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Aaron Swartz Invents Proto Whuffie
Posted by Ernest Miller on Tuesday, September 16 @ 12:00:06 EDT File Sharing
"Whuffie" is the term that author and EFF activist Cory Doctorow coined for reputation based currency in his excellent first novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom [go read it - it can be downloaded in about a gazillion formats - Ed]. It is a pretty interesting concept, actually, and there is even a Whuffie Blog.

Hacker prodigy Aaron Swartz has proposed a new compulsory licensing scheme based on an anonymous cash concept that would operate in a similar manner to Whuffie (Fixed Compulsory Licensing). The government would collect a tax on IP connections, hard drives, etc. and in return provide taxpayers with cryptographically enabled gift certificates. Taxpayers could then give these gift certificates to the artists they like.

There a number of implementation issues that would need to be addressed, however the real problem is the way the system is setup. Whuffie is simply not ready for prime time. Aaron claims that:

Yes, it’s accurate. The money goes to the artists that the people like and want to support, as chosen by the people themselves. There are a few edge cases. For example, if everyone listens to but hates Jerry Falwell, they might choose not to give him any money, even though they’ve taken advantage of his work. I think this is an acceptable problem — the majority of people won’t bother to change the defaults [your computer tracks what you listen to and distributes gift certificates based on this] and even if they do, hey, it’s their money.

Unfortunately, he is wrong. This is basically a tax in which people get to decide who receives the windfall. The only caveat is that the recipient must be an "artist." I can just imagine the many artists that will benefit from this tax: The National Rifle Association Marching Band, the Republican Party Barbershop Quartet, Rev. Elmer Gantry's Gospel Choir, and MC Rush "Ditto" Limbaugh.

 
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Re: Aaron Swartz Invents Proto Whuffie (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 16 @ 15:35:43 EDT
Why are all of your "down side" examples targeted at conservative groups? This has nothing to do with the discussion at hand, but it sure paints a vivid picture of your political views.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: Aaron Swartz Invents Proto Whuffie (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 16 @ 15:46:27 EDT
Regardless of his (admittedly humorous) examples, the concept he's trying to get across is one that you have to acknowledge. Don't dodge the issue. Do you think he's right (even if he's one of them left-wingers)?


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fortunately, Shwartz is right (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 16 @ 16:05:08 EDT
In his scheme, the vast majority of money would go by default to people who produced the content you consumed; hopefully, some of yours would be coming to me as you read this :-)

The amount that would go otherwise would be comparable to the (currently very small) proportion of content that is paid for, because it would involve the same "mental transaction costs".

Minus any where the stimulus for paying is from conscience, since you know the default is honest.

Also minus any that that could described similarly to "Sure, I read that National Enquirer article about Madonna, but I sent my money to Project Gutenberg anyway."

As for the tiny residuum: Get a life, pal.



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Immediate downfall (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 16 @ 18:33:01 EDT
No, my money would go (like most other people very quickly, I think) to The Band Of Me. So the government takes my money, and I allocate it all back to myself. Nobody gets paid except beaurocrats, which seem in line with the author's implied socialist leanings.


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Thanks for the thoughtful post! (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 16 @ 19:08:39 EDT
Thanks a lot for the post. Your problem is one of the best I've heard so far.

- Aaron


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Re: Aaron Swartz Invents Proto Whuffie (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 16 @ 21:50:22 EDT
I have a simple question. What about those who don't use the Internet to illegally download content? Why should we be forced to pay for a service we neither want nor need?

- Chris


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Voting and Fairness (Score: 1, Informative)
by Anonymous on Wednesday, September 17 @ 19:48:20 EDT
I've written a brief post about the fairness of voting schemes like Aaron's:
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cmusings/2003/09/17#a350

---Derek Slater


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