This sounds a bit like saying libraries are bad for authors? Why would this torpedo the system? Do we know that people would "freeload" to the extent that the system would break down?
> Also noted that you've failed to address access issues for the poor, children, researchers, and creatives themselves, all of which a general fee would cover.
How so? A child can use a parents account, researchers and creatives can certainly pay? Researchers might get remimbursed of course -- but that's immaterial.
Certainly poor can pay some -- granted, many will not be able to. Let them read for free (by "abusing the refund") -- and start paying when/if they're no longer poor?
I don't see how a flat tax would be any better for the poor, than direct payment? If a person can afford to spend a dollar, or a thousand dollars on content each month -- that doesn't change just because you collect a fee based off of bandwith rather than per-item?
Re: payment fraud -- sure, that's a real problem, and fraud is something every pay system need to account for. I'm not sure that credit cards/micropayments would be more expensive in this regard than tax -- there's plenty of tax fraud too.
I'm mostly concerned with that your model would appear to me to extend the status quo -- where a lot of low quality content get a lot of views, and generate a lot of the profit -- while it'd be better to have a system that promoted more diverse and "better" content -- generally that'd be a slide towards more decentralized publishing/more personal publishing.
This is of course entirely subjective.
