Jonathan, I can’t think of any examples of “where readers say what news they’d pay for”, much less any “that are user-friendly and common”. But to me that’s like asking for examples of the Internet when all we had were Compuserve, Prodigy and AOL.

As we said in Cluetrain ten years ago, a seller-dominated marketplace was put in place when Industry won the Industrial Revolution. The Internet Revolution is one where everybody wins — starting with customers.

And that’s why VRM starts with customers. It’s not a lot more complicated than that. At least as far as our ambitions go. Getting it done is a helluva lot more complicated.

I’m far more encouraged about working with industries that welcome VRM, such as public radio here in the U.S., than with ones that don’t (yet), such as newspapers. That’s why I’m dropping out of the whole fracas around micropayments as the next big hope for VRM. And proprietary kluges like Kachingle (which gets a big kiss from Editor & Publisher here.

I understand that ProjectVRM includes exploration of mechanisms to enable ‘users’ to express their wants, and any prices they would put upon satisfaction thereof.

It’s early days. I’m currently working on a very simple ‘use-case’, i.e. “I’ll pay you a penny for the next blog article you publish”. Even that could take some time establishing as a ‘user-friendly’ proposition. It may turn out to not be user-friendly at all. I have a hunch it will be. Others, as with PayChoice, have a hunch that enabling the price to be specified will be attractive. I’m not sure. There are many issues of friction and decision cost that will impact these things, let alone people becoming familiar with the whole concept of being enfranchised to bargain with vendors on more than their ‘take it or leave it’ basis.

Think of a system that permits all those interested in news to express what they are willing to pay for, whether just horse racing or ‘anything impacting tourism around the world’, or ‘everything that might be of potential interest to a typical resident of Madison, Wisconsin’. Imagine every single individual expressing an individual bargain, and that these may be collectively accepted (in whole or part) by the newspaper.

So I’d agree that if a newspaper refuses to consider any individual’s commission that isn’t for the whole shebang, they’re going to have fewer takers (and revenue) than if they said ‘Tell us what you’ll pay for, and if we can deliver it to you, we will accept your commission (should we consider it equitable)’.

This is diametrically opposed to the newspaper traditionalist’s current proposition for online delivery of “You can’t read it until you’ve paid a year’s subscription, and woe betide you if you quote any of our headlines or let anyone peer over your shoulder.”

It’s so diametrically opposite that, as Doc suggests, you should not look to the incumbent producers of intellectual work to develop this revenue model. It’s going to have to come from the people, the customer side, the public who would own the words that they pay for, pay to be produced and delivered to them.

This is of course heresy to immortal corporations who would own the words they produce for at least a couple of centuries. That theological schism prevents them perceiving the route to their salvation. The same schism can be observed between producers and customers of copyright/patent constrained software vs free software.

Free as in speech, not as in beer.

There is a large demand for news. That means there’s money involved, and a bargain to be made between those who have money and those who can supply the news to them. There’s also a large demand for liberty, and no good reason why this liberty should be suspended to benefit the owners of printing presses.

The people are taking their liberty back (whether publishers like it or not). What remains is the facility of enabling individuals to exchange their money with publishers for the publications they want and would like to commission (or reward).

The market for copies has ended.

The market for intellectual work has just begun.