Re: Micropayments and principle 4

Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> 
> Priniciple 4 states:
> 
> 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;
...
> 
> 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, but that doesn't really feel right to me.

Why not?  This is my reading.  I do *not* want to make payments, even 
micropayments, as a result of doing a GET, without have done an explicit 
prior authorization.  Obviously some sort of distributed authorization 
framework is interesting so you don't have to do it separately with 
every site, but at the end of the day I think principle #4 holds up.

Hmm.. perhaps a re-write along the lines of not incurring *new* 
obligations or some such.  Or not "make a commitment" or some such? 
Suggestions? -Tim

Received on Monday, 9 September 2002 14:55:14 UTC