From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 10:31:52 +0800
To: Digital Bearer Settlement List <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: Cypherpunks defeat?
Message-ID: <v04011714b2355c5105ab@[139.167.130.246]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Forwarded with Andrew's permission...

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text


Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 09:15:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: Andrew Odlyzko <amo@research.att.com>
To: rah@shipwright.com
Subject: Re: Cypherpunks defeat?

Bob,

Concerning the recent posting by Jim Donald about micropayments,
let me say that as a co-inventor of a micropayment scheme
(presented at the FC'97 conference) I do see a role for them.
However, I do think it will be a limited role.  The reason
is economic.  It is not just that people don't want to be
"nickeled and dimed."  A more substantive reason is that in
most situations the content producers can get more money
from aggregating content.  I have analyzed this in papers
such as

The bumpy road of electronic commerce, in "WebNet 96 - World
Conf. Web Soc. Proc.," H. Maurer, ed., AACE, 1996, pp. 378-389.

and

Fixed fee versus unit pricing for information goods: competition,
equilibria, and price wars, P. C. Fishburn, A. M. Odlyzko, and
R. C. Siders, First Monday 2(7) (July 1997), http://www.firstmonday.dk/.
Also to appear in "Internet Publishing and Beyond: The Economics of
Digital Information and Intellectual Property," D. Hurley, B. Kahin,
and H. Varian, eds., MIT Press, 1998.

Both are available at

  http://www.research.att.com/~amo/doc/eworld.html

Best regards,
Andrew


************************************************************************
Andrew Odlyzko                                      amo@research.att.com
AT&T Labs - Research                                voice:  973-360-8410
http://www.research.att.com/~amo                    fax:    973-360-8178
************************************************************************

--- end forwarded text


-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'