Pay authors, not copywriters

To defeat clumsy copyie dinosaurs, protests such as the recent English-language Wikipedia strike directed against SOPA and PIPA laws are not enough. It is necessary to create and maintain business models that can provide a decent reward to authors, even with the free distribution of their works. You can argue about how an ideal model should look. And you can take, and right now start using one of the schemes that allow you to pay directly to the authors. It may not be perfect, but it already works, and the better, the more people will use it, it will work. I'm talking about the social micropayment system Flattr . About her already a couple of times wrote on Habré. It was founded by Peter Sunde, one of the creators of The Pirate Bay.



In a nutshell - by registering in the system, you deposit a small amount into the account and choose how much money you will spend each month on the authors reward. The authors put buttons on the pages with their content like “I like” social networks. Every month your money is distributed among all the authors whose buttons you clicked. For example, if you set a monthly expense of $ 10 and clicked 20 times, then each click will bring the author 45 cents (50 minus 10% service fee).



Recently, I was interested in Habr's technical support, are they going to put the Flattr button next to the social network buttons under each topic? UFO reacted to the idea favorably and promised to think. And while it thinks, we have the opportunity to independently add to each topic a static version of the flattr button. If at least 10% of the authors and readers of Habrahabr will register on flattr.com and start putting such buttons in their topics, blogs, Github and in general, wherever possible, and will not forget to regularly replenish the account and actively click on the buttons of others - this is great to help in the fight against copywriting. And this can be done right now. This is a real step towards a new model of relations between authors and consumers of content. Albeit small, but constructive.



PS First, I put the button “Flattr this!” At the end of the topic, which was discussed in the last paragraph. The topic quickly began to creep into the minus. I removed the button, and it also quickly took off to the main. There is a problem of chicken and eggs - if there are no buttons anywhere, then no one will use the system. I myself have been eyeing Flattr for over a year, as I have never seen such buttons anywhere and I simply had no one to pay. I do not think that there is something shameful in the placement of such buttons on my content, but judging by the minuses received, many consider it unethical. Need to come up with something. Any ideas?