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EmanciPay is the name for a system by which readers, listeners and viewers can easily choose to pay whatever they like, whenever they like, however they like, for the media goods they use — and to do that on their own terms, and not just those of media suppliers' arcane systems, or of any single intermediary.
=== Overview ===


The purpose of EmanciPay is to provide a new revenue source marketplace for media and creative works in which supply and demand can relate, converse and transact business on mutually beneficial terms, rather than only on terms provided by thousands of different silo'd systems, each serving to hold the customer captive, and causing much inconvenience and friction in the process.
Simply put, Emancipay makes it easy for anybody to pay (or offer to pay) —


EmanciPay will use open standards and be comprised of open source code. While any commercial [fourth party] can use EmanciPay (or its principles, or any parts of it they like), EmanciPay itself cannot ride on commercial systems. It can, however, support fourth parties by making them substitutable, much as the open standards of email (smtp, pop3, imap) make email systems substitutable. (Each has what [http://blog.joeandrieu.com/2009/04/26/introducing-user-driven-services/ Joe Andrieu calls] [http://blog.joeandrieu.com/2009/05/07/user-driven-services-5-service-endpoint-portability/ service endpoint portability].)
# as much as they like
# however they like
# for whatever they like
# on their own terms


=== Background ===
or at least to start with that full set of options, and to work out differences with sellers easily and with minimal friction.
We now live in a media environment where creative goods previously sold directly or paid for by advertising are freely available and shared widely over the Internet. A number of factors contribute to a business and social conundrum for suppliers of those goods:
* Easy copying and sharing makes the goods freely available at growing ease and convenience.
* Copying and sharing is so widespread and common that punishment for copyright and other usage violations touches only a small minority of offenders, and fails to stop the practice.


What the marketplace requires are new business and social contracts that ease payment and stigmatize non-payment for creative goods. The friction involved in voluntary payment is still high, even on the Web, where one must go through complex forms even to make simple payments. There is no common and easy way either to keep track of what media (free or otherwise) we consume (see [[Media Logging]]), to determine what it might be worth, and to pay for it easily and in standard ways — to many different suppliers. (Again, each supplier has its own system for accepting payments.)
Emancipay turns consumers (aka users) into customers by giving them a pricing gun (something which in the past only sellers used) and their own means to make offers, to pay outright, and to escrow the intention to pay when price and other requirements are met. And to be able to do this at scale across all sellers, much as cash, browsers, credit cards and email clients do the same. Payments themselves can also be escrowed.


EmanciPay will support a "buy button"-simple payment system to allow readers, listeners and viewers to pay whatever they like, at their discretion, for whatever media products they use. For too many media the traditional business models -- subscriptions, newsstand sales, advertising and underwriting -- are not sufficient. (Especially in the current economic environment, which is akin to an earthquake that won't stop.) Nor do they support full participation and involvement with their users.
In slightly more technical terms, EmanciPay is a payment framework for customers operating with full agency in the open marketplace, and at scale. It operates on open protocols and standards, so it can be used by any buyer, seller or intermediary.  


EmanciPay differs from other payment models (subscriptions, newsstand, tip jars) by exposing for customers choices for paying any amount they please, when they please, with minimum friction -- and with full choice about what they disclose about themselves.
It was conceived as a way to pay for music, journalism, or what any artist brings into the world. But it can apply to anything. For example, [[https://customercommons.org/solving-subscriptions/ subscriptions]], which have become by 2021 a giant fecosystem in which every seller has separate and non-substitutable scale across all subscribers, while subscribers have zero scale across all sellers, with the highly conditional exceptions of silo'd commercial intermediaries. As [[http://customercommons.org Customer Commons]] puts it,


EmanciPay will also support credit for referrals, requests for service, feedback and other relationship support mechanisms, all at the control of the user. For example, EmanciPay can provide quick and easy ways for listeners to pay for public radio broadcasts or podcasts, for readers to pay for otherwise "free" papers or blogs, for listeners to pay to hear music and support artists, for users to issue promises of payment for for stories or programs -- all without requiring the individual to disclose unnecessary private information, or to become a "member" -- although these options are kept open.  
''There’s also not much help coming from the subscription management services we have on our side: Truebill, Bobby, Money Dashboard, Mint, Subscript Me, BillTracker Pro, Trim, Subby, Card Due, Sift, SubMan, and Subscript Me. Nor from the subscription management systems offered by  Paypal, Amazon, Apple or Google (e.g. with  Google Sheets and Google Doc templates). All of them are too narrow, too closed and exclusive, too exposed to the surveillance imperatives of corporate giants, and too vested in the status quo.''


This will scaffold genuine relationships between buyers and sellers in the media marketplace. It will also give deeper meaning to "membership" in non-profits. (Under the current system, "membership" generally means putting one's name on a pitch list for future contributions, and not much more than that.)
''That status quo sucks (see [https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=b8db8d9f-5e61-4da2-b112-e5e1cf71df57 here], or just look up [https://www.bing.com/search?q=subscription+hell "subscription hell"]), and it’s way past time to unscrew it.) But how?''


EmanciPay will also connect the sellers' CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems with customers' VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) systems, supporting rich and participatory two-way relationships. In fact, EmanciPay will by definition be a VRM system.
''The better question is '''where'''?''


=== Micro-accounting ===
''The answer to that is '''on our side''': the customer’s side.''
The idea of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment "micro-payments"] for goods on the Net has been around for a long time, and has recently been revitalized as a potential business model for journalism by [http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1877191,00.html an article by Walter Isaacson] in Time Magazine. What ProjectVRM [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/2009/02/11/EmanciPay-for-newspapers-and-everything-else-thats-free/ suggests instead] is something we don't yet have, but very much need: ''micro-accounting'' for actual uses. These including reading, listening and watching.


Most of what we now call "content" is both free for the taking and worth more than $zero. How much more? We need to be able to say.
While EmanciPay was first conceived by ProjectVRM as a way to make live payments to nonprofits and to provide [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/2009/05/28/emancipay-a-content-monetization-plan-for-newspapers/ a new monetization method for publishers]. it also works as a counterpart to sellers' subscription systems in what [http://www.zuora.com Zuora] (a supplier of subscription management systems to the publishing industry, including ''The Guardian'' and ''Financial Times'') calls the "[http://www.zuora.com/subscription-economy/ subscription economy]", which it says "is built on ever changing relationships with your customers". Since relationships are two-way by nature, EmanciPay is one way that customers can manage their end, while publisher-side systems such as Zuora's manage the other. (To our knowledge, it is still the first and only way.)


So, as currently planned, EmanciPay would -
===Emancipay economic case===
# Provide a single and easy way that consumers of "content" can become customers of it. In the current system -- which isn't one -- every artist, every musical group, every public radio and TV station, has his, her or its own way of taking in contributions from those who appreciate the work. This can be arduous and time-consuming for everybody involved. (Imagine trying to pay separately every musical artist you like, for all your enjoyment of each artists work.) What EmanciPay proposes, however, is not a replacement for existing systems, but a new system that can supplement existing fund-raising systems -- one that can soak up much of today's MLOTT: Money Left On The Table.
# Provide ways for individuals to look back through their media usage histories, inform themselves about what they have been enjoying, and to determine how much it is worth to them. The Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP), and later the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), both came up with "rates and terms that would have been negotiated in the marketplace between a willing buyer and a willing seller" -- language that first appeared in the 1995 Digital Performance Royalty Act (DPRA), and was tweaked in 1998 by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), under which both the CARP and the CRB operated.  The rates they came up with peaked at $.0001 per "performance" (a song or recording), per listener. EmanciPay creates the "willing buyer" that the DPRA thought wouldn't exist.
# Stigmatize non-payment for worthwhile media goods. This is where "social" will finally come to be something more than yet another tech buzzmodifier.


All these require micro-accounting, not micro-payments. In fact micro-accounting can inform ordinary payments that can be made in clever new ways that should satisfy everybody with an interest in seeing artists compensated fairly for their work. An individual listener, for example, can say "I want to pay 1¢ for every song I hear on the radio," and "I'll send [http://www.soundexchange.com/ SoundExchange] a lump sum of all the pennies wish to pay for songs I hear over the course of a year, along with an accounting of what artists and songs I've listened to" -- and leave dispersal of those totaled pennies up to the kind of agency that likes, and can be trusted, to do that kind of thing.
EmanciPay provides a new form of economic signaling not available to individuals, either on the Net or before the Net became available as a communications medium. EmanciPay will use open standards and be comprised of open source code. While any commercial [Fourth party] can use EmanciPay (or its principles, or any parts of it they like), EmanciPay's open and standard framework will support fourth parties by making them substitutable, much as the open standards of email (smtp, pop3, imap) make email systems substitutable. (Each has what [http://blog.joeandrieu.com/2009/04/26/introducing-user-driven-services/ Joe Andrieu calls] [http://blog.joeandrieu.com/2009/05/07/user-driven-services-5-service-endpoint-portability/ service endpoint portability].)


Similar systems can also be put in place for readers of newspapers, blogs and other journals.
EmanciPay is an instrument of customer independence from all of the billion (or so) commercial entities on the Net, each with its own arcane and silo'd systems for engaging and managing customer relations, as well as receipt, acknowledgement and accounting for payments from customers.
What's important is that the control is in the hands of the individual, and that the accounting and dispersal systems work the same way for everybody.


=== Projects ===
=== Use Case Background ===
To work, EmanciPay needs to have its choices informed. For that there should be a number of tools in the [[Media Logging]] toolbox. The first we're working on is a [[Listen Log]] called [[ListenLog]] for the [http://publicradioplayer.org Public Radio Player].
EmanciPay was conceived originally as a way to provide a customers with the means to signal interest and ability to pay for media and creative works (most of which are freely available on the Web, if not always free of charge). Through EmanciPay, demand and supply can relate, converse and transact business on mutually beneficial terms, rather than only on terms provided by the countless different silo'd systems we have today, each serving to hold the customer captive, and causing much inconvenience and friction in the process.
=== FAQ ===
''Q: Who would want to use it and why?''


Right now supporting otherwise "free" journalism ranges from difficult (setting up separate paid relationships with each journal or broadcast station, each with its own rules and procedures, with all data stored in the journal or station's system) to impossible (no means are provided at all). Even the membership systems of public broadcasting exclude vast numbers of people who would contribute "if it was easy". EmanciPay will make it easy for consumers of media to become customers of media. It will allow those customers to pay for what they want, when they want, and to initiate actual relationships with the news organizations they pay -- on their own terms as well as those of the news organization.
Media goods were chosen for several reasons: 1) because most are available for free, even if they cost money, or are behind paywalls; 2) paywalls, which are cookie-based, cannot relate to individuals an anything other than submissive and dependent parties (and each browser a users employs carries a different set of cookies); 3) both media companies and non-profits are constantly looking for new sources of revenue; and 4) all methods of intermediating payment choices are either silo'd by the seller or silo'd by intermediators, discouraging participation by individuals.


''Q:  What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?''
What the marketplace requires are new business and social contracts that ease payment and stigmatize non-payment for creative goods. The friction involved in voluntary payment is still high, even on the Web, where one must go through complex ceremonies even to make simple payments. There is no common and easy way either to keep track of what media (free or otherwise) we use (see [[Media Logging]]), to determine what it might be worth, and to pay for it easily and in standard ways — to many different suppliers. (Again, each supplier has its own system for accepting payments.)


A much more healthy media business would arise out of the one that's failing -- at least economically -- right now. In the process, the media business would no longer be required to depend entirely on advertising, newsstand sales, subscriptions and donations because a new and far more accountable system would be in place. It would, for example, provide a way for any journalist or journalistic organization in the "long tail" to find paying customers for their work.
EmanciPay differs from other payment models (subscriptions, newsstand, tip jars) by providing customers with the ability to choose what they wish to pay and how they'll pay it, with minimum friction -- and with full choice about what they disclose about themselves.


''Q: Is EmanciPay a micropayments model?''
EmanciPay will also support credit for referrals, requests for service, feedback and other relationship support mechanisms, all at the control of the user. For example, EmanciPay can provide quick and easy ways for listeners to pay for public radio broadcasts or podcasts, for readers to pay for otherwise "free" papers or blogs, for listeners to pay to hear music and support artists, for users to issue promises of payment for for stories or programs -- all without requiring the individual to disclose unnecessary private information, or to become a "member" -- although these options are kept open.


No. EmanciPay will involve what might be called "microaccounting," however, by keeping logs and histories that inform the user about what media content he or she has consumed. This will aid in valuing that content. Users will also be able to set what might be called "microprices" on items such as songs heard on radio and other music streaming sources, such as Pandora or Last.fm. A listener could, for example, say he or she will pay 1¢ per song, and have payments roll over when they reach a sum large enough to make the transaction worthwhile. Willingness to pay can also be aggregated among multiple users. There are lots of ways to arrange this. But micropayments have proven problematic so far and we have no intent to visit the same problems with EmanciPay.
This will scaffold genuine relationships between buyers and sellers in the media marketplace. It will also give deeper meaning to "membership" in non-profits. (Under the current system, "membership" generally means putting one's name on a pitch list for future contributions, and not much more than that.)


''Q: How will you be able to measure whether or not EmanciPay has really made a difference?''
EmanciPay will also connect the sellers' CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems with customers' VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) systems, supporting rich and participatory two-way relationships. In fact, EmanciPay will by definition be a VRM system.


The primary measure would be monetary -- measurable as cash income to news producers from the consumers who, by paying, would become customers as well. Goals and benchmarks for measuring social effects would be established.
=== Micro-accounting ===
The idea of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment "micro-payments"] for goods on the Net has been around for a long time, and if often brought up as a potential business model for journalism by [http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1877191,00.html an article by Walter Isaacson] in Time Magazine. What ProjectVRM [http://blogs.harvard.edu/vrm/2009/02/11/emancipay/ suggests instead] is something we don't yet have, but very much need: ''micro-accounting'' for actual uses. These including reading, listening and watching.


A secondary measure would be membership activities other than those surrounding transaction.
Most of what we now call "content" is both free for the taking and worth more than $zero. How much more? We need to be able to say. In economic terms, demand needs to have a much wider range of signals it can give to supply.


''Q: What un-met need does EmanciPay answer?''
So, as currently planned, EmanciPay would -
# Provide a single and easy way that consumers of "content" can become customers of it. In the current system -- which isn't one -- every artist, every musical group, every public radio and TV station, has his, her or its own way of taking in contributions from those who appreciate the work. This can be arduous and time-consuming for everybody involved. (Imagine trying to pay separately every musical artist you like, for all your enjoyment of each artists work.) What EmanciPay proposes, however, is not a replacement for existing systems, but a new system that can supplement existing fund-raising systems -- one that can soak up much of today's MLOTT: Money Left On The Table.
# Provide ways for individuals to look back through their media usage histories, inform themselves about what they have been enjoying, and to determine how much it is worth to them. The Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP), and later the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), both came up with "rates and terms that would have been negotiated in the marketplace between a willing buyer and a willing seller" -- language that first appeared in the 1995 Digital Performance Royalty Act (DPRA), and was tweaked in 1998 by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), under which both the CARP and the CRB operated.  The rates they came up with peaked at $.0001 per "performance" (a song or recording), per listener. EmanciPay creates the "willing buyer" that the DPRA thought wouldn't exist.
# Stigmatize non-payment for worthwhile media goods. This is where "social" will finally come to be something more than yet another tech buzzmodifier.


Media and other free-for-the-taking creative works need a new business model. In spite of the shift of advertising from other media to digital ones, little of this money finds its way to supporting, for example, participatory journalism, where so much good and pioneering work is taking place.
All these require micro-accounting, not micro-payments. In fact micro-accounting can inform ordinary payments that can be made in clever new ways that should satisfy everybody with an interest in seeing artists compensated fairly for their work. An individual listener, for example, can say "I want to pay 1¢ for every song I hear on the radio," and "I'll send [http://www.soundexchange.com/ SoundExchange] a lump sum of all the pennies wish to pay for songs I hear over the course of a year, along with an accounting of what artists and songs I've listened to" -- and leave dispersal of those totaled pennies up to the kind of agency that likes, and can be trusted, to do that kind of thing.


EmanciPay will create that model. It will also go beyond monetary support to include means for establishing working relationships between the buyers and sellers of media products, so demand can find supply and vice versa.
Similar systems can also be put in place for readers of newspapers, blogs and other journals.
 
What's important is that the control is in the hands of the individual, and that the accounting and dispersal systems work the same way for everybody.
There is also the need to address the likelihood that advertising -- the primary source of income for many media enterprises -- will either be severely diminished or go away, simply because ways will be found for demand to find supply that are more efficient than the guesswork that advertising involves. EmanciPay will be one way to take advantage of this inevitable shift in the marketplace

Revision as of 09:23, 19 July 2021

Overview

Simply put, Emancipay makes it easy for anybody to pay (or offer to pay) —

  1. as much as they like
  2. however they like
  3. for whatever they like
  4. on their own terms

— or at least to start with that full set of options, and to work out differences with sellers easily and with minimal friction.

Emancipay turns consumers (aka users) into customers by giving them a pricing gun (something which in the past only sellers used) and their own means to make offers, to pay outright, and to escrow the intention to pay when price and other requirements are met. And to be able to do this at scale across all sellers, much as cash, browsers, credit cards and email clients do the same. Payments themselves can also be escrowed.

In slightly more technical terms, EmanciPay is a payment framework for customers operating with full agency in the open marketplace, and at scale. It operates on open protocols and standards, so it can be used by any buyer, seller or intermediary.

It was conceived as a way to pay for music, journalism, or what any artist brings into the world. But it can apply to anything. For example, [subscriptions], which have become by 2021 a giant fecosystem in which every seller has separate and non-substitutable scale across all subscribers, while subscribers have zero scale across all sellers, with the highly conditional exceptions of silo'd commercial intermediaries. As [Customer Commons] puts it,

There’s also not much help coming from the subscription management services we have on our side: Truebill, Bobby, Money Dashboard, Mint, Subscript Me, BillTracker Pro, Trim, Subby, Card Due, Sift, SubMan, and Subscript Me. Nor from the subscription management systems offered by Paypal, Amazon, Apple or Google (e.g. with Google Sheets and Google Doc templates). All of them are too narrow, too closed and exclusive, too exposed to the surveillance imperatives of corporate giants, and too vested in the status quo.

That status quo sucks (see here, or just look up "subscription hell"), and it’s way past time to unscrew it.) But how?

The better question is where?

The answer to that is on our side: the customer’s side.

While EmanciPay was first conceived by ProjectVRM as a way to make live payments to nonprofits and to provide a new monetization method for publishers. it also works as a counterpart to sellers' subscription systems in what Zuora (a supplier of subscription management systems to the publishing industry, including The Guardian and Financial Times) calls the "subscription economy", which it says "is built on ever changing relationships with your customers". Since relationships are two-way by nature, EmanciPay is one way that customers can manage their end, while publisher-side systems such as Zuora's manage the other. (To our knowledge, it is still the first and only way.)

Emancipay economic case

EmanciPay provides a new form of economic signaling not available to individuals, either on the Net or before the Net became available as a communications medium. EmanciPay will use open standards and be comprised of open source code. While any commercial [Fourth party] can use EmanciPay (or its principles, or any parts of it they like), EmanciPay's open and standard framework will support fourth parties by making them substitutable, much as the open standards of email (smtp, pop3, imap) make email systems substitutable. (Each has what Joe Andrieu calls service endpoint portability.)

EmanciPay is an instrument of customer independence from all of the billion (or so) commercial entities on the Net, each with its own arcane and silo'd systems for engaging and managing customer relations, as well as receipt, acknowledgement and accounting for payments from customers.

Use Case Background

EmanciPay was conceived originally as a way to provide a customers with the means to signal interest and ability to pay for media and creative works (most of which are freely available on the Web, if not always free of charge). Through EmanciPay, demand and supply can relate, converse and transact business on mutually beneficial terms, rather than only on terms provided by the countless different silo'd systems we have today, each serving to hold the customer captive, and causing much inconvenience and friction in the process.

Media goods were chosen for several reasons: 1) because most are available for free, even if they cost money, or are behind paywalls; 2) paywalls, which are cookie-based, cannot relate to individuals an anything other than submissive and dependent parties (and each browser a users employs carries a different set of cookies); 3) both media companies and non-profits are constantly looking for new sources of revenue; and 4) all methods of intermediating payment choices are either silo'd by the seller or silo'd by intermediators, discouraging participation by individuals.

What the marketplace requires are new business and social contracts that ease payment and stigmatize non-payment for creative goods. The friction involved in voluntary payment is still high, even on the Web, where one must go through complex ceremonies even to make simple payments. There is no common and easy way either to keep track of what media (free or otherwise) we use (see Media Logging), to determine what it might be worth, and to pay for it easily and in standard ways — to many different suppliers. (Again, each supplier has its own system for accepting payments.)

EmanciPay differs from other payment models (subscriptions, newsstand, tip jars) by providing customers with the ability to choose what they wish to pay and how they'll pay it, with minimum friction -- and with full choice about what they disclose about themselves.

EmanciPay will also support credit for referrals, requests for service, feedback and other relationship support mechanisms, all at the control of the user. For example, EmanciPay can provide quick and easy ways for listeners to pay for public radio broadcasts or podcasts, for readers to pay for otherwise "free" papers or blogs, for listeners to pay to hear music and support artists, for users to issue promises of payment for for stories or programs -- all without requiring the individual to disclose unnecessary private information, or to become a "member" -- although these options are kept open.

This will scaffold genuine relationships between buyers and sellers in the media marketplace. It will also give deeper meaning to "membership" in non-profits. (Under the current system, "membership" generally means putting one's name on a pitch list for future contributions, and not much more than that.)

EmanciPay will also connect the sellers' CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems with customers' VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) systems, supporting rich and participatory two-way relationships. In fact, EmanciPay will by definition be a VRM system.

Micro-accounting

The idea of "micro-payments" for goods on the Net has been around for a long time, and if often brought up as a potential business model for journalism by an article by Walter Isaacson in Time Magazine. What ProjectVRM suggests instead is something we don't yet have, but very much need: micro-accounting for actual uses. These including reading, listening and watching.

Most of what we now call "content" is both free for the taking and worth more than $zero. How much more? We need to be able to say. In economic terms, demand needs to have a much wider range of signals it can give to supply.

So, as currently planned, EmanciPay would -

  1. Provide a single and easy way that consumers of "content" can become customers of it. In the current system -- which isn't one -- every artist, every musical group, every public radio and TV station, has his, her or its own way of taking in contributions from those who appreciate the work. This can be arduous and time-consuming for everybody involved. (Imagine trying to pay separately every musical artist you like, for all your enjoyment of each artists work.) What EmanciPay proposes, however, is not a replacement for existing systems, but a new system that can supplement existing fund-raising systems -- one that can soak up much of today's MLOTT: Money Left On The Table.
  2. Provide ways for individuals to look back through their media usage histories, inform themselves about what they have been enjoying, and to determine how much it is worth to them. The Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP), and later the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), both came up with "rates and terms that would have been negotiated in the marketplace between a willing buyer and a willing seller" -- language that first appeared in the 1995 Digital Performance Royalty Act (DPRA), and was tweaked in 1998 by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), under which both the CARP and the CRB operated. The rates they came up with peaked at $.0001 per "performance" (a song or recording), per listener. EmanciPay creates the "willing buyer" that the DPRA thought wouldn't exist.
  3. Stigmatize non-payment for worthwhile media goods. This is where "social" will finally come to be something more than yet another tech buzzmodifier.

All these require micro-accounting, not micro-payments. In fact micro-accounting can inform ordinary payments that can be made in clever new ways that should satisfy everybody with an interest in seeing artists compensated fairly for their work. An individual listener, for example, can say "I want to pay 1¢ for every song I hear on the radio," and "I'll send SoundExchange a lump sum of all the pennies wish to pay for songs I hear over the course of a year, along with an accounting of what artists and songs I've listened to" -- and leave dispersal of those totaled pennies up to the kind of agency that likes, and can be trusted, to do that kind of thing.

Similar systems can also be put in place for readers of newspapers, blogs and other journals. What's important is that the control is in the hands of the individual, and that the accounting and dispersal systems work the same way for everybody.