Peter writes:
> > To earn Mojo tokens, users can sell their extra bandwidth
> > or disk space and act as servers, or create their own
> > service that others want to pay for. A successful system
> > would also likely include money exchangers who buy and
> > sell Mojo tokens in exchange for dollars.
>
> Doesn't this create a private currency? Many US banks used to issue
> their own currency, but around the turn of the 19-20th century the
> Fedz slapped a 10% tax on any transaction which didn't use USG
> issued scrip. I could see them attempting to apply that tax to this,
> and many other e-scrip operations.
What you really need is a distributed ecash system. You mention
earlier banking eras -- some of those included free banking --
multiple competing banks with free floating exchanges in the form of
discounts based on the reputation of the banks.
That model would seem to best suit distributed publishing -- no
central point of control, a censor resistant payment system. Anything
less and the payment system will come under attack by the censors, if
the system can not function without the payment system.
One could build a competing set of banks -- let anyone who can
maintain enough reputation to make their tokens worth anything run a
bank. One would think the rate of exchange or discount between
currencies would have high exchange rate fluctuations, but in practice
it may not be that bad. Sale of information content can withstand a
bit of fluctuation, with zero copying cost.
I reckon attempting to run a single bank would be a mistake -- it
might last for a while, but "profiting" from the liberation of
copyright material, and erosion of the copyright laws even with a
mechanism to benefit the authors is risky. The legal system and the
author's cartels are accustomed to demanding payment on their terms,
so this would give AZI a disadvantage in negotiating deals -- it would
be like Napster negotiating it's way out of it's current position.
The converse -- a distributed payment system -- would seem to reduce
the ability of AZI to even have the power to negotiate deals, as the
banking system would be independent.
However, AZI could still make money using the same mechanism content
authors may -- rely on the same payment mechanism, and suggest the
users of the system voluntarily contribute funds to AZI as some user
chosen percentage of transactions. If you keep the suggested
contribution low enough and provide good service, and have good
reputation (branding) people won't have sufficient incentive to modify
the default policy. Set the default too high and third party
developers step in, and / or the user base adjusts the contribution
level downwards.
An area where differential rates of pay can come into Mojo, or Eric
Hughes recursive auction market is in the timeliness, or ease of
location of the data. For example a powerful author may pay many
search agents to suggest it's servers, or servers paying it a high cut
as the primary location. People who care more about price look
harder, or change software to avoid overcharging servers.
A natural equilibrium should form, where the revenue a digital
producer can hope to pull in depends upon timeliness, user cooperation
and PR (users feeling they are getting value for money and that the
author is a cool guy will tend to be less likely to adjust the payment
down), convenience (ease of locating). This is the future of digital
content distribution and pricing. Charge the most efficient margin
above resource cost. Service resources will become distributed and
commoditised. Censorship and government and legal system subsidies
for author cartels will fade.
Adam
