When you pay your water bill, you aren’t just paying for the upkeep of the pipes that brought the water to your house – you’re also paying for the production of that water. The internet should be no different.
Besides paying a fixed monthly cost to your ISP for the physical connection, there should be a tiny monetary amount – a fraction of a cent – attached to each HTTP request you make, that can go towards covering server costs. Currently sites have no choice but to pay for their upkeep with advertising. Replacing this with direct payments would drastically curtail the data broker and surveillance industry that currently lives off of it.
How server costs would be measured, and whether sites would be allowed to charge a premium on top of that (eliminating paywalls, but also making web browsing a much more price-weary activity) is up for debate.
But currently using the internet is like paying for a car, without paying road tax.
Hmm, I disagree with the analogy. Your ISP is like the toll you pay to use the highway… also it would have zero effect on real databrokers, why would they settle for ISP pennies when they have a billionaire industry?
Hmm, that’s true. I don’t know how to solve that bit tbh.
I think the analogy kibda breaks down there tbh. The water one works better, where your ISP runs the infrastructure (maintaining tbe pipes), and the websites are the water works
Your proposal sounds like you’re saying that road tolls should also cover the cost of any food, or anything else, delivered by road.