Posted on Categories Personal

Paying for the Web: Umm, no

(Via garret) Marshall Brain posits the idea of How “Penny Per Page” Might Work on his Howstuffworks website. He suggests that you, me, and the rest of the websters pay a penny per page view to finance the web and particularly the content like Google and ESPN that we all love so much.

Worried about sites that would simply take advantage by popping open huge numbers of new windows? Don’t be: “The billing mechanism should track for and eliminate charges for that, as well as for pages that auto-refresh themselves, error and non-existant pages, pages arrived at by pressing the back button, duplicate pages and so on.”

Just a few other concerns, which the article doesn’t address:

  • Doesn’t this violate U.S. antitrust regulations?

  • Wasn’t this already proposed by the people behind micropayment systems like CyberCash, which have since failed miserably?

  • While $20 per month (his suggestion for monthly cap on the viewing fee) might not be much for an American, what about people in nations like China, India, and so on where $20 is a huge portion of their monthly income?

    Marshall, we all want to find ways to ensure that interesting, useful, and meaningful content continues to be available to all, so keep those ideas coming. In the meantime, stick to the really cool articles with which HowStuffWorks excels.