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Originally Posted by jocampo
we cannot use cash when buying online, not cash in the strict usage of the word. I know about it, I'm a DBA ;-) ...
Paranoid about privacy? Get a P.O BOX, and pay everything cash. You can even buy a Kindle from Target or any brick store here in USA and later register with a Hotmail or Yahoo email.
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But most of these restrictions have nothing to do with the nature of the internet or with ebooks. I believe it would be technically trivial to set up a fully functional anonymous e-cash system using prepaid/top-up cards similar to how pay-as-you-go SIM cards operate. Plenty of companies would be delighted to set those up and accept them as payment (with no physical address required at all at any stage in the process), were it not for all those pesky government regulations intended to restrict money laundering, tax evasion and the like.
Loss of privacy is not really so much about the policies of retailers or the nature of the technology - it's because governments really, really, really dislike untraceable flows of money.
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Originally Posted by Giggleton
I think before a text gets access to the levy kitty, the text would have to pass a peer review process. That is where I think the random pool of people can come in, To determine if a text is worthy.
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So either it's a truly representative sample of the population and author payments are determined by the same people who lap up whatever ghostwritten celebrity pap is pushed out this week, or it's a non-representative sample and author payments are determined by whoever picks the reviewer pool.
I'm not sure the effects will be much different from the old-fashioned approach where writers either get paid by publishers if they sell well, or get paid by the government if the culture bureaucrats approve of them.