Indeed, and it seems like true hubless p2p technology is the only real solution to this. It almost makes me wonder if the crackdown against p2p services that started back in the 90s was secretly motivated by a desire for bolstering blackhole monopolies.
P2p is not a solution to this simply because the problem is not in being able to get a recurring payment. The problems start with fraud, chargebacks, refunds and range all the way to having to collect and pay differing sales taxes that stream in from different economic regions of the OECD. California and other sales taxes in the US. EUVAT for European subscribers. Even Japan has its own VAT scheme. On top of that, you have to maintain a billing system. Its a b*tch.
Anyone who tries to do those ends up spending a lot of their time in maintaining and sorting these out than doing their actual activity like art, music and so on. That's why services like Patreon are a godsend to, well, practically anyone. Anyone, because there are a lot of software developers (freeware, shareware, modders) who use Patreon to fund their software development.
I think they mean P2P for federation, discoverability, searching.
Handling payments, subscriptions, fraud, local tax kinks are mostly solved problems with the right intermediaries. Yeah, it's more than letting somebody else handle it, but —depending on your content— it's potentially 15% of your revenue.
Yeah. You turn into someone like that when you start running your own business and get to know the reality of payments, compliance, taxes, fraud, chargebacks and all that sh*t. And it doesn't matter how small is your business.
