Pricing for content in the internet

Pricing content defines a major challenge for tomorrow's Internet, since existing models appear to be unworkable yielding very poor results. However, the provider of content, commercial ones as well as private persons, show in a commercialized world of interactive trade the clear need for content charging systems, which in particular are demanding for electronic content. Those systems generally are beyond the pure technical scope of a system and they go beyond the economic point of view as well. Only an integrated approach, fully understood in their details and technological-economic interactions, will provide the platform for future success. Although traditional manners of content charging will work in the Internet, such as credit card payments or paper bills, the set of constraints and technical possibilities has changed, e.g., a customized newspaper can be provided only electronically. This new approach for pricing content in the Internet needs to cover mechanisms for resource allocation, service fusion, payment schemes, valuation of content, pricing, charging for services and content, and a management system. Therefore, this position paper addresses some of those topics in more detail, which will find a refinement during the panel.