Howto/PremiumChannel

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How To Create a Premium / Paid Content Channel

Objective

The objective with a paid channel is to have a channel with some data that is free for anyone and some other data that is encrypted until the reader pays for it (with Snowblossom).

Then you have the ability to publish content (a channel) and host paid content (also the channel) and collect payments for premium access, all with no middleman taking a cut.

Steps

  • Create a Snowblossom Channel. See Channels#Basic_Setup.
  • In the channel upload directory put in a file that looks like this named: "encryption.json"
 encryption.json 
 This sets the price, address to pay (use one of yours) and the directory name you want to protect.
  • Add your premium content to the directory you define there.
  • Import your channel.
  • Restart your iceleaf channel client and leave it running.

Example:

How To Use (As a User)

Go to a channel page as normal. When you go into the premium directory and get the notice to pay, press the pay button. This will load the data to pay the offer in the "Send" tab of your Iceleaf Channels cleint. If it looks good, press send. Then wait the timeout and press send again.

If the client of the content holder is running, you should immediately have access.


Limitations

In order for a new user to gain access, the channels node holding the key has to be open. This is why the site provider should leave their client running. For actual serious use, the channels node can be run headless on a server to do this function.

Nothing prevents a user from accessing the files (after paying) and sharing the key that they get or the data themselves. There is no DRM.

Privacy

When the user pays for access, they generate a unique key pair just for this channel and ask for that key pair to have access. So if user pays for multiple different sites, it won't be clear that they are the same user. Of course, Snowblossom transaction analysis and p2p network peers can give them away, but the keys themselves are unique to each channel.

Why It Is Awesome

  • No middlemen - no fees (other than snowblossom network fee)
  • Always access - once you get access to premium content you always have it, assuming some network peer has it (even if they don't have the decryption key and are just mirroring the encrypted data). The user decryption keys are encoded into the channel blockchain so after initial access, it doesn't matter if the content creator goes away.
  • No hosting costs.
  • Scales automatically with new users being p2p peers to share the data on.