropayment systems have been "fumbled" by those who should have been developing and promoting standards - ie. governments and banks - because they see it - quite rightly - as potentially sewing the seeds of their own demise.

    An open-source micropayment system could provide a way for fans to pay artists directly, with no middle man. Such a system would have to be established on a "web of trust" model, to avoid any possibility of control by dubious central "authorities". It would require the cooperation of many people, all over the world, to overcome the obvious chicken-and-egg problem, but the history of the net suggests that this may not be as unlikely as it appears. We propose to call this system a potlatch network [potlatch.net], after the gift festivals of the northwest coast. Napster et al. is providing one half of a gift economy - we need to complete the circuit by providing a way for fans to support their favorite artists. The implicit contract is an informal version of Kelsey and Shneier's Street Performer Protocol [firstmonday.dk], in which payments are effectively for future works - the carrot rather than the stick: "give us money and we'll release more art." Steven King's experiment was reported as a failure by the New York Times - but he made $600,000 dollars with virtually no expences. (read King's reply to the NYT [stephenking.com].)

    This not only can work, it is working. What Amazon's doing is an attempt to insinuate themselves into a central position as experiments in voluntary payments (micro- or otherwise) begin to mature. And we all know how much we can trust Amazon, right? We're interested in any insight or assistance in specing out this proposed network, comments welcome - jim at potlatch dot net or visit the url atop this msg for more info.

    • She don't make enough money, she can quit.

    • I don't tip because society says I gotta. I tip when somebody deserves a tip. When somebody really puts forth an effort, they deserve a little something extra. But this tipping automatically, that shit's for the birds. As far as I'm concerned, they're just doing their job.
    • The words "too busy" shouldn't be in a waitress's vocabulary.

    • So's working at McDonald's, but you don't feel the need to tip them. They're serving you food, you should tip them. But no, society says tip these guys over here, but not those guys over there. That's bullshit.

    • I'm very sorry the government taxes their tips, that's fucked up. That ain't my fault. It would seem to me that waitresses are one of the many groups the government fucks in the ass on a regular basis. Look, if you ask me to sign something that says the governemnt shouldn't do that, I'll sign it, put it to a vote, I'll vote for it, but what I won't do is play ball. And as for this non-college bullshit I got two words for that: learn to fuckin' type, 'cause if you're expecting me to help out with the rent you're in for a big fuckin' surprise.

    From Resivoir Dogs
  • Couple of dollars a week? Im a slashdot regular, and I wouldnt pay that. Remember, slashdot gets most of its stories from other news sources, its just convinient to have them all in one place. While The idea of a digital tip jar for slashdot would be a nice one, it should not be manditory or a prerequisite for registering. Money would flow in because people want to donate, not because they are forced to pay. Didnt we learn our lesson with Salon?

  • Those sites that dont have any redeeming quality go out of buisness. ( I know, I know, why is AOL.com still up, go figure) If you dont make any money from yoru site, its because nobody likes it and nobody visits it. You cant expect to make a million dollars from a site that has say a thousand visitors a week. On the other hand, you were very clever and now probably have had your site slashdotted. You got free advertising thanks to posting on slashdot and the momentary insanity of a few moderators who didnt quite realize what you were doing. Kudos to you for screwing the system

  • It makes me question why I'm doing this..

    Answer your question and you might keep on doing it. If the answer is for money, oh well, see you later!

    Let's not get confused ala RIAA. Creativity is not dependent on ability to earn money. I love to skate board and it's too bad that I can't earn enough money doing it to quit my engineering job. I could really develop it into the performance art it deserves to be. BZZZT, I'm gonna do it anyway.

    Oh yeah, soon I'll be putting more time into my own server on the DSL line I'm getting (No Freaking cable style TOS off! Yes! Good bye ATT@home, you suck, suck, suck.). What will I put on it? Some of my thesis work, other projects, and who knows. I don't care if anyone pays me one cent.

    We should be concerned about access to publishing and the web becoming some kind of neutered corporate lap dog. Somehow I think that's less likely when this dot com scam dies off. No money here, boss, move on.

  • fairtunes [fairtunes.com]

    done.

    Paul

  • It seems that Amazon has a much bigger profit in this than a simple "chunk of the payment" - they get new customers to sign up that way. I'm not a business major but i'd expect the benefits of that to far outweigh the itty bitty amount of money the sites using the jar would collect.

    Plus, they obviously get usage statistics - another big plus (while the policy said they don't gather personalized tracking info, they never said they wouldn't gather statistics across users, which would also be very useful, especially since they CAN cross-match that statistics with their own database of items bought from your account.

    I'm not sure if i'd be hesitant to use such system or not, but i'm sure i'd MUCH rater prefer a similar system from a company that doesn't also sell things.

    -Daniel

  • Who needs them ? We already have FairTunes [fairtunes.com] which has been operating for a while now. FairTunes is maintained by a couple of canadian students, and they DON'T take hefty processing fees out of people's tips '(or ips).

    Linus Torvalds has received money from them too!

  • I noticed Icebox (www.icebox.com) is already using this system!

    Almost everyone at Icebox is from the TV world and, as we've seen, ideas from the "old economy" does not always port well to the Internet. What's interesting about this company is that they have alot of expertise in creating content but not making money off of it.

    I believe they were part of a talk at Digital Hollywood on how to make $ from content on the web - but they didn't have a clue! Too bad, they have some really good shows!
  • My point is that eventually, the monetary drain of running a website with no income is gonna shut sites down.

    Depends on the purpose of the site. I've been running the Phoenyx (PBeM/Internet roleplaying) for fifteen years last December. Its web site has always come out of my pocket, and always will. Yeah, it's a monetary drain, but I know people with more expensive hobbies.

  • That's truly annoying.

    Yeah. Fortunately, they let the webmaster use a text link instead. No way for Amazon to track (except the folks who click through), no doesn't-match-my-color-scheme graphic, no annoying "Hello YourName" stuff.

    If I use this, I'm definitely going the text link route.

  • but the little box knew me (and took me straight to a Hello, page). Cookies = tracking, so what's the difference?
  • My inbox was flooded today with Slashdotters letting me know Amazon was moving in on the Fairtunes space. Thanks for the heads up :) and the support.

    Here's a quick comparison between Amazon and Fairtunes [fairtunes.com].

    • 15% transaction fee (Ours is 3.5%)
    • Receive money only if you're American (We don't discriminate)
    • Lose your privacy (We respect it)
    • $1 minimum transaction (Ours is $0.25)

    We also have a Winamp Plugin [fairtunes.com] so *you* (not us) can track your music preferences and then quickly and easily send money to an artist, or you can use the integration in FreeAmp [freeamp.org].

    Fairtunes isn't just for musicians! I.e. Look at Linus Torvalds [fairtunes.com] who has received $175 from Slashdot readers.

    The power of Fairtunes is that you can send money to anyone. Even if they don't ask for it!

    Matt.

  • The free beer coupon good at any store 'Tip Jar'
  • Paypal! [paypal.com]

    The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
  • the Amazon Honor System lets you use Amazon.com payment technology to make payments to Web sites as small as $1.00.
    isn't micr payment more like 0.10 $ ?
  • If amazon.com [noamazon.com] is hurting for money so much, you'd think they'd come up with a better ploy for making revenue. This sounds like a glorified version of the salami technique where they slice off fractions of a penny from back transactions.

    Apparently, they aren't making as much money off of their patent fiasco as they thought they would.
  • "And Amazon takes a hefty chunk of each payment in processing fees. But perhaps this model could be useful for sites which need cash but don't want to serve advertising."
    True, but what happens if the site using the tipjar banks on that as their income source and then Amazon rips it out from under them. That's one quick way to kill a website, I'd think.

    I'd still keep a backup option before relying on this as my method of cash generation.

  • Truly annoying (Score:3)

    by Shoeboy ( 16224 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @04:27AM (#453222) Homepage
    From the satirewire tipbox:
    "Shoeboy, you CAN save a dotcom. This is one."
    That's truly annoying. Any time I see my nick, I look. Even my parents call me shoeboy. It's more recognizable to me than my real name.
    If this thing takes off, I'm going to have to delete my amazon cookies. The last thing I want is to have my attention drawn to advertisements.
    God, imagine if they applied this tech to banner adds.
    --Shoeboy

  • Re:I tried, it's failed. (Score:3)

    by Hadean ( 32319 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] ... s+nogard.naedah]> on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @05:16AM (#453223)
    First, your site is called Bangable, rate chicks and stuff... your clientel might not be into donating money. Second, your site is a ripoff of so many other sites... (there's event a rate the Rating Sites site out there!). Third, why would I donate to you? What do you offer me exactly? I could easily take my $1 and give it to something more charitable, or at the very least, a site that interests me on a daily basis and keeps me informed/smiling/whatever. Rating sites just plain don't do it.

  • Answer: PayPal (Score:3)

    by levik ( 52444 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @04:40AM (#453224) Homepage
    Isn't X.com's pay pal doing the same exact thing but at no cost to either the recepient and the person payng? (I think they have a small fee on larger accounts though)

    Places like blogger.com have been having paypal funding drives where they asked people interested in helping out to send money by paypal, and as far as I know these have been pretty successful.

    I guess this may not be sufficient prior art for the USPTO though...

  • Oh thank God... (Score:3)

    by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @07:57AM (#453225) Journal
    ...I thought it said, "Amazon Starts 'Jar Jar' System". I was about to have a heart attack... I mean just imagine, that idiot Gungan keeping track of your purchases...

  • Finally (Score:3)

    by burris ( 122191 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @07:17AM (#453226)
    Finally some big players are moving towards building a viable voluntary payment system. After all, we know that the barriers to building this system are more political than technical.

    In a world where you can't stop people from copying your work (unless you never release it), I think artists and authors will find that they make the most money by letting their work spread into as many hands as possible and make it as easy as possible for people to tip the artist, no matter where they get the work from.

    The Grateful Dead pioneered this model by giving away their live performances. Phish showed that anyone could become successful this way, it was not something unique to the Grateful Dead. Now there are a bazillion Jam Bands [jambase.com] that allow recording [wagnerone.com] and trading of their concerts. Pretty soon they will be able to actually get income directly from tape trading as well!

    Burris

  • Amazon's Micropayment Strategy (Score:3)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @07:24AM (#453227) Homepage Journal
    I'm beginning to see a pattern in some of Amazon's actions: they think the micropayment business is beginning to take off, and they want in. You'll notice that zShops and Amazon auctions don't require you to pay through Amazon, but they do make it difficult.

    So they come up with a slightly slicker version of Paypal's Web Accept [paypal.com] program. (One of Amazon's innovations is a personalized greeting on the payment button -- a feature that may backfire given the privacy issues.) But everyone's going to ask, Doesn't Paypal already do this? And why should an emerchant use Amazon -- a competing emerchant?

    So they don't market the thing as a micropayment system. They call it a "tip jar" system, which makes it sound like something new, and gives them a foothold in small sites that are noncommercial or don't compete with Amazon. That creates "brand awareness" (a holy concept with this company) and a chance to get a foothold in a market dominated [pbs.org] by Paypal.

    I think the whole thing's gonna be a big bust. Paypal has done a good job of designing a simple, usable payment system and building a loyal customer base. The Amazon payment systemis one of those half-assed initiatives that works better as a Powerpoint presentation than in the real world.

    __________________

  • Re:charities, donations (Score:3)

    by AnyLoveIsGoodLove ( 194208 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @04:53AM (#453228)
    If we each sent a few dollars to a particular charity, the cost of processing the individual checks would easily exceed 15%. Think about all the people needed to do the simple stuff like opening envelopes, writing all the check numbers down, writing the deposit slips, making sure there are no errors, bringing them to the bank, reprocessing the bounced checks..I think you get my idea. The non-profit would easily send spend 15%. One example, the company I worked for donated 100k in matching funds to the earthquake victims in India through UNICEF's web site. Fortunately, UNICEF is large enough to process their own transactions to cut out the middlemen, but it would still be worth it. Imagine the amount of individual donations and time to process 100k worth of donations. The Indian earthquake victims need the food now, not later.100k was collected in less than 48 hours from my company's employees. Electronic is the way to go.

  • I stopped using them. (Score:3)

    by ConsumedByTV ( 243497 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @04:17AM (#453229) Homepage
    I once bought many a things from amazon, but no more. Why would anyone want to buy from them? I can name off many places that have the same products at a cheaper price. Most of all the part they seem to love to sell is the private data of users, thats way too much to pay for a service like that. So how many slashdot users use them and care that they are being sold as stats? And how many of you just buy natalie portman dolls only to send them back and throw off their demographics?


    Fight censors!

  • Yuck.... (Score:3)

    by tvm ( 310200 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @04:39AM (#453230)
    Great, now when anybody puts up some lame site like 'Newz about My Cat Mittens', not only will they go to great lengths to irritate the public at large, but they'll also expect to get paid for their efforts...

  • Backwards US banking (Score:4)

    by slim ( 1652 ) <john AT hartnup DOT net> on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @06:37AM (#453231) Homepage
    I find it very strange that banks in the US are so backwards as to necessitate things like PayPal. In the UK (and I think the rest of Europe) as long as you know someone's account number and their branch sort code, you can make an instantaneous transfer into their account, either by telephoning your bank, or through Internet banking -- for free, and without the need to hold a "buffer" of money in a service such as PayPal.

    Frankly it beggars belief that this protocol does not extend worldwide. Why can't I pay eBay sellers in the US in this way? I'd even pay a small surcharge, but not the £25 or so that an international banker's draft costs.

    Um, this is sort of irrelevant to micropayments (although it points us in the direction of how things *should* be done) but since PayPal got mentioned so often here I thought it was worth dropping into the mix.

    --

  • Paypal (Score:4)

    by FroBugg ( 24957 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @04:47AM (#453232) Homepage
    I've been using paypal for a while now, just for transactions between myself and friends and the occasional auction. And you don't even have to have a credit card to use it. I've got it patched into my bank account.

    All transactions on the personal level are free, but they go to $.30 for all purchases under $15 and 2.2% (for credit card) or 1.6% (for non-credit card) plus $.30 for all purchases over $15 if you're using the premier or business account.

    I haven't checked the amazon rates, but these seem fairly reasonable to me for any normal transaction. It gets a little tricky when you're just doing micropayments, but you can stick with a personal account if you don't plan to be raking in lots of cash.

  • This should be used on Slashdot. (Score:4)

    by Lover's Arrival, The ( 267435 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @04:20AM (#453233) Homepage
    It would have a number of advantages. People would care more about the site, and not troll it as much because they are paying for it. The editorial policy would be more independant of commerce, as they would no longer rely on advertising. This would also chime with the ideals of the readership. Hostile, flaming AC"s would become a thing of the past.

    I also expect that the average intelligence of the posts would increase, as only those who were reasonably intelligent would have the foresight and drive to actually register. I expect that /. could increase its revenues by doing this too, which would give them more money to invest in the site and improve slash (and perhaps employ someone to proofread articles for typos and read Taco's mailbox).

    In addition, it need not cost much. I expect a couple of dollars a week automatically paid by credit card would do the trick.

    Just imagine the improvement in the quality of discussion and commitment to the site and community that would occur! It would be a vast improvement from all the goatsex, I am sure.

    I am also sure that many of these arguments could be applied to other sites.

    They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

  • I tried, it's failed. (Score:5)

    by BilldaCat ( 19181 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @04:29AM (#453234) Homepage
    I tried doing the whole PayPal donation thing, which is very similar. Had it up for about a week now on my site (the one in my sig).

    I've received a grand total of 20 cents.

    If I get another nickel, I can buy that gumball I always wanted.

    It's very depressing, actually. It makes me question why I'm doing this, if it's obvious people don't appreciate it that much. There's next to no money to be made in banners, and the cost of the server will soon become too prohibitive to handle by myself, so I'll likely be forced to shut it down. Kinda blows, but I guess that's survival of the fittest for you.

  • Question: (Score:5)

    by cybercuzco ( 100904 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @04:15AM (#453235) Homepage Journal
    How long before Amazon patents the Digital tip jar? A week? Two weeks? Start getting your prior art ready

  • charities, donations (Score:5)

    by Mr.roboto ( 112555 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @04:23AM (#453236) Homepage
    When you see one of those cans in a store, or see some donation place, it's often run by someone else who takes most of the money for themselves. Amazon has set up an interesting paralell. While %15 is not much by first look, it really does add up when you have a few million in donations cross their wires. I think it would be better for them to send a check in to the people, despite the convience of this type system. That way you are sure all the money goes to the group it belongs to. And I wouldn't trust their privacy policy as far as I could throw it. It would be rather easy to slip a web bug into an image for the "donation system."

  • Lightbulb went on in my head.... (Score:5)

    by kenthorvath ( 225950 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2001 @04:23AM (#453237)
    Imagine. Now we can tip all of those live-feed strippers on adult websites.

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