Pay as you Browse: Microcomputations as Micropayments in Web-based Services

Currently, several online businesses deem that advertising revenues alone are not sufficient to generate profits and are therefore set to charge for online content. In this paper, we explore a complement to the current advertisement model; more specifically, we propose a micropayment model for non-specialized commodity web-services based on microcompu-tations. In our model, a user that wishes to access online content offered by a website does not need to register or pay to access the website; instead, he will accept to run micro-computations on behalf of the website in exchange for access to the content. These microcomputations can, for example, support ongoing computing projects that have clear social benefits (e.g., projects relating to HIV, dengue, cancer, etc.) or can contribute towards commercial computing projects. We argue that this micropayment model is economically and technically viable and that it can be integrated in existing distributed computing frameworks (e.g., the BOINC plat-form). We implement a preliminary prototype of a system based on our model through which we evaluate its perfor-mance and usability. Finally, we analyze the security and privacy of our proposal and we show that it ensures payment for the content while preserving the privacy of users. 1