Re: Micropayments and principle 4 (retrieval is safe)

On Mon, 2002-09-09 at 08:53, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> 
> Priniciple 4 states:

(I doubt the principle numbers will be stable over time,
so I added some content words to the subject)

> 4. Representation retrieval is safe:
> Agents do not incur obligations by retrieving a representation.
> 
> I am worried that this precludes the eventual development of 
> micropayments; in particular pay for page models. Although as yet 
> theoretical, one of the explicit goals of micropayments is to make 
> the cost low enough that the user does not need to decide whether to 
> pay for each song/article/stock quote/picture/movie etc. They can 
> just click through the site, read what they want, and have the 
> appropriate pennies deducted from their account or charged to their 
> credit card. Obviously this involves the incurrence of financial 
> obligations.
> 
> Perhaps this can be argued around by claiming the obligation is 
> actually only incurred when the user signs up for the micropayment 
> scheme, not when the user reads the page,

exactly.
http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/get7#obligations

> but that doesn't really 
> feel right to me.

Why not?


-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/