This is a discussion about a feature proposal for the network, maybe my ideas were not clearly explained or maybe it’s just my tone that put you off, it happens some time when I get excited about a feature, I get pushy.
Anyway, you don’t seem to like it, but I’m not sure exactly why, is it just the concept of paying for content in general or this specific implementation of it?
Can’t speak for going deep, and do love your ideals and goals but the concept of a paywall in a digital context is super annoying. Here is the pay wall: don’t put it on any network and it won’t be available at any price but the moment you do expect the price to be exactly what the end user thinks is worth without peek a boo games. Even a supplier or content creator suggested price is super offensive.
There is a way to get at a hybrid, but the rule and maxim should be total end user control and empowerment. Empower end users and their sustained interest will drive the rest.
I disagree with you, I think the producer is in the best position to set a price for his content because he is in the best position to know the cost of making it. That said, we can leave it at that, I don’t want to turn this into an ideology thread, we got plenty of those already.
Its not ideology, conveniently for the perspective I like best at the moment, your model has to compete with free. Valuation is in the buyers eyes in the context. Cant offload the risk.
I really don´t get how people reject the proposed Idea of @DavidMtl, but then strongly support PtP (which is actually PtU). In the latter case I, as an uploader, have to pay EVERY content uploader out there, that are also the uploaders of terrorist annoucements, revenge porn, kitten videios. And yes, it´s not free for me, and not everyone can do it if he*she has no ressources. What makes me any different than the person who stumbles at a paywall?
The fact is, and here I disagree with @dyamanaka, content providers HAVE TO charge. They cannot live on thin air and I (as a content provider) don´t see why I should not do it. Yes, that makes my products less attractive for people like @Warren who say things like “I hate the idea of artists being able to set their price.”, and yes, people can buy my stuff and reupload it, because they think it´s a fair thing to do, but real customers won´t do it. They will either enjoy the convenience or accept my request since I have to pay my rent and family.
In the end I don´t believe this has to be done on the core layer. With the rise of cryptocurrencies people can easily buy articles, artworks, music via pay-per-click. There can be itunes/spotify-like platform that allow users to pay per listen and payout artist the same way and many people will be willing to pay, because content creators work hard like everyone else and deserve to be paid.
Because NETWORK > APP/SITE > CONTENT
That is why.
You can’t just have a feature such as the one you are proposing and I am not even speaking specifically about the paywall, I am speaking about the network meddling in the goings on of the network users.
Your idea has been spun a few different times and a few different ways on this forum and I’m not for it.
The closest thing we have to base your idea on is a social totalitarian government and we all know how that works out right? Sounds good on paper, in reality it sucks balls unless you’re the roof perched rooster and even then you gotta have morals like The Prince of Darkness to actually enjoy it.
When thinking about ‘artists’ (they are referring to them as producers in this community now btw) anyway… you gotta remember that some producers are app developers and some app developers are producer but not all producers are app developers (wait, I think I got that right).
So take a guy that writes a blog but he also knows how to design a website and do all that jazz right? We he would be considered an app developer in SAFE terms. So he’s going to rewarded regardless. But what about the guy that writes a blog for another guy who runs a blog, what about that guy? And this is where the idea of the network coming up with features and management solution’s to sort through all this fails.
Most of the content online is on user-generated content sites like YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, Imgur, Twitter etc, much like this very forum in fact. We the users AKA ‘producers’ AKA ‘artists’ are creating the content for this website. This very discussion alone. So how the hell would you manage that? You can’t and you shouldn’t try to as the network.
This is up to the app developers, site owners and their producers.
I want content producers to be able to earn from their content just as much as you do and in this thread I layed out an idea PtP Suggestion - Lets Discuss my idea was rough as guts but the crux of it is that YES indeed content generators should be paid but the network should have as little do do with it as possible.
My idea got hacked to pieces because I didn’t think it out correctly and rightly so, but…there is still merit in the thinking behind it IMHO and of course I am biased. But specifically the parts about the app developers being incentivised by the network to offer their producers a solution…hmmm.
I am all for any method that pays the producer, just so long as the network is not behind it because it will not work.
And I am happy to be proven wrong. There is a bottle of scotch on it to anyone who can prove me wrong 
Idea worth exploring for sure. Having a micro-payment system is great but if many decisions need to be made you get an increase in cognitive load for the users and this diminishes the user experience so the system needs to be implemented well. In the OP, if I understood correctly with the faucet example @DavidMtl you set a daily budget and this is deducted based on content you view over this day?
I like the idea of paying content producers for content they have created that is engaging. Duplicate content becomes a problem but with reputation systems involved this does balance out. Why not a framework that handles things like reputation and provides a gateway for micro-payments using safecoin?
The pay-per-view model built into the network does become exclusionary even if the tx cost is negligible to most.
So many people are forced to sell their users eyeballs using display advertising as a way to monetize their loved craft, I want to see an end to this and an alternative model layered onto Safe. So many potential opportunities come out of this.
@goindeep The entire system is optional from the point of view of app developers so it is not totalitarian or even meddling. Anyone who doesn’t want to use this mechanism is free to do it some other way. The only people for whom this is likely to become oppressive are users - if the scheme was widely adopted and most content has a paywall, however low, that’s quite a barrier, and very different from the internet we’re used to.
Might want to read that back.
I see what you are trying to say but it doesn’t mean it is sensible.
I like Johnnie Walker.
I see your point, here’s my bottle of Blue Label:
Apps on Safe works differentely then app you are used to. For example, SafeTube doesn’t store the videos, all SafeTube does is keep a reference to videos stored by its users. Each user remains the owner of the video file and SafeTube is only a list of them. That’s the philosophy of Safe apps. Users always get to keep the control of their data. Read this to get a better idea of how it works.
Same for SafeGur (Imgur, lol), it doesn’t own all the images, what the uploader does is give a link to the image to SafeGur so it can be referenced. The user keeps control of the file and earn safecoin, if he wishes to, when someone visit SafeGur and view his image.
Maybe SafeGur is annoyed that people ask for payment to view the content and instead decide to only reference images that are free to view, that’s totally reasonable and is a perfect example of why this whole thing works.
Same for the blog you are talking about. Each writer stays the owner of its post and earn from it. The website just reference them.
Same for Safebook, you stay the owner of your images and your post, your friends and family simply reference them.
To answer @Artiscience, the big advantages of that is as a content provider your income isn’t tide to any app or platform. Anyone can reference your work and you are still gonna earn from it. It’s like the Mochi Media wrapper for game made in Flash. Game developer would wrap their game into the Mochi Wrapper and whenever somebody copy the game to put on their website the game developer would still get revenue from it. This allowed thousands of indie game developers to finally make a living of their work and actually embrace the fact that people would independently spread their work around. It’s really been huge for the indie game industry.
The fact that users on Safe gains control of their data create a paradigm shift, your eyeballs are no longer the product sold to advertiser, now the product is your content and you stays the owner of it. It’s gonna take some time before everyone wrap their head around that. But it’s a whole new world for everyone to explore, the possibilities are endless and it’s very exciting.
It’s exactly that. It’s like the fuel in your car, when you go up a hill the car doesn’t ask you the permission to consume more fuel, it just takes it based on the speed you want to go at. Safecoins is your fuel, you control a set of valve to control its flow. Earning safecoin and spending them become very natural. It doesn’t feel like taking your credit card out, filling the numbers in a form, hitting accept, waiting for confirmation, etc. It’s much more fluid then that.
@dyamanaka, I see your point, we are used to stuff being free. But the thing is, it’s still basically free if you are a participant.
Before Safe: you wake up, open your computer, check on Facebook what’s up, check some news site, some videos, go to work, come back, rinse repeat, etc. Everything was free, life is good, the cost of living is already high, who want’s to pay for that silly cat video anway?
With Safe: you wake up, earned some Safecoins during the night, open your computer, check on Safebook what’s up, check some news site, some videos, go to work, come back, rinse repeat, etc. Everything cost you some Safecoin but life is still good because you earned them during the night, you didn’t have to do any extra work for it. Even better whenever you add quality content to the network you earn a little bit more, it’s not gonna be much but it adds up over time.
On the other hand it is the reason why I didn’t charge you anything to read my post, because I know it would drastically cut my reach and I want people to hear what I have to say. I’m also a nice guy and I think it’s pretentious to put a price tag on stuff I write, I’d gladly accept tip though if you feel like it but that’s up to you.
Honestly, I’m starting to think some of you are a bit greedy with your Safecoins 
Personnaly I want to have thousands of reason to spend them because like @bugsbunny point out, it’s actually fun to spend them, It’s play money, it’s frictionless, it’s the digital equivalent of a high five.
Oh, you want SAFE to follow Adobe Acrobat.
@Artiscience More money for the artists and none for the corps would be perfect. But the old corp friendly risk shifting model is dead. New model is statisfaction or no pay. The role of end users is really the only angle things should considered from as we are all end users. As an end user I want more money for you. I think a functioning system like SAFE on its core merits would be a solid step in that direction.
Philosophy is the correct word because that is what it is. Philosophy.
This will not practically work this way and I’m running out of ways to prove it to you. You are going against everything we know about human behaviour and psychology.
Will the network play host to plenty of open source apps that will operate in the way you and @BenMS are describing? No doubt! But there will be app developers who are also entrepreneurs and business people and they will see the benefits in parts of the system but why on Earth would someone who is business minded not want to own or at the very least share ownership and control of his own website and the content within it? They will indeed and there is nothing wrong with that.
And those who turn off their computer at night? Which now SAFE is designed for, the typical vault behavior is now expected to be On/Off. They earn fewer coins.
Or the phone user (& others) who has no vault. There is expected to be a reasonable number in this situation. Phone/tablet users may in general not run vaults due to cpu power and cost of bandwidth, could even be 80% of them do not run vaults. For PC users it would be a lot less, but the trend today is phone and pad as the only browsing device that a person owns.
Where do these people get all the needed coins from to access data in general?
I agree with you. I’m not sure if there is currently a way to do it with Safe though regardless of the current proposal. I understand that right now, how thing works, an application can send data to a server outside of Safe which will then upload the data to Safe in the name of the app dev. But to do it directly from the user’s connection to Safe, I don’t think it’s currently possible. I might be wrong.
So there’s two possibilities. I’m wrong and what you are asking for is already possible regardless of the micro-paywall proposal. Or I’m right and app dev needs to go through another server to make it work. Either way, what you are asking for is not a problem and totally compatible with the micro-paywall proposal.
Honestly, and it might shock some people, I don’t think traditionnal server are going the way of the Dodo any time soon. As you point out, there is still a use case for centralization. Safe will just give a very tangible solution for decentralization. Both will work in parallele and people will use the one that allows them to achieve their goal.
Safecoin accessibility is indeed a great concern. I’ve heard it been said many times that they want to be as inclusive as possible in term of platform choices to farm Safecoin. I also don’t think it’s a problem only with my proposal but more of a problem regardless of it. That said it’s true that adding more utility to the coin makes it a more pressing concern.
On the other hand, micro-paywall helps a little bit. It makes the economy more fluid, people will be less likely to hoard and there will be more Safecoins to farm. But yeah, Safecoin accessibility is something important to look at.
The issue that happens is where once it cost nothing to access the SAFE network and did not require the person to log on to view content. Now they not only have to log on but obtain SAFEcoin in order to surf the “SAFEweb”
I think is is also about values. What do we believe SHOULD be paid for? How much do we believe it SHOULD be paid for? What do we believe SHOULD be free? Why? And how much margin of error and negotiating room is there in between? The fuel metaphor and the app that would facilitate this would work not just for those that are willing to pay for content but also those who are NOT willing to pay for content because you’d be able to set your values to 0 and perhaps attatch all this to a search engine to search for content that allowed you to view for free. So say @Warren was surfing along with his settings all set to 0 for free content because he believes no one should pay for content and in empowering the user. He could plug that into this search engine and immediately he’d find tons of creative commons content, open source content and pirated content because hey it’s all free. Someone who set a margin of say $0.000001 or something as their max would get more content, or different content. But it’s still in the user’s control because again you are finding what you’re looking for. Giving people control and options doesn’t stop you from finding like minded people or free content. Allowing people to have a flexible paywall system doesn’t stop people from putting stuff out there for free nor does it stop people from searching for free stuff nor does it stop pirating of stuff. All it does is it allows different payment options.
Not exactly, they still can access any content that is free, you only have to pay content that the owner wishes to get paid for. It’s not really different then what we have today, most everything is free because adding a price cuts your audience drastically. But for whoever wants to profit from their work in their own term, they now have choice.
Again, you didn’t pay to read my comment, I think it would rude of me to ask you too.