I understand the impetus behind this post, but I think it is misaimed - I don't think a new protocol is the answer.
There is quite a common business model from the old pre-internet world that I think we need to bring back - and it comes from utilities-style industries and co-competition.
Consider the UK interbank payment system BACS or VISA. Or the old Audit Bureau of Circulation that measured newspaper circulations. These were/are core organisations that provide critical services - moving money, paying by credit card, enabling print advertising to be purchased with confidence.
That they share is that they are owned in common by the sector they support - so the banks neeeded interbank payment but didn't want/weren't going to be allowed one bank to own that market and strangle the other banks.
So BACS is both independent operationally of the member banks, but owned by them in common and has a reporting/co-ordination/technical role in supporting BACS payments between customers. The banks colletively set the fees they pay to use the service - equally.
Similar structures and funding mechanisms exist for VISA and ABC.
This is what we are missing - platforms like Etsy that are not funded and owned by Venture Capital aiming to be a winner-takes all - but are owned collectively by their users who have open buy-in (I can come along and join the platform, if I put cash up) - which have operational independence from the users and maintain interparty-security. So this neo-Etsy collects and can obviously see my sales data and your sales data - but cannot set itself up as a seller, nor sell that data, nor let me see your data (or vice versa).
I think online publishers should collectively own their ad platform and not use Google rigged ones (there needs to be legislation to prevent Google rigging the search and ad market too).
Within that commercial framework there is room for open protocols (BACS runs a 3 phase commit transfer protocol that handles interback transfers - or it did, I am an old skool banker from 25 years ago - there are now instant transfer mechanisms that I suspect work on the same organisational basis - collectively pooled across the sector.
So a shared ad advertising platform would have a managed bid/advert exchange supported by an open bid/submission protocol and so on...
This approach would need to be supported by some state institutions (I think the European Union is the best bet) to get some of them off the ground.
Thank you for your well thought of response. I like the idea of co-operatives. There is one that is trying to take flight in the hand made sector called Artisans Cooperative. If I had the funds to invest in joining that I would, just so to see if goes anywhere. :-)
If I understand correctly systems like the ones you mentioned had to exist because trust was very difficult to establish over distances. In a similar way, I think we are living through a time with corroding trust. And its not just a problem for indivuals, like me, but a problem for the big companies too. EU would likely be powerful enough to help implement this and get the idea spread outside their economic area. From my viewpoint though, EU is not that good at looking out for the smaller players.
Neither is anyone else in business, because there is a limit on how much profit can be extracted from our work. Many of us simply cannot match the increase in productivity that industrialisation and now gen-AI are creating. As much as people love the idea of blacksmiths, woodworkers and artists existing, there is very little financial incentive in what we do. You see this in the loss of funding for arts in school. The course I was on, no longer exists.
Support is exactly what arts and crafts needs. We just don't have a multi-million Euro lobby behind us reminding the governing bodies why this all matters. Something like a WikiArts Foundation would be really useful for so many reasons!
I understand the impetus behind this post, but I think it is misaimed - I don't think a new protocol is the answer.
There is quite a common business model from the old pre-internet world that I think we need to bring back - and it comes from utilities-style industries and co-competition.
Consider the UK interbank payment system BACS or VISA. Or the old Audit Bureau of Circulation that measured newspaper circulations. These were/are core organisations that provide critical services - moving money, paying by credit card, enabling print advertising to be purchased with confidence.
That they share is that they are owned in common by the sector they support - so the banks neeeded interbank payment but didn't want/weren't going to be allowed one bank to own that market and strangle the other banks.
So BACS is both independent operationally of the member banks, but owned by them in common and has a reporting/co-ordination/technical role in supporting BACS payments between customers. The banks colletively set the fees they pay to use the service - equally.
Similar structures and funding mechanisms exist for VISA and ABC.
This is what we are missing - platforms like Etsy that are not funded and owned by Venture Capital aiming to be a winner-takes all - but are owned collectively by their users who have open buy-in (I can come along and join the platform, if I put cash up) - which have operational independence from the users and maintain interparty-security. So this neo-Etsy collects and can obviously see my sales data and your sales data - but cannot set itself up as a seller, nor sell that data, nor let me see your data (or vice versa).
I think online publishers should collectively own their ad platform and not use Google rigged ones (there needs to be legislation to prevent Google rigging the search and ad market too).
Within that commercial framework there is room for open protocols (BACS runs a 3 phase commit transfer protocol that handles interback transfers - or it did, I am an old skool banker from 25 years ago - there are now instant transfer mechanisms that I suspect work on the same organisational basis - collectively pooled across the sector.
So a shared ad advertising platform would have a managed bid/advert exchange supported by an open bid/submission protocol and so on...
This approach would need to be supported by some state institutions (I think the European Union is the best bet) to get some of them off the ground.
Thank you for your well thought of response. I like the idea of co-operatives. There is one that is trying to take flight in the hand made sector called Artisans Cooperative. If I had the funds to invest in joining that I would, just so to see if goes anywhere. :-)
If I understand correctly systems like the ones you mentioned had to exist because trust was very difficult to establish over distances. In a similar way, I think we are living through a time with corroding trust. And its not just a problem for indivuals, like me, but a problem for the big companies too. EU would likely be powerful enough to help implement this and get the idea spread outside their economic area. From my viewpoint though, EU is not that good at looking out for the smaller players.
Neither is anyone else in business, because there is a limit on how much profit can be extracted from our work. Many of us simply cannot match the increase in productivity that industrialisation and now gen-AI are creating. As much as people love the idea of blacksmiths, woodworkers and artists existing, there is very little financial incentive in what we do. You see this in the loss of funding for arts in school. The course I was on, no longer exists.
Support is exactly what arts and crafts needs. We just don't have a multi-million Euro lobby behind us reminding the governing bodies why this all matters. Something like a WikiArts Foundation would be really useful for so many reasons!