https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/14/facebook-punks-partners-again-how-publishers-can-fight-back/ talks about Europe's royalty model for publishing, wherein writers/journalists get paid when their material is posted on social media (i.e., when a social network makes ad money by linking to the content), the same way musicians/labels get paid every time their pieces are played on the radio.
It sounds great.
Then I remembered Steve Yegge's epic post deconstructing how devilishly complicated the details of complex things like this can get: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized-marijuana.html
🤣 "WHAT THE EVER-LOVING *FUCK* ARE YOU PEOPLE SMOKING? HUH? HAVE YOU EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT THIS PROJECT FOR MORE THAN A MILLISECOND? THE SPEC FOR THIS PROJECT WILL BE 5,000 PAGES! IT WILL TAKE THOUSANDS OF MAN-YEARS TO IMPLEMENT, AND *NOBODY* WILL UNDERSTAND HOW IT WORKS OR HOW TO USE IT…!" 😂
But I hasten to add: just because the exact mechanics of this system will be extraordinarily byzantine does not mean it won't get built, nor that it won't wildly succeed. We've seen crazier things.
