Re: HTTP 402 (payment required) -- the missing link

I currently believe that the standard for automated 402 that names a
price should
specify the receiving ledger and the currency using a DHT key rather
than reference to a centrally maintained list of currencies. Can a
ledger hold more than one currency? Probably not as elegant as
seperate ledgers for each currency, which would be needed anyway, so
what currency is required to buy the access can be deferred until
after contacting the ledger for an access token. So I see the ideal
402 carrying
two data, (1) 160 bits of hash key for where to send the payment and
(2) forty more bits for the price for one view, in the atoms of
whatever the named ledger accepts. These 200 bits could be expressed
neatly as a static 50-character Crockford-encoded ASCII string.
Offering such a string with your 403 constitutes an offer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table


There is a lot of room for creativity concerning what happens next and
why, but I'm not currently aware
of a better general solution for ad-hoc identification of distributed
resources than libdht.

For instance, the client then connects to the specified ledger and
does whatever it has to do to get another 200-byte string redeemable
for in-house credit at the web server, however many views it will be
good for, which when presented along with a request for a
payment-required resource will get the ledger for the session debited
at the web server.

Something like that.




On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 3:52 PM, Melvin Carvalho
<melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 17 June 2015 at 01:57, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I've implemented HTTP 402 a few times for payment protected resources.
>>
>> While it works well enough, I ran into a problem.
>>
>> If payment is required, how does the client know what to do next?
>>
>> I think ive found the missing link here, and wanted to run it by people
>> here.
>>
>> What about sending a Location: header telling the client where to go next?
>>
>> Then the client can find all the information about how to pay, their
>> balance, the cost etc.
>>
>> This should enable smooth work flows for payment protected resources, pay
>> walls etc.
>
>
> So I raised http 402 with timbl today, to ask the history.
>
> He did invent ("scribbled down was his term :)") 402 the idea being that the
> web should be a platform for both paid and unpaid content.
>
> He said he originally envisioned it as being quite important, else it
> wouldnt have been put before 403!
>
> He also said the w3c payments group might be a good place to standardize
> 402.
>
>>
>>
>> Thoughts?
>
>



-- 
Every contention or denial must be proper, warranted, and supportable.

Received on Friday, 26 June 2015 21:53:41 UTC