Sustainability Model:
Assuming it works and is implemented, this project will certainly be self-sustaining. The obvious business model is that the organization that runs a server that makes these accounts available will charge a small fee, perhaps 1 ofr 2 percent, for money transfer whenever sales (sponsorships) occur. So there will be no upfront cost to artists to make their work available this way, through social networks globally, provided that the artists can reach people who are interested -- an obvious advantage for use in poor countries.
Expertise needed:
Marketing/Media Expertise: I'm trying to get a public discussion going, leading to a practical proof-of-principle implementation.
Technical Expertise: I'd like someone to look at what I'm doing to catch any mistakes or overlooked problems.
Project goals:
1. I'm going to re-do http://www.smart-accounts.org, to make it more consistent and easier to understand. The current site includes older terminology and concepts, which changed over time. 2.Next step is to get more public discussion started among interested persons. The main obstacle has been that the idea of financial accounts that reproduce just loses most people right there. It's never been done that way before. 3. The third milestone is to demonstrate a proof of principle, good enough so that a few artists can actually use it, for handling small amounts of money. 4. Several more milestones will result in professional implementations, complete with marketing and other business advice for new artists, and any necessary legal analysis. Note: All my work is available for anybody to use without restrictions. I defensively published it to prevent patenting the concepts. But if someone wants to make a commercial system with proprietary copyright software, that's fine.
Identified Obstacles:
It's just hard for people to grasp the idea of reproducing accounts, and its importance.
New name, domain name for this project, www.RepliCounts.org
We changed the name of this project yesterday, mainly to avoid trademark conflicts. The old smart-accounts URL now forwards to www.RepliCounts.org
John S. James