You may remember last week’s entry about micropayments and webcomics.
September 14th, 2003
You may remember last week’s entry about micropayments and
webcomics. Well, there have been a few high-profile responses: one
by Mister Webcomics Micropayments, Scott
McCloud, and one in the MIT
Technology Review. McCloud helpfully points out a mischaracterization I thought rather
glaring in Shirky’s original article:
“Fame vs. fortune” is right, but not in the way Shirky means. The effect of
fame on the Web is often to rob the author of his or her fortune through
excess bandwidth charges (a fact utterly glossed over in Shirky’s sunny claim
that “content gets cheaper as it gets more popular”). To accept any system
that punishes success in this way is to perpetuate an intolerable status quo.