Flattr Now Open Beta
I’ve written several times in the past weeks about Flattr, the micropayment system.
Yesterday, they announced they are going from closed beta testing to open beta. This means anyone who wants to can sign up without the need for an invitation. It also of course means they still consider themselves to be in the testing phase, but my experience with it so far has been very good and it all seems to work well.
To briefly summarize, with Flattr you can give small amounts of money to this and other websites which have signed up and have a Flattr button. You choose the amount of money you want to commit to giving away each month, with a minimum of €2, and this amount is spread among the people who’s Flattr buttons you click on. There are some costs, the fees for depositing and withdrawing money, and a 10% commission to Flattr themselves, which they promise to try to lower over time.
If you have a website yourself, you can also solicit donations through Flattr. There is also a service called imflattrd, where you can create an online profile and flattr button even if you don’t have a website. In particular this is useful with social networking tools.
For more detailed information, have a look at the Flattr website by following the link above.
I would really encourage all readers to become part of Flattr. As well as being able to donate small amounts of money to my efforts here, there are an increasing number of other sites accepting Flattr donations as well. The amount of money you have to commit is relatively small. After you have paid fees and the like, the minimum cost is around $30/yr, and if you have a website this will be partly or completely offset by donations others give to you.
Minute Meme: Copying is not Theft
Following up on my posts from yesterday, this is a 1 minute video meant to be a response to similar short blurbs sponsored by the recording industry. I would encourage you to read about the background of the video at it’s original source. In particular they are not necessarily suggesting copying can’t be harmful in the end, they just feel copying can be a good thing and the true definition of copying is too important to be distorted by those who want to discourage us from doing it.
Animation, lyrics, and tune by Nina Paley. Music arranged by Nik Phelps; vocals by Connie Champagne.
For Flattr users, you can flattr them here:
questioncopyright.org
Wikileaks: Afghanistan War Diary 2004-2009
Arguably one of the most significant uses of the Internet to publish information that belongs in the public domain. You can read more about it and access the documents on the Wikileaks site.
Recently the Swedish Pirate Party, who have two seats in the EU parliament and is their own ISP, have offered ISP services to Wikileaks should they find it useful.
For those of you who are Flattr users, you can flattr them here:
Wikileaks: Afghanistan War Diary 2004-2009
For those of you who aren’t Flattr users and are interested, contact me for an invitation code or sign up for a code on the Flattr website.
Pirate Party
Probably a lot of people reading this have heard of the Swedish Pirate Party or perhaps The Pirate Bay website where you can find things like videos, music, software and other things to download, copyrighted and otherwise.
In fact the idea of the Pirate Party has spread worldwide, and many countries have similar emerging parties.
The Pirate Party really came to peoples attention when The Pirate Bay website was raided by the Swedish police. It was raided, not because it was in violation of Swedish or other law, it was raided on the request of the US government who threatened trade sanctions against Sweden(!) if they didn’t shut the website down. In Sweden this is illegal. Politicians are not allowed to request the police to do this, but they did it anyway.
In the following video, Peter Sunde, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay website tells the story of The Pirate Bay, the Swedish Pirate Party and Flattr:
In the last European elections the Swedish Pirate Party won 2 seats in the EU Parliament. Since the ISP of The Pirate Bay was ordered by a judge to disconnect the website, the Swedish Pirate Party decided to become an ISP and now hosts The Pirate Bay website in the Swedish parliament building. The Swedish constitution gives them immunity from prosecution as long as their actions are consistent with their party mandate. This is the reason The Pirate Bay website is still available on the Internet.
I am no spokesperson for the Swedish or any other Pirate Party. In fact one of the things I’ve discovered recently is there is a huge diversity of opinions within these parties. As a rule however, these parties are opposed to the injustices imposed by copyright holders on users of the Internet. These include lawsuits, threats of lawsuits, disconnection of Internet service and other actions.
I think many Pirate Party members feel like I do, that downloading anything from the Internet is a good thing. It is the nature of how the Internet works technically. It’s how information and computer tools are distributed and it’s how people communicate. This is simply an important aspect of how the Internet works, and people should use it as such.
Few people are opposed to creators of this content being paid! I think it’s a fine idea for people to be paid for their work. The idea of enforcing this payment by imposing rules on the use of the Internet is seriously flawed.
There are even some politicians who believe people who break these or other rules should have their Internet service disconnected! Can you imagine this? This is like taking away someone’s library card, because they’ve abused the information in the books.
In today’s world the Internet is far beyond a luxury. If you’re a person of any age in school, you’ll almost certainly receive a portion of your assignments on the Internet. Some companies now only bill via the Internet. It’s simply the largest and most important source of information and communication, and it’s not something you take away from someone because they’ve been bad! Already it’s a necessary part of life, and in the coming years it’s going to be even more important.
This video has some Dutch but it’s mostly in English, and features the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party talking a bit about the party principles:
While these principles apply now to the Internet, there are ramifications for Democracy as a whole. Do we want seed companies to someday be able to tell us we can’t trade seeds over the Internet?
Flattr People and Updates
Flattr is growing and you can now give money to people besides me!
At the top of the front page of this blog I have a new link labelled ‘Flattr‘, and on that page you will find a current list of flattr buttons for people who would like to display them here. Here’s the current list:
Søren Holt, plant breeder and author of the blog In the Toads Garden.
Tom Wagner, plant breeder and author of the blog Tater-Mater.
Lieven David, plant breeder and author of the website De Lusthof.
Tim Peters, plant breeder currently working on perennial food crops among other things.
Patrick Wiebe, the author of this blog, Bifurcated Carrots.
Kelly, author of the blog Populuxe, and maintainer of a private seed bank through which she shares seeds from her garden.
As of a few days ago, the flattr developers reported the number of flattr accounts was doubling every 7 days. There is now a major German newspaper with flattr buttons on all their online news articles.
The money calculations were also just done for the month of May, and several users earned more than €100. I earned 66 cents above and beyond what I paid in fees! I think that’s really good considering how few people are using it right now.
It’s no longer necessary to use PayPal. Many people complained about this. There is now another option, Moneybookers, where you can pay with a credit card as well as direct bank debit in a lot of countries (Germany, Netherlands and others).
I hope more readers of this blog, and bloggers in general will give it a try. It’s an important way you can show support for my work and that of others. To repeat something I said before, you have to think first about why you want to use it. There are three reasons:
- You want to give away money to other flattr users.
- You want to earn money, by doing something and asking others to support you.
- You want to do some combination of the above.
There is no free money with flattr. There is a fee for using it, but depending on how you use it this doesn’t need to be very much. It’s important to understand in advance it’s not free!
Flattr is still in beta testing, meaning some things may not work as you expect. I’ve been conversing with the developers, and they promise lots of new features are on the way.
It’s still necessary to have an invitation to use flattr, but these are becoming more common and I have several available if anyone is interested. Just send me an email. Every activated account can request 3 more invitations, so you’ll be able to invite friends. Soon it will be open to anyone who wants to join anyway.
