How Bitcoin may undo the Apple/Facebook 30% sales tax

As little as five years ago, virtual currencies only had a very niche role in the internet ecosystem. You might see one used to maintain the internal economy of a massively multiplayer online game, but that was just about it. There was simply no need for them, as video game purchases cost more than $40 and were generally done in retail stores. The other form of monetization was subscriptions, and these cost more than $10 per payment, an amount high enough that the transaction fees involved in transferring money through credit cards were bearable.

Then, however, something happened. As the smartphone revolution took over the digital world, a new market for casual games appeared, games which are made by independent developers making a few hundred thousand dollars at most and close to nothing on average and which rely on quantity to earn their largest gains – one of the most popular titles so far, Angry Birds, sells its different versions for $1-$2. The same happened in social media, releasing a completely new class of games based on playing them with your friends and relying on a different model to generate their income: micropayments. The core game would be free, but players who wanted to get ahead could buy additional in-game content or equipment for a low price per piece. Even in the traditional video game market, developers who could not compete with major game production studios for quality adopted microtransactions as their main business model. And such models work; the gamers that are drawn into such games the most may end up spending hundreds or even over a thousand on them, one small item at a time.

However, there is a problem: the credit card fees. Online money transmission services like credit cards and Paypal have a two-part fee structure, with a percentage component of 2-4% and a fixed fee component of 20-30 cents. For a $10 purchase, for example, paying with Paypal (2.9% + $0.30) requires a total fee of 69 cents, giving $9.41 to the payee. For a $2 purchase, however, the fee is 36 cents, or 18% of the purchase price, and for a $0.99 app that figure would almost double. For this reason, Apple’s App Store and social media gaming companies have come up with the same solution: pay into an account in lump sums and spend from there. With social media companies, since players would not necessarily know ahead of time which game they were going to spend their money on and might even want to only spend $2 on each of ten or twe

Apple, meanwhile, went with the centralized solution: require all apps sold for their platform to go through Apple’s centralized payment system, which generates considerable revenue as they take a 30% cut of all revenues. Some developers tried to bypass this restriction by sending their users to make in-app purchases elsewhere, but Apple eventually banned the practice. And Facebook, with its new Facebook Credits system, is seeking to do the same. Replacing the choice of competing virtual currencies with a mandate to use their own, they intend to extract the same 30% tax that Apple does from all revenues made within their ecosystem. Also, the move serves to help lock users in to Facebook itself, as independent currency providers would have gladly allowed users to spend their money at any social media platform they prefer while now quitting Facebook entails leaving your deposit behind. Also, much like credit card merchant agreements, Facebook’s new terms of service also prevent game developers from offering discounts to users making purchases outside of Facebook. The end result is that Facebook wins, and everyone else loses. In fact, as any economist would quickly point out, the harm to the users, developers and competing social media platforms is much greater than the gain to Facebook as the policy isn’t just a money transfer – it’s also a deadweight loss dampening the incentive for innovation. Some are so frustrated by this move that they have set up a website, stopfacebookcredits.com, to criticize the move and are even considering filing an antitrust lawsuit.

While some are only concerned about this specific application of Facebook’s near-monopoly power, moves like these are ultimately symptomatic, a mere part of a larger ongoing trend toward the proprietarization of the internet. The internet’s original infrastructure, largely developed by Tim Berners-Lee, was designed to be open and public so that anyone could use it, and it was this strength that caused protocols like HTML to win out over proprietary alternatives. Everyone was equal on the internet, and you did not need anyone’s permission to participate. For the first few years of the internet, this paradigm largely remained. Email was designed from the start to be federated, people maintained personal webpages under their own control and online forums were accessible to everyone. Now, however, the situation is slowly sliding in the opposite direction. The focus of our online activities drifted away from the internet to proprietary “walled gardens” built on top of the internet, accessible to no one but those who are already inside. In 2011, Google lost its position as the most visited site on the internet to Facebook, and its response was to build yet another walled garden, Google+. As the internet began to be monetized, there were no decentralized or federated protocols in the spirit of HTML to do so; instead, we rely on credit cards and Paypal. And these new giants are waking up to the potential to turn their newfound power into profit. Each individual move may be protested, fought and perhaps even banned, but the problem will only persist and grow as long as we deny the core principle that made the internet so strong in the first place: that the basic infrastructure on top of which everything else relies must be open and accessible to all.

There are signs of hope, as OpenID has become a fairly successful standard for authentication to online services, Diaspora has appeared as an alternative to Facebook and Google+ and credit cards and Paypal are under attack by Bitcoin. Indeed, if Bitcoin succeeds the very motivation behind the battle over Facebook Credits may cease to exist as no one would be willing to pay a central provider 30% of their profits. Once free is the norm, for better or for worse changing it is a steep uphill battle. But it is situations like these that remind us why such efforts are necessary in the first place, and why it does not suffice to simply shame the business or petition the government into giving users a temporary reprieve or marginal improvement. The internet is the greatest laboratory of innovation and driver of technological progress that the world has ever seen, and the reason for its initial success is not any central body pushing its development to extract a profit but the sheer openness and freedom of it all, and such freedom must be defended in order for it to survive.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine

Hang On – All Is Being Revealed

What a perfect analogy. The Truth is coming to light in so many areas right now and this excavation is so representative of this entire phenomenon. All along we thought these were just massive heads that were mysteriously placed here on Easter Island by a civilization gone by, for whatever esoteric purpose.

Only now just a few months ago we find out they’re whole enormous statues–which makes it even more fantastic. Joke’s on us!

Read more: Zen Gardner

Meat Glue Secret

EX-NSA AGENTS SPEAK OUT ABOUT SPYING AND COLLECTING AND STORING DATA ON AMERICANS

“A Staggering Mess” as Tsunami Debris Hits Alaska Coast Early

Gulf of Alaska Keeper, a non-profit organization that estimates it has cleared nearly 1,000,000 pounds of plastic debris from Alaskan coasts over the past 10 years, is reporting “tons” of what it believes is likely tsunami debris washing up on the coasts of the Kayak and Montague islands. Chris Pallister, president of Gulf of Alaska Keeper, told Alaska’s KTUU TV that ““It’s a staggering mess [...] the magnitude of this is just hard to comprehend and I’ve been looking at this stuff a long time.”

In an email to The SunBreak, Pallister let loose:

In my opinion, this is the single greatest environmental pollution event that has ever hit the west coast of North America. The slow-motion aspects of it have fooled an unwitting public. It far exceeds the Santa Barbara or Exxon Valdez oil spills in gross tonnage and also geographic scope. (I was in Prince William Sound during the during the Exxon Valdez oil spill and so have a sense of comparison).

Tens of thousands of miles of coastline from California to the Aleutian Islands are going to be hit with billions of pounds of toxic debris. NOAA’s latest estimate is that 1.5 million tons of largely plastic debris will hit the western United States coast. That is 30 billion pounds. We expect Alaska to get the largest percentage of that with much of it lodging on northern Gulf of Alaska beaches. Most of this will be plastic which is full of inherent toxic chemicals that will leach into the environment for generations.

Possibly worse are the millions of containers full of anything from household chemicals to toxic industrial chemicals that are floating our way. They will eventually burst upon our shores…in sensitive inter-tidal spawning and rearing habitat, endangering shorebirds, marine mammals, fish and everything in between. We are already finding empty and partially full containers of tsunami related chemicals and fuel drums along the northern Gulf of Alaska shoreline. The heavier fuller containers will come later because the wind doesn’t push them as fast toward the Gulf of Alaska as they are more current driven. The light-weight, high-windage debris such as Styrofoam, buoys, bottles, empty containers and drums have already arrived in staggering quantities.

Everyone is careful to say the debris is only “suspected” of having come from Japan’s March 2011 tsunami; there is plenty of marine debris on the ocean in general. Here is Pallister on the scope of the everyday marine debris problem.

Read more: The Sun Break

Letter Shows Monsanto Planted GMOs Before USDA Approval

A letter from Cal/West Seeds shows that evidence of contamination was withheld and the USDA turned a blind eye to proof of contamination in 2005 which shows it was planted at least two years before it was initially deregulated in 2005. As you can see for yourself, the official letter states:

We first discovered the unintended presence of the Roundup Ready gene in our conventional alfalfa seeds in 2005. It was identified in one of our foundation seed production lots grown in California. We tested the foundation seed lot priot to shipping it to a producer who intended to plant it for organic seed production.

In another telling segment, the author writes:

We detected the presence of the … Roundup Ready gene in both our foundation seed and certified seed prior to deregulation.

In order to protect the safety of the individual, some further contents cannot be divulged. Remember in the past, those who have stood up against Monsanto have received anonymous death threats — in one case, the threats were directed towards a mother and her children.

This video documents the timeline of events that led to the deregulation of Monsanto & Forage Genetics’ GMO alfalfa that is contaminating natural alfalfa. As the video explains, the lawyers representing the farmers against Monsanto failed to hold an evidentiary hearing so the injunction (ban) against planting GMO alfalfa was removed and the case was sent back to the lower district court. The lawyers pursued no further action on this case.

The Silent War Within the Brains of U.S. Soldiers

While many "patriotic" Americans feel good about cheering on their soldiers to enter any and every battlefield that politicians and elites convince them is necessary, there already have been signs that the stress of such long-term battle is taking a horrible mental toll.

There is an equally troubling discussion by the military about how best to cover up the consequences of the trauma endured. We have read about the testing of neuroscience applications that can erase traumatic memories with just the pop of a pill. However, it is the more common pharmaceutical prescription drugs that are increasingly widespread. As discussed in the video below, there are now 110,000 troops on amphetamines, antidepressants, and sedatives among other prescribed medications, which is leading to higher rates of suicide, and poor judgement resulting in the deaths of friends and foes alike.

Most soldiers and their families wouldn't imagine that the sanctioned scrambling of brains by psychoactive drugs would be part of the risk. But, then again, the U.S. government has a history of experimentation and neglect of soldiers and their families even as they head back to civilian life.

As America descends into full-blown Martial Law, many of these drug-addled brains are landing in America, thereby creating a scenario that is all but guaranteed to become violently obvious even to those who have chosen to ignore this mounting problem.