Times To Patent Their Phone Micropayment Scheme
from the *sigh* dept
Ah well. On Wednesday we posted a story about how the Times Online was going to start charging viewers for content. The interesting thing was that they were going to bill them by having visitors put in their phone numbers - and then the charge would show up on the phone bill. Now comes the news that they're trying to patent this system. So, even if they don't make money off of subscription fees, they're hoping to cash out by forcing anyone else who wants to use a similar system to pay them licensing fees. Of course, in 1998 when I was working at an e-commerce company I remember dealing with a company called eCharge, who wanted to set up a billing option that was very similar, using phone numbers instead of credit cards. So, there's probably quite a bit of "prior art" out there.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
