How Reddit Could Use Bitcoin to Become a Decentralized Media Platform

[Robin_Good]

This is pretty interesting method. The problem is someone would post it online for free or with advertisements at some point.

Yes but I think those people would typically be at the bottom of the chain, so ultimately it might be served up for free, but everyone has already made their money at that point. Some people might try to wait until it's free, whereas some people would probably be willing to pay a little to get a faster and more immediate download.

[logger]

Interesting. A bit of rant nevertheless: you associate piracy with the unwillingness to pay and leeching free content all day long, but I believe this is rather the tip of the iceberg with loads of money movement below. An exclusive service is not for free - and likely worth (so I've been told). I have the impression the key point is rather something else: convenience, quality and fast availability. But the old world seems to catch up with services like Hulu, Netflix and HBO to name.

The part that raised my eyebrows was where it was basically stated that paywalls are annoying, donations are useless and then a few minutes later you mentioned the awesome "Vitalik Buterin’s content monetization model". Oh well.. Convenience is also a big keyword here.
That being that, I'm curious where this is going to. Cheers and good luck!

[NotAtOld]

I've always thought an auction type business model would work for online media. A content creator puts his work up for sale at a certain price to one or many people willing to buy it. Once those individuals purchase it at that price they turn around and resell it at a lower price to more people. As the reselling continues the price drops very quickly, and everyone up the chain buying/reselling makes a small profit. The last people to buy the video would end up paying a very low price. You might also have to implement some kind of proof-of-bandwidth protocol since some people might be willing to pay for a faster download.

Agree with the convenience factor. It would have to be ridiculously easy to get bitcoins and spend them on various projects for this to work. The difference between a regular pay wall and Vitalik's model is that the pay wall is crowdfunded. Having said thay, it's still not ideal, which is why the voting method or something else could give audiences the proper incentives.

[cccarnation]

This is pretty interesting method. The problem is someone would post it online for free or with advertisements at some point.

Yes but I think those people would typically be at the bottom of the chain, so ultimately it might be served up for free, but everyone has already made their money at that point. Some people might try to wait until it's free, whereas some people would probably be willing to pay a little to get a faster and more immediate download.

This would be even better if there was a week or so between auctions. I suppose the people selling the content each round also have an incentive to not leak it. They don't necessarily lose that incentive after selling either because it could mess up their opportunity in future distributions.

[collinstar]

This is pretty interesting method. The problem is someone would post it online for free or with advertisements at some point.

Yes but I think those people would typically be at the bottom of the chain, so ultimately it might be served up for free, but everyone has already made their money at that point. Some people might try to wait until it's free, whereas some people would probably be willing to pay a little to get a faster and more immediate download.

Actually wouldn't it make sense to just go to the 2nd to last layer before the price is free? Sort of like what Louis CK did with his stand up special. Just $5 to whoever wants it now. Freeloaders can get it off torrent sites later.