Copyright 2009-2010 © Digital Bazaar, Inc.
The PaySwarm web platform is an open standard that enables web browsers and web devices to perform micropayments and copyright-aware, peer-to-peer digital media distribution. This document is a list of all use cases that the PaySwarm specification is designed to address.
This document is merely a public working draft of a potential specification. It has no official standing of any kind and does not represent the support or consensus of any standards organisation.
Digital content piracy has been a significant disruption to the operation of the Web for over a decade. While this is partially due to a number of factors that are outside of the control of standards bodies, there remains one key oversight that the standards organizations could address that would enable new business models via the Web while reducing the incentive to illegally disseminate digital files. If Alice has a MP3 song that she would like to give Bob, there should be a simple mechanism to enable the legal duplication of that copyrighted work from Alice to Bob. There should be a standard mechanism for the legal exchange of commercially viable digital content.
At present, digital media sales on the Web is largely a producer to consumer model. Typically, sites like Apple iTunes, Amazon Music, Netflix, the Microsoft Zune store and other digital retailers create proprietary, Web-based store fronts to sell digital products to their customers. During the product sale, the item is either wrapped in Digital Rights Management technologies in an attempt to curb piracy or restrictively licensed only to the individual purchasing the digital good. This is strictly a corporation-to-consumer experience.
There currently is no secondary market for digital content sales due to the nature of digital media - reproducing a digital file is incredibly fast, cheap and easy. This fact has lead to a great amount of digital piracy, notably by peer-to-peer network technology such as Napster, BearShare, Morpheus, Gnutella, Kazaa and BitTorrent. While iTunes has claimed to make as many as 435,164 video sales per day through their store, the number of video downloads per day over Mininova, one of the largest BitTorrent networks (2008), approach close to 4,975,075 downloads per day. Close to ten times as much video traffic is served through a single BitTorrent community versus the number two digital video sales service in the world.
While it is still fairly unknown how much DRM, industry tactics, value proposition, platform access, file formats, convenience and digital kleptomania contribute to piracy - it can be said that each is a contributor to piracy in todays digital media ecosystem. By addressing some of the use cases outlined in this document, we may be able to address the following key areas that are currently overlooked by the major players: value proposition, platform access, file formats, and convenience. The end-goal is to create a standards-based peer-to-peer network, driven by open, flexible standards, that allow customers to help artists, production companies and creators of content to distribute digital goods in exchange for financial compensation. Just as physical storefronts help to distribute products on behalf of their manufacturers, digital storefonts can help to distribute content on behalf of their creators.
Providing a standard mechanism for web browsers to exchange digital goods in exchange for monetary compensation would provide a much needed core feature of the Web that has been a demonstrated need for over a decade.
Jude blogs about music and movies and has achieved a respectable following of people that read his blog. He would like to sell content that he writes about to his many readers, but doesn't have the music and movie industry connections to acquire content for distribution. Typically, content deals require an multi-million dollar, advance payment in return for the right to sell content. This high up-front cost removes many potential sellers, harming the overall incentive to distribute for people that run smaller music websites and blogs.
There are many existing clearing houses for content on the web today. If those clearing houses were able to manage artist content, content creators could use the clearing house to setup the distribution rights for their content. Smaller content distributors, like Jude, could then offer content to their site visitors without worrying about the high-cost or management overhead associated with managing content catalogs.
Jane, who is an independent film maker, has just finished her documentary and wishes to distribute it to a very large audience. She does not have the resources to provide High-Definition streaming of her content to her fans. She would also like to charge enough for the current documentary in order to cover the production costs of the next documentary. She could use BitTorrent to distribute her work, but it lacks the ability to collect payment on her behalf. She would like to give some of the proceeds of each sale to those that will help her distribute her documentary.
Ideally, Jane would register her work with a content clearinghouse. That clearinghouse would provide the reference file which would be used to seed the network. Once enough downloads have been performed, others on the network could distribute the file in exchange for monetary compensation for providing a download source.
Tellulah is a DJ and would like to setup a non-profit Internet radio station to stream Weekly Top 40 songs along with a mix of independent music. She would like to cover her expenses as well as the standard per-song ephemeral broadcasting fee set by the US Copyright Arbitration Panel to ensure she is legally compliant at all times. Registering and tracking royalties can be a very daunting and time consuming process. A mechanism that reduces the burden of legal compliance could drive more stations to come online.
Online radio broadcasters are also presently limited in their ability to grow their stations due to the ephemeral broadcasting royalties that must be paid on a per person/per song basis. Running these stations make it difficult to collect, track and distribute royalties in a way that makes it easy to integrate into the web browser. Often, donating or signing up to a single download provider can be more trouble than it is worth. If there was a universal mechanism to pay very small amounts for data streams on the Web, new legal avenues for distributing content legally would be enabled.
Joss directs and produces a number of excellent television shows. Over the years, he has garnered a strong online following but doesn't have the required numbers for a long television production run. He would like to distribute his shows via the Web. Joss would like to partner with an advertising network to provide audio and video advertisements to cover the costs related to the production and distribution of his shows. In order to do this, the system that he uses must be able to credit and debit payment accounts accordingly whenever advertising is inserted into the content stream.
When a fan watches each episode, they can opt to pay for the episode in full, pay for reduced advertisements, or request that advertisers cover the entire cost of the show. Advertisers can choose to provide small payments for anonymous advertisements, or larger payments if customers provide advertising details and preferences to the advertisers.
Lars would like to ensure that the purchase process for a digital good is streamlined as much as possible into the web browser that he has created. When somebody uses the web browser, he would like to display a "Buy" button in the address bar. The media details such as the title of the work, the price and the details required to perform a swarming purchase would be lifted from the web page.
The purchase process would be as simple as the buyer clicking the Buy button and watching a download progress dialog appear on the screen. Account and payment details could be stored in the web browser to ease the purchase process. Not bothering the person browsing for payment details would be especially useful in scenarios where very small payments were needed to access content.
Gregor runs a fairly active high-definition movie download site. His data transmission prices are high during peak hours and low during off-peak hours. He would like to give his customers the option to negotiate for lower download prices if they download their movies during the off-peak times. He would also like to reserve the right to refuse a contract re-negotation attempt if he has not made a pre-set sales quota and even raise his prices if it would make sense for his business.
The ability to change prices based on market demand would enable a more dynamic marketplace, leading to more competition between download providers. Giving buyers the ability to re-negotiate terms of sale would not only give them a sense of empowerment, but could eliminate bad pricing behavior on the network, leading to overall market efficiencies.
The Association of Science Journalists Conference would like to present a series of live keynotes by luminaries in their respective fields. The presentations would be open to conference attendees or those that pay for a virtual day pass for the conference. The license could be purchased separately and then could be used to access a number of multicast sources that play at different times. Remote access to journalists would be granted at a different payment rate than non-members.
It is important that a separation is made between the content license and the download contract. The content license specifies usage and access rights. The download contract specifies the download negotiables, such as payment rate, speed and other details associated with the data stream. By separating the two concerns, we can allow network specialization to occur between those that would grant licenses for digital content and those that would deliver digital content. Ensuring that both could operate semi-autonomously would allow semi-independent optimization of market variables.
Luciano has purchased a song from an online music store. The band that created the song would like to give people that purchased any song from their last album the chance to view their latest music videos and behind-the-scenes footage.
Since Luciano's browser was used to make the purchase, it has a digitally signed receipt of the sale. When he visits the band's website, it asks his browser for a receipt that proves that he has purchased a song from their latest album. The digital receipt is sent to the website, is verified, and Luciano is allowed into the special VIP section of the band's website.
Penelope has completed her fourth book of photography. She would like to charge a very small amount for her travel expenses and supplies but doesn't want to make a living from the sale of her book. Penelope does, however, want to make a number of contributions to charities that she would like to support as well as give her fans the ability to contribute to their favorite charities.
Giving individuals on the network the ability to add optional payees to licenses and contracts would enable payment models such as online tipping for artists, donations to charity, and batched payments to a particular initiative or cause to be made along-side the purchase.
Werner owns an independent software development company. He would like to provide his software application to a broad audience while ensuring that it is uniquely tailored to each of his customers. He has experience writing code and would like every application package that is distributed to have a unique customer key embedded in the installation program for the purposes of providing customer support to those that have received software keys. The purchaser's information could also be filled out automatically in the software registration screen for the software at the time of purchase.
Having a binary stream processor would enable customized data files to be sold on the network. The most difficult aspect of the binary stream processor would be ensuring that the stream processor's ABI was compatible across major processing architectures as well as remotely executable. There are a number of security concerns that are also related with executing arbitrary code to mutate data streams. It may be required that binary stream processors must undergo a code-review before they are allowed on the network.
The editor is thankful for reviews and contributions from (in alphabetical order):
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