Micro Payments BOF (micropay)

Monday, November 8 at 1530-1730
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CHAIR: Amir Herzberg <amir.herzberg@il.ibm.com> 

DESCRIPTION:

The Internet is quickly becoming the prefered method of delivery for 
information and on-line services. The growth of this industry is 
resticted by the limited availability of secure online payment mechanisms, 
especially for small amounts. Micropayments are designed to allow charging 
of small amounts, where the minimal fees of credit-card payments are 
unacceptable. There have been, and still are, many attempts at providing a 
micropayments solution, however so far none of them was successful, and in 
particular none of the deployed systems seems to be able to reach critical 
mass of buyers and sellers. Furthermore, even if one or more of these 
systems gain popularity, the lack of standardization may slow down their 
availability. In this BOF we'll review some recent micropayment markup 
standardization spec from the W3C, and discuss whether the IETF should 
attempt to contribute standards in this area - i.e. should we create a 
micropayments WG (and if so what would its charter and goals be).

AGENDA:

Reports on the W3C Micropayments Markup spec and implementations of it
  Thierry Michell from W3C who is in charge of this activity will describe it
  Amir Herzberg from IBM will present release 1.3 of IBM Micro Payments
    implementation of the W3C Micropayments Markup spec
  Other implementations may be described as well as comments about the spec
Reports on open designs which are proposed as basis for potential IETF
standardization
  Amir Herzberg will present the IBM Micro Payments design
  Other designs may be presented
Discussion of the goals of (micro)payment standardization activity in the
IETF
  Mark Manasse (Compaq): what we're (MilliCent) hoping for in a standard
  Use the IBM Micro Payments design as basis to a standard
  Or, open discussion to alternative approaches and select one (or some
    combination) first
  Limit to micropayments or cover also larger payments?
  Attempt to agree on rough charter and goals