Sound Marketization of User-Generated Content based on a Fair Micro-Billing Scheme

Abstract

User-generated content (UGC) is one of the most promising services. Most UGC items are currently being distributed for free due to the lack of a suitable compensation system. This inability to compensate the creators stands in the way of UGC becoming a mature service with sustainable and sound growth. The current schemes used to charge for (professional) digital content are inadequate for UGC, since UGC is distributed through a different value-chain that dispenses with the selection processes of publishers and distributors found in the conventional value-chain for distributing professional works, and thus the quality of content is quite uneven. Such high quality unevenness greatly increases the user&rsquo;s risk of buying a pup, and turns the UGC market into a Akerlof&rsquo;s <em>lemon market</em>, where the quality of merchandise enters a death-spiral until the market collapses. This paper comprehensively examines the ability of monetization models to remunerate creators of UGC, and proposes a smartcard-based fair micro-billing scheme that will activate the UGC market. The proposed scheme enables users to pay for content in a &ldquo;bit by bit&rdquo; manner, and thus significantly reduces the user&rsquo;s content quality risk as well as the &ldquo;freeride&rdquo; risks for creators. This paper also shows that the proposed scheme can be implemented securely and feasibly by using current smartcards