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This Techniques for WCAG 2.0 document provides guidance for web content authors and evaluators on meeting Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 [WCAG20] success criteria. It is part of a series of documents published by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) to support WCAG 2.0. For an introduction to WCAG, supporting technical documents, and educational material, see Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview.
WCAG 2.0 itself is a stable document that does not change. This Techniques for WCAG 2.0 document is updated periodically, about twice per year, to cover more current best practices and changes in technologies and tools.
Techniques are informative—that means they are not required. The basis for determining conformance to WCAG 2.0 is the success criteria from the WCAG 2.0 standard—not the techniques..
Note: W3C cautions against requiring W3C's sufficient techniques. The only thing that should be required is meeting the WCAG 2.0 success criteria. To learn more, see:
Techniques for WCAG 2.0 is not intended to be used as a stand-alone document. Instead, it is expected that content authors will usually use How to Meet WCAG 2.0: A customizable quick reference to read the WCAG success criteria, and follow links from there to specific topics in Understanding WCAG 2.0 and to specific techniques.
Publication of techniques for a specific technology does not imply that the technology can be used in all situations to create content that meets WCAG 2.0 success criteria and conformance requirements. Developers need to be aware of the limitations of specific technologies and provide content in a way that is accessible to people with disabilities.
For important information about techniques, please see the Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria section of Understanding WCAG 2.0.


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Come listen to the words that are inspiring students, faculty and staff at this month's Stothart Readings. All are welcome to share their original works and favorite pieces, or just to listen to others.
The Stothart Readings are held from noon-1 p.m. on Wednesdays at the beginning of each month in the Hinckley Library Amphitheater. They're named for Rob Stothart, a former associate professor of English who helped launch the NWC Writers Series and contributed regularly to the readings.
Each month, an open mic is set up for college and community participants to read their original writing or offer their interpretation of a favorite author.
Those who enjoy listening more than sharing are equally welcome. Food is allowed in the library amphitheater for those who want to make their lunch a literary one.


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Vatican City, Apr 12, 2020 / 05:40 am (CNA).- Here is the full text of Pope Francis' Urbi et Orbi message, delivered April 12 at the Basilica of St. Peter.
Dear brothers and sisters, Happy Easter!
Today the Church's proclamation echoes throughout the world: "Jesus Christ is risen!" – "He is truly risen."
Like a new flame this Good News springs up in the night: the night of a world already faced with epochal challenges and now oppressed by a pandemic severely testing our whole human family. In this night, the Church's voice rings out: "Christ, my hope, is risen!"
This is a different "contagion", a message transmitted from heart to heart – for every human heart awaits this Good News. It is the contagion of hope: "Christ, my hope, is risen!" This is no magic formula that makes problems vanish. No, the resurrection of Christ is not that. Instead, it is the victory of love over the root of evil, a victory that does not "by-pass" suffering and death, but passes through them, opening a path in the abyss, transforming evil into good: this is the unique hallmark of the power of God.
The Risen Lord is also the Crucified One, not someone else. In his glorious body he bears indelible wounds: wounds that have become windows of hope. Let us turn our gaze to him that he may heal the wounds of an afflicted humanity.
Today my thoughts turn in the first place to the many who have been directly affected by the coronavirus: the sick, those who have died and family members who mourn the loss of their loved ones, to whom, in some cases, they were unable even to bid a final farewell. May the Lord of life welcome the departed into his kingdom and grant comfort and hope to those still suffering, especially the elderly and those who are alone. May he never withdraw his consolation and help from those who are especially vulnerable, such as persons who work in nursing homes, or live in barracks and prisons. For many, this is an Easter of solitude lived amid the sorrow and hardship that the pandemic is causing, from physical suffering to economic difficulties.
This disease has not only deprived us of human closeness, but also of the possibility of receiving in person the consolation that flows from the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist and Reconciliation. In many countries, it has not been possible to approach them, but the Lord has not left us alone! United in our prayer, we are convinced that he has laid his hand upon us, firmly reassuring us: Do not be afraid, "I have risen and I am with you still!"
May Jesus, our Passover, grant strength and hope to doctors and nurses, who everywhere offer a witness of care and love for our neighbours, to the point of exhaustion and not infrequently at the expense of their own health. Our gratitude and affection go to them, to all who work diligently to guarantee the essential services necessary for civil society, and to the law enforcement and military personnel who in many countries have helped ease people's difficulties and sufferings.
In these weeks, the lives of millions of people have suddenly changed. For many, remaining at home has been an opportunity to reflect, to withdraw from the frenetic pace of life, stay with loved ones and enjoy their company. For many, though, this is also a time of worry about an uncertain future, about jobs that are at risk and about other consequences of the current crisis. I encourage political leaders to work actively for the common good, to provide the means and resources needed to enable everyone to lead a dignified life and, when circumstances allow, to assist them in resuming their normal daily activities.
This is not a time for indifference, because the whole world is suffering and needs to be united in facing the pandemic. May the risen Jesus grant hope to all the poor, to those living on the peripheries, to refugees and the homeless. May these, the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters living in the cities and peripheries of every part of the world, not be abandoned. Let us ensure that they do not lack basic necessities (all the more difficult to find now that many businesses are closed) such as medicine and especially the possibility of adequate health care. In light of the present circumstances, may international sanctions be relaxed, since these make it difficult for countries on which they have been imposed to provide adequate support to their citizens, and may all nations be put in a position to meet the greatest needs of the moment through the reduction, if not the forgiveness, of the debt burdening the balance sheets of the poorest nations.
This is not a time for self-centeredness, because the challenge we are facing is shared by all, without distinguishing between persons. Among the many areas of the world affected by the coronavirus, I think in a special way of Europe. After the Second World War, this beloved continent was able to rise again, thanks to a concrete spirit of solidarity that enabled it to overcome the rivalries of the past. It is more urgent than ever, especially in the present circumstances, that these rivalries do not regain force, but that all recognize themselves as part of a single family and support one another. The European Union is presently facing an epochal challenge, on which will depend not only its future but that of the whole world. Let us not lose the opportunity to give further proof of solidarity, also by turning to innovative solutions. The only alternative is the selfishness of particular interests and the temptation of a return to the past, at the risk of severely damaging the peaceful coexistence and development of future generations.
This is not a time for division. May Christ our peace enlighten all who have responsibility in conflicts, that they may have the courage to support the appeal for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world. This is not a time for continuing to manufacture and deal in arms, spending vast amounts of money that ought to be used to care for others and save lives. Rather, may this be a time for finally ending the long war that has caused such great bloodshed in Syria, the conflict in Yemen and the hostilities in Iraq and in Lebanon. May this be the time when Israelis and Palestinians resume dialogue in order to find a stable and lasting solution that will allow both to live in peace. May the sufferings of the people who live in the eastern regions of Ukraine come to an end. May the terrorist attacks carried out against so many innocent people in different African countries come to an end.
This is not a time for forgetfulness. The crisis we are facing should not make us forget the many other crises that bring suffering to so many people. May the Lord of life be close to all those in Asia and Africa who are experiencing grave humanitarian crises, as in the Province of Cabo Delgado in the north of Mozambique. May he warm the hearts of the many refugees displaced because of wars, drought and famine. May he grant protection to migrants and refugees, many of them children, who are living in unbearable conditions, especially in Libya and on the border between Greece and Turkey. And I don't want to forget the island of Lesbos. In Venezuela, may he enable concrete and immediate solutions to be reached that can permit international assistance to a population suffering from the grave political, socio- economic and health situation.
Dear brothers and sisters, Indifference, self-centeredness, division and forgetfulness are not words we want to hear at this time. We want to ban these words forever. They seem to prevail when fear and death overwhelm us, that is, when we do not let the Lord Jesus triumph in our hearts and lives. May Christ, who has already defeated death and opened for us the way to eternal salvation, dispel the darkness of our suffering humanity and lead us into the light of his glorious day, a day that knows no end.
With these reflections, I would like to wish you all a happy Easter.


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A decade ago, the vast majority of platforms could be considered "SaaS 1.0," offering tailored software services and generating recurring revenue from customer subscriptions. Today, most platforms have transitioned to "SaaS 2.0," meaning they also facilitate online payments for their customers. Embedding online payments has made it easier for platforms to meet customers' foundational needs and compete more effectively. By building an additional revenue stream around payment processing, platforms have been able to supplement the income earned from subscriptions.
More recently, platforms have evolved yet again to "SaaS 3.0" and started offering additional embedded financial features beyond payments, such as cards, lending, and financial accounts. Banking-as-a-service (BaaS) has broadened the suite of financial services that software platforms can offer customers while minimizing the development lift and regulatory complexity. In the future, BaaS-enabled software platforms will be better positioned to become one-stop shops for customers looking to centralize their operations with one trusted provider.
Stripe has partnered with more than 10,000 platforms and learned firsthand how platforms can build and launch embedded payments and financial services businesses. The most successful platforms recognize that building a payments business requires a different set of skills than building a software business. Many platforms intentionally build payments teams beforehand, embedding them within their larger organizations and integrating them into existing business practices. This guide outlines how your software platform can begin to shape the team that will guide and grow your new payments business.
We've also put together a list of the most common industry terms and their definitions, so if you're unfamiliar with any phrases in this guide, refer to the payments glossary.
Start with these three questions
In order to build a payments offering that complements your existing business strategy and organizational structure, it's important to answer three foundational questions:
- Why are you building a payments business?
- How will you integrate payments?
- What's your payments strategy?
Why are you building a payments business?
Your motivations for building a payments business will depend on the unique demands facing your business and the needs of your existing and prospective customers. In general, we've found that platforms' payments goals largely fall into one of three categories:
- Driving adoption: Many platforms have used payments to differentiate their software from competitors and increase adoption among potential customers. For example, Classy Pay, a payment processing solution powered by Stripe, has helped Classy increase adoption rates with nonprofits of all sizes by giving Classy customers access to easier reconciliation, increased fraud protection, and revenue optimizations.
- Improving retention: Others have added payments to deepen their relationships with existing customers and improve retention. For example, Lightspeed launched Lightspeed Payments to help bring together all the financial solutions their customers need to run their businesses.
- Increasing lifetime value: Still other platforms have created new revenue streams and increased the lifetime value of their customers by monetizing payments and financial services. For example, after partnering with Stripe to launch a payments platform for small- and medium-sized businesses, Weave's payments customers have grown 13% month over month and its processing volume has grown at an average of 37% month over month.
Whatever your goals may be, clarifying and aligning behind the relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) can help your payments team track its progress and stay accountable.
How will you integrate payments?
To control the end-to-end payments experience, some platforms initially consider becoming a full-fledged payment facilitator. They soon discover that this path requires owning customer onboarding, underwriting, dispute management, compliance, support, customer dashboards, reporting, and much more. Because of the time, resources, and financial costs required to become a payment facilitator, many platforms work with payments providers instead, building on their infrastructure to offer payments services and solutions.
Ultimately, resourcing your payments team will depend on what integration path you choose. For example, you may decide to support multiple payment processors, allowing customers to integrate their existing processors on your platform. In this case, while the payment processor (rather than your own team) will be responsible for risk and compliance, your engineering team will need to build the integrations, your designer will need to architect the user experience, and your customer support team will need to field any integration issues.
What's your payments strategy?
There is no one-size-fits-all payments strategy; yours will depend on your particular product offering, business model, and goals. Before hiring new teammates, it's crucial to clarify how payments will fit into your overall value proposition and competitive positioning. You should align internal stakeholders behind the answers to a few key questions:
- What target customer segments do you serve? Does a payments offering enable you to better serve existing customers or become competitive among a new segment of customers?
- What problems do customers come to you to solve? Will payments services complement your existing offering?
- What do your competitors offer? Will payments help you differentiate?
- How will payments position you to capitalize on your product's strengths in order to meet customers' needs in ways that competitors can't?
How to staff your payments team
Once you've codified your payment goals, approach, and strategy, you can begin to craft your payments team's organizational structure. Whether your payments team divides its time across other parts of the business or is focused solely on payments, the team should be organized around three discrete functions:
- Building a payments product: A group of product experts will craft the product strategy and translate that strategy into designs and code, as well as test and iterate to maintain product-market fit.
- Supporting the payments business operationally: An operations team will keep the payments business running, answering customers' questions, managing relationships with internal stakeholders and external partners, and mitigating fraud and compliance risk.
- Launching and commercializing payments: A go-to-market team will design a compelling launch and continue to deepen market penetration with an educated sales team, a competitive monetization model, and ongoing customer feedback.
Building your payments product
Your product team will not only be responsible for building and integrating payments into your platform, but it will also scale and maintain the payments product over time. To meet customers' needs and differentiate the platform's core software, this team of product managers, designers, software developers, and data analysts will shape the payments product's roadmap, implementation, and user experience.
Product manager
One of your top priorities should be hiring a payments product manager to drive the payments strategy and be accountable for finding product-market fit. Given this responsibility and the deep cross-functional partnerships they'll build, this payments product owner will need to build a broad base of knowledge:
- Technical experience with payments products: In collaboration with a solutions architect, the product manager will be responsible for designing account structures, building funds flows, and determining payout schedules. With the engineering team's help, the product manager will also equip customers with robust APIs and SDKs, documentation, and capabilities so they can configure your payments product.
- Knowledge of payments unit economics: In order to minimize the business's costs, the product manager should be familiar with interchange costs, dispute fees, and any geographic-specific costs. This knowledge will also help inform the pricing strategy.
- Familiarity with payments regulations and financial systems: The payments value chain involves acquiring banks, issuing banks, card networks, and payment gateways. Different countries have different rules and restrictions governing these players. A product manager will need to stay up-to-date on these players and regulations in order to partner effectively with legal, risk, and compliance teams.
- Awareness of emerging payments trends and payment methods: Keeping a pulse on new payments capabilities and payment methods makes it easier to deliver value for customers and stay ahead of their evolving needs. A product manager will use that knowledge to build a roadmap and experimentation plan that enhances the platform's value proposition, increases adoption, and maintains product-market fit.
Product and UX designers
The design function will map out and design your customers' payments journey. A product or UX designer's first step will likely be the onboarding flow. Working with a UX researcher to interview potential customers and map out the end-to-end experience, they'll design an onboarding experience that's easy for customers to use while also balancing any regulations, legal stipulations, and risk requirements. In line with the payments product strategy, the design team will also craft the dashboards, screens, and copy that customers see after they've been approved. These experiences might allow your customers to dig into reports on their payments performance, track payouts, or manage disputes and refunds. The design team should also standardize the experience for your customers' users, including the checkout experience or payment confirmation emails.
By planning, building, testing, and deploying releases, software developers drive the technical aspects of developing and maintaining a payments product. You'll need engineers who are well versed in building integrations, crafting user experiences, and iteratively optimizing. A payments product will require integrations not only with payment gateways, but also with business systems like ERPs, CRMs, and accounting software. Payments engineers will also translate the design team's mock-ups into an efficient customer-onboarding experience and dashboards where customers can manage their business. Like all software products, your payments product must evolve to meet the ever-changing needs and expectations of customers. Engineers will play a big part in optimizing conversion and authorization rates and updating the systems required to support new monetization models.
Data analyst
The data function will help meet both customers' and businesses' data needs. A data analyst should be charged with defining the payments data standards, including the APIs and data tables used to ingest data from customers' payment gateways. Given the sensitive nature of payments data, the data team should also define the processes governing how payments data is managed, protected, and recovered. It's also common for payments data analysts to monitor and analyze performance across payment gateways and to support smart routing for customers using multiple gateways.
Other payments stakeholders will look to the data team for support with their workstreams. For example, the finance and accounting team will work with a data analyst to ensure their systems can ingest the payments data correctly. The payments marketer will want to track the efficacy of their adoption and monetization efforts, and the payments product manager will want reporting on the performance of the payments business. The risk team may also come to the data team for help with fraud modeling.
Supporting payments operationally
Payments can be one of the most sensitive aspects of your customer's business. It's important to build a deep operations bench to support your customers as they onboard, for example, and ensure compliance with risk, legal, and regulatory obligations. This operations team will keep the organization ahead of the various rules surrounding payments, including underwriting, risk scoring, and fraud mitigation standards; Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements; PCI compliance; payment facilitator compliance; and tax obligations.
Program manager
A program manager's top priority should be to drive alignment behind the payments program by actively managing stakeholders within and outside the payments organization. Given the number of financial partners required to operate in the payments space, the program manager can act as the single point of contact to manage those relationships. If your platform decides to expand internationally, for example, the program manager can drive outreach to potential issuing banks. If your platform supports multiple payment gateways, the program manager can coordinate with those gateways, quickly resolving issues and outages if they happen.
Some of their key workstreams include developing KPIs for the payments team, designing (and evolving) the team's structure, and redesigning internal processes to increase the team's velocity. A program manager might also support the payments product manager with research to strengthen their business cases or support the payments product marketer with stakeholder management and process optimization in preparation for launches.
Customer support team
While your platform likely already has a customer support team, dedicated resources are often required to handle payments-related issues. As customers get onboarded, they'll look to customer support for help, and your team should be prepared to answer some of the most common questions:
- How can I add a bank account for deposits?
- Why hasn't my first payout arrived?
- How should I handle disputes?
- How much will I be charged for payments?
- Where can I find my statements?
Legal counsel
Whether you hire a dedicated resource or work with your platform's existing legal function, your legal counsel will need to stay up-to-date on the relevant laws and regulations governing the financial services and payments industry in order to provide legal advice to members of the payments team. For example, legal may partner with program management to acquire a money transmitter license or review contracts with payment gateways. If you decide to brand the payments functionality as your own, your platform is assuming a larger regulatory burden, and your legal counsel should play a central role in drafting the contractual language between your platform and customers.
Fraud manager and risk and compliance manager
The risk of adding a payments product to your business isn't negligible. Payments businesses need to not only manage fraud and credit risk but also compliance risk. While smaller platforms may be able to manage these risks with one resource, larger ones will be better served hiring a payments fraud manager and a risk and compliance manager.
Integrating payments into your platform means taking on financial liability for all transactions initiated by your customers, including both the credit risk of your customers and the fraud risk of your customers' users. To mitigate these risks, a payments fraud manager will proactively implement risk models and processes to prevent fraud and money laundering. They'll help design the onboarding and underwriting flow and craft the risk controls and thresholds in line with your platform's risk tolerance. On an ongoing basis, the risk team will need to monitor transactions for any irregularities and segment customers based on their risk profile—all while accounting for the nuances and differences across customers' industries.
Because of the risk involved with moving money, many countries have put in place regulations designed to protect their constituents, their local economies, and the global financial system. A risk and compliance manager should be charged with keeping the organization current on this evolving regulatory landscape and integrating the payments compliance obligations into your platform's existing compliance controls and policies:
- "Know Your Customer" (KYC) obligations: When onboarding customers, you may be required to collect certain data (such as their tax ID) and run checks (such as identity verifications) to validate that their businesses are what they claim to be.
- Data residency requirements: For example, the Reserve Bank of India has mandated that payments data for transactions processed through Indian payment service providers or intermediaries must only be stored on databases and servers located within India.
- Security standards: In 2006, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, and JCB aligned on one standard policy, the PCI Data Security Standards (known as PCI DSS), to ensure a baseline level of protection for consumers and banks in the internet era.
Accounting and finance manager
Depending on your monetization model, your payments business may have multiple sources of new revenue: revenue from each transaction as well as revenue from value-added services like analytics and subscriptions. When launching a payments product for the first time, an accounting and finance manager should ensure that payments revenue flows through the platform's accounting system so that financial reporting is accurate, complete, and timely. As your payments business continues to mature, the accounting and finance team will help maintain the connections between upstream payments systems and downstream accounting systems, track the profitability of the payments program over time, and help file taxes according to different countries' and states' rules and rates.
Launching and commercializing payments
Once your product has been built and your operational systems are in place, a go-to-market team can monetize, launch, and scale your payments business. The makeup of your go-to-market function will depend on your particular acquisition model. If you plan to encourage customers to sign up online, you'll likely lean more heavily on a marketing team. However, if you use a white-glove approach to identify and onboard new customers, building a knowledgeable payments sales team is crucial. By maintaining a constant feedback loop between your customers and internal teams, this go-to-market team will also help kickstart experience improvements and inspire new product innovations.
Monetization manager
Responsibility for pricing strategy should be shared by both product marketing and product management teams. Before narrowing in on a monetization model, your payments product marketing manager will research how customers measure value and audit competitive alternatives. While taking into account the business's costs, the product manager will help weigh whether existing internal systems are designed to support different monetization levers:
- Interchange: If you offer a card product, you may be able to keep a share of the interchange fees that are generated for every card transaction.
- Lending: You can make money by offering loans and charging origination fees and interest.
- Earn fees on funds held: If you allow customers to store funds, you can earn fees as a share of the funds held. You can capture this entire revenue, share it with the customer, or do some combination of the two.
- Subscription or service fees: Charge customers a recurring fee for subscription or membership plans in exchange for access to your offerings or services.
- Mark up money movement services: Mark up the costs of various money movement services (e.g., accelerated access to funds, wire transfers, currency exchange, etc.).
While these approaches directly monetize your new features and services, an alternative to consider is simply raising the price of your overall platform fee. After all, by offering payments and financial services, your platform is creating more value for customers.
Product marketing manager
A payments product marketing manager should be charged with creating and implementing a go-to-market strategy to drive new customer acquisition. Through customer and competitive research, marketing will define the target customer segments, brand positioning, and messaging. If your platform drives sign-ups through a self-serve approach, your marketer will build demand at the top of the funnel through paid, earned, and owned media channels. If you depend more heavily on a sales team, marketing should play a central role in building the training and collateral to enable your sales team to pitch payments effectively. After the initial payments product launch, your marketing team will announce the launch of new features, increase customer penetration with marketing promotions, and continue to experiment with its marketing and awareness strategies to see what works best.
Sales team
To build a payments sales motion, some platforms train their entire sales teams, though most use an overlay sales model, training existing team members to become payments specialists and articulate the value of the payments offering. Regardless of your approach, setting up a sales team doesn't end at hiring. Foundational pieces need to be put in place in order to set your sales team up for success:
- Set revenue targets to motivate your sales team and measure its productivity.
- Establish an incentive structure that compensates sales agents for closing payments deals.
- Create a sales enablement framework to train sellers how to pitch the combined value of payments and software.
How Stripe can help
Stripe is a fast, easy, and flexible way for software platforms to start, scale, and grow their payments and financial services business. By working with Stripe and its bank partners, platforms of all sizes—from fintech startups to established platforms—are able to collect payments, extend capital to their customers, issue virtual and physical cards, and offer many other financial services. With a single integration, Stripe makes it easy to expand your platform internationally and reach customers in new countries with no additional development work.
To accelerate speed to market and minimize the resources and investments required to build and run a payments business, Stripe offers tools to reduce the operational overhead and can even actively manage parts of your payments business for you:
- User experience: Instead of designing and building your onboarding flow and dashboard reporting experiences from scratch, you can use Stripe-hosted experiences that are localized, optimized for conversion, and regularly updated to help meet new compliance standards. Stripe offers a suite of easy-to-integrate features (such as the ability to refund a transaction, request a payout, and manage verifications) that will help your product team build faster; reduce maintenance costs; and create a cohesive, branded experience.
- Risk: Stripe provides platforms with a variety of solutions to help manage both transaction and merchant risk. Stripe Radar provides platforms and connected accounts with configurable tooling to manage transaction fraud risk. And Stripe-managed risk provides platforms with an end-to-end merchant risk management solution that includes ongoing monitoring and mitigation for merchant credit and fraud risk as well as protection against risk of loss in the event of unrecoverable negative balances attributed to merchant risk across a platform's portfolio of merchant accounts.
- Legal: Stripe stays current with global regulations and card network rules, so your legal team has a partner in monitoring the changing landscape. Stripe also offers data tokenization to help with PCI compliance and helps create safer payments businesses with our risk-based financial crimes screening program, including Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks for individuals and businesses. You can also benefit from Stripe's money licenses around the world, instead of getting your own in every market.
- Customer support: Stripe can provide phone, email, and chat support to your customers.
- Monetization: Rather than relying on engineers to build a custom pricing tool, you can use Stripe to easily set and dynamically control pricing: configure application fees, offer discounts, and support various pricing models.
- Data: Stripe offers robust revenue reporting to streamline reconciliation with your finance and accounting teams' reports.
- Go-to-market: When you join the Stripe Partner Ecosystem, you gain access to a toolkit designed to accelerate your marketing and sales efforts, including training for your internal teams, resources to announce your Stripe integration, videos covering popular Stripe features and setup questions, as well as brand guidelines and assets.
If you're considering building your payments business with Stripe, our professional services team can help you navigate the best path to launch. To build a foundation for your payments program, we can co-develop a product strategy and business plan, defining your resourcing needs, functionality requirements, and monetization approach. Through regular reviews, our consultants will work with your team to integrate payments, covering everything from experience mapping and customer migration to data ingestion and financial reporting. To bring your new payments product to market, we'll help you craft your marketing strategy, plan a phased rollout, and equip your internal teams with the necessary resources and processes to support the launch.
Get in touch with our team to learn more about how your platform can partner with Stripe to build a payments and financial services business.
Payments glossary
This glossary defines some of the most commonly used payments terms in this guide:
- Acquirer: Also referred to as an acquiring bank, an acquirer is a bank or financial institution that processes credit or debit card payments on behalf of the merchant and routes them through the card networks to the issuing bank.
- Card networks: Card networks process transactions between merchants and issuers and control where credit cards can be accepted. They also control the network costs. Examples include Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express.
- Chargeback: Also referred to as a dispute, a chargeback occurs when cardholders question a payment with their card issuer. During the chargeback process, the burden is on the merchant to prove that the person who made the purchase owns the card and authorized the transaction.
- Credit risk: This is the risk that a platform's customer is unable to fulfill its goods or services orders. If a chargeback is requested, generally speaking, the platform facilitating the transaction would be liable for the money owed.
- Disputes: See definition for "Chargeback."
- Fraud risk: This is the risk from false or illegal transactions. Fraud typically occurs when someone steals a card number or checking account data to make an unauthorized transaction. Fraud can also happen when a business deceives a customer into giving them money, when the business has no intention of delivering the good or service.
- Interchange: This is a fee paid to the issuing bank for processing a card payment.
- Issuing banks: These are the banks that issue credit and debit cards to consumers.
- Payment facilitator: Generally, adding certain payments functionality required a platform or marketplace to register and maintain status as a payment facilitator (or payfac) with the card networks. Using Stripe, a platform or marketplace can make payments functionality available without necessarily having to register as a payfac and take on a wide range of burdensome requirements imposed on payfacs.
- Payment gateway: A payment gateway is a piece of software that encrypts credit card information on a merchant's server and sends it to the acquirer. Gateway services and acquirers are often the same entity.
- Payment method: This is the way a consumer chooses to pay for goods or services. Payment methods include bank transfers, credit or debit cards, and digital wallets.
- PCI Data Security Standards (PCI DSS): This is an information security standard that applies to all entities involved in storing, processing, or transmitting cardholder data and sensitive authentication data.


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Friendica has unlimited profiles. You may use different profiles to show different "sides of yourself" to different audiences.
You always have a profile known as your "default" or "public" profile. This profile is always available to the general public and cannot be hidden (there may be rare exceptions on privately run or disconnected sites). You may, and probably should restrict the information you make available on your public profile.
That said, if you want other friends to be able to find you, it helps to have the following information in your public profile...
- Your real name
- A photo of you
- Your location on the planet, at least to a country level.
Without this basic information, you could get very lonely here. Most people (even your best friends) will not try and connect with somebody that has a fake name or doesn't contain a real photo.
In addition, if you'd like to meet people that share some general interests with you, please take a moment and add some "Public Keywords" to your profile. Such as "music, linux, photography" or whatever. You can add as many keywords as you like.
Your default or public profile is also shown to contacts on other networks, since they do not have the ability to view your private profiles. Only members of the Friendica network can see alternate/private profiles.
To create an alternate profile, select "Profiles" from the menu of your Friendica site. You may edit an existing profile, change the profile photo, or create a new profile. You may also create a "clone" of an existing profile if you only wish to change a few items but don't wish to enter all the information again.
To assign a profile to specific persons, select the person from your "Contacts" page and click the pencil "Edit" icon. You will find a dropdown box listing the various profiles available. If this box is not selectable, the person is not in a supported network and cannot be assigned a specific profile.
Once a profile has been selected, when the person views your profile from one of the "magic profile links" on their site, they will see the private profile you have assigned. If they are not logged into their site or view your profile from elsewhere, they will see your public profile.
A magic profile link is indicated by a special cursor when hovering over a contact's name or photo. Currently this cursor is a hand next to a small padlock. These magic cursors indicate that by following the link, you are able to access special areas of the other person's pages which are only available to friends and may not be available to the general public.
You may also discover that (assuming you have the proper permissions) you may be able to post directly on the other person's profile (often called a "wall-to-wall" post). You may also be able to comment directly on posts from while visiting the other person's profile page.
There are two settings which allow you to publish your profile to a directory and ensure that it can be found by others. You can change these through settings on the "Settings" page. One setting allows you to publish your profile in the site directory of this Friendica server. Another option (this may have been disabled by the site creator) allows you to publish your profile in the "Global Directory". This is a mega directory which contains people from many other Friendica installations world-wide.
If you do not wish to be visible to any of these sites, you may leave your profile unpublished.
Although you may have multiple profiles, you only have one profile photo. This is intentional. In early tests we experimented with different photos for each profile and found it was very confusing for people. They might see a different picture depending on what website they visited or what conversation they were in, and often alerted them to the fact that other people might be able to see different profiles of you than they could see.
(But you can use the rich-text information boxes within a profile such as "Tell us about yourself" and link other photos onto the page.)
Keywords and Directory Search
On the site Directory page, you may search for people with published profiles who are on this site. The search is typically for your nickname or part of your full name. However this search will also match against other profile fields - such as gender, location, "about", work, and education. You may also include "Keywords" in your default profile - which may be used to search for common interests with other members. You have two sets of keywords available - public and private. Private keywords are not visible to anybody. You could use these keywords to locate people who share membership in secret societies, or that share a love of fishing (for example) - without making this information visible on your public profile. Public keywords are used in the friend suggestion tool and although they aren't readily visible, they may be seen by viewing the HTML of your profile page.
Directory searches are also able to use "boolean" logic so that you can search for "+lesbian +Florida" and find those who's sexual preference (or keywords) contain the world "lesbian" and that live in Florida. See the section on "Topical Tags" on the Tags-and-Mentions page for more information on performing boolean searches.
On your Contacts page is a link to "Find People with Shared Interests" (unless your site administrator has disabled the global directory). This will combine both your public and private keywords, and find people in the global directory who have matching and/or similar keywords. (Your private keywords are not identified or stored on the global directory). The more keywords you provide, the more relevant the search results that are returned. These are sorted by relevance. You may discover that you are the first person on the list - because you are very likely the most relevant match for your keywords in the directory.


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10 Best Video Games of 2013
Nothing says "holidays" to us like shanking a zombie in the neck, or destroying a group of enemies with a flock of crows, or setting your attack dog on an enemy soldier. These 10 Best Video Games of 2013 deliver the greatest in shooting, stomping, and stabbing action. It was a phenomenal year for gaming and this list is populated with diverse titles including FPSes, Action Games, JRPGs, Strategy Games, Fighting Games, and even Oldschool Platformers. If you haven't played these titles, you have missed out on some of the high points of 2013 gaming. These are the 10 Best Video Games of 2013.
- 10
Tomb Raider
First up is Tomb Raider, the story of the sexy and deadly Lara Croft before she was so sexy and deadly. Then again, she does single-handedly kill a bunch of psychopathic islanders who are halfway between cannibals and rapists. She also fights off wolves with her bare hands and treats wounds with nothing but scavenged herbs and twigs, and she manages to do it all wearing a light blue tank top. Yeah, we take it back. Lara Croft is as sexy and deadly as ever.
- 9
Call of Duty: Ghosts
We all knew that Activision's latest in the Call of Duty series would make it on our Best Games of 2013 list. So why should you play COD: Ghosts? One word: Riley. Riley is your pet German Shepard with titanium teeth. Riley can stalk through the tall grass and ninja kill your enemies by lunging at their necks. Riley is one of the best killstreaks ever devised, revealing snipers and insta-killing enemies who try to get the drop on you. Riley takes down a helicopter at one point! This is one badass dog, and if the entire Call of Duty series doesn't revolve around him from this point on we will be severely disappointed.
- 8
Injustice: Gods Among Us
Who would win in a fight, Superman or Batman? Well, Injustice: Gods Among Us lets you find out! (The answer is totally Batman by the way.) This DC Comics fighter puts together some of the most well-known icons of the DC Universe including the Green Lantern, The Joker, Lex Luthor, The Flash, Wonder Woman, and even the butt of DC joke, Aquaman. Of course, our favorite character is Lobo. Why have superpowers when you can have a rocket powered motorcycle and a nuclear shotgun.
- 7
Fire Emblem: Awakening
For the thinking men out there, we recommend Fire Emblem: Awakening, a chess-like turn based strategy game accented with a healthy dose of dragon sex. Fire Emblem: Awakening takes place across two separate generations of fighters and the children of your main party eventually come back in time to help you. So yes, this means that you can have sex with a dragon girl and birth a ludicrously powerful dragon messiah child. There's nothing about that sentence that we didn't like.
- 6
Super Mario 3D World
It's classic Mario action with a co-op twist. On the surface, this is a family friendly co-op platformer that has Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Toad fighting against Bowser again. But deep down this is a speed running fight to the death. The game rewards the best player with a crown that exists for no other reason than to say "I am better than you." So expect several nights of controller throwing when you get tosses off the stage by your douchebag friends for the umpteenth time.
- 5
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
Where did all the good JRPGs go? Here they are! Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is the perfect game for dudes who grew up remembering Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy fondly. It's developed by Level-5 and Namco Bandai, who classic JRPG development teams, and is animated by Studio Ghibli, who has done great Miyazaki films like Princess Mononoke. Granted, you won't be seeing any chicks in wolf skin biting at the necks of samurai in this game, but you do get to ride a dragon, fight with a pirate cat, and gamble with the dead, so that's pretty cool.
- 4
Grand Theft Auto V
Grand Theft Auto V broke seven Guinness Worlds Records when it released. It was the best-selling action-adventure video game in 24 hours, the best-selling video game, period, in 24 hours, the fastest entertainment property to gross one billion dollars, the fastest video game to gross one billion dollars, the highest grossing video game in 24 hours, the highest revenue generated by any entertainment product in 24 hours, and the most viewed trailer for an action adventure video game, ever! These accolades should convince you that GTA V deserves to be on our list of 10 Best Video Games of 2013 if shooting hookers in the face wasn't enough for you.
- 3
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
Arr mateys! What be greater than controlling an assassin that shapes history by his very hands? Playing a pirate assassin of course! Yarr it be filling to wash down yer daily meal of neck stabbing with a healthy cask o' rum. Ye even got to build ye own pirate ship and manage ye own salty crew of brigands and vagabonds.
- 2
BioShock Infinite
BioShock Infinite takes the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics and combines it with steampunk flying cities and shotguns. What more do you want from a shooter? Whether you like opening portals to other dimensions, taking part in cultural uprisings, killing your enemies with a flock of ravens, or just chilling out and listening to a ragtime version of Tainted Love, BioShock Infintie has something for you.
- 1
The Last of Us
This is a video game set in a world where neck shanking is a daily activity. This is a game where you are just as likely to be killed by psychotic looters as you are to be killed by post-apocalyptic fungus zombies. This is a game in which you probably aren't a good person, and that's the point. It combines a phenomenally emotional story with tight stealth and shooting controls. The Best Video Game of 2013 is easily The Last of Us


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As I mentioned last week, there are certain authors and genres I've never been able to become a fan of no matter how many times I try to like them.
It simply isn't possible to write, draw, film, or sing something that's going to appeal to every single person who stumbles across it. My thoughts on this topic were too complicated to condense for last week's post, so I'm going to discuss them with you this week instead.
Some themes, plot twists, or tropes will appeal to one reader but will repel the next person who attempts to read them. This is completely normal, and it says nothing about the quality of the writing itself. It all boils down to the subjective nature of art and storytelling.
Subjectivity and Literature
To give you a concrete example of what I'm talking about, let's go back to when I was in high school. My eleventh grade English teacher was a kind, generous woman who regularly allowed her students borrow books from her if we wanted something to read for the sheer joy of it.
When she noticed me reading a scary Stephen King story one week and a collection of Langston Hughes poems the next, she smiled and say she was glad to see a student of hers readings such a wide variety of stuff.
She taught her students a lot about literature in general. The authors she assigned us to study were from a wide range of eras and movements. I enjoyed all of them at least a little bit with one glaring exception: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
By the time I finished the first scene of it, I began counting down the days until we finished the last chapter and moved onto literally anything else in the entire world. I honestly would have preferred to read the phone book by the time we were halfway through that story because there was nothing about it that I found at all enjoyable. The characters were vain, selfish, and materialistic from what I observed. If anything interesting ever happened to them, the horrendously slow pacing made it hard for me to tell when those scenes were occurring.
I've never been able to get into F. Scott Fitzgerald's catalogue even as an adult reader who no longer has to remember anything about what I've read for a future pop quiz. Obviously, there are plenty of people who disagree with me here, and I'm glad that they're able to get something out of his writing. The fact that it doesn't speak to me in no way means that it isn't worth reading.
He simply isn't the kind of storyteller that I'm drawn to. Something tells me that my teacher would have understood this if it had been socially acceptable for me to tell her how much I disliked that unit. As it was, I stayed perfectly polite and never brought up the subject. She might have privately had a list of authors she wasn't a fan of as well!
Subjectivity and Art
The subjective nature of these things isn't limited to literature, either.
One of the biggest reasons why I love going to art museums, shows, galleries, and other creative spaces with a small group of like-minded people has to do with how interesting it is to see how different folks respond to the same painting, sculpture, or other creative work.
When it comes to photography, I like whimsical, thought-provoking pieces like the shot of two toy robots on the right side of this post. Their glowing eyes make it easy to imagine that they're somehow at least slightly aware of their surroundings.
There are so many different ways to interpret a photo like this one. Sometimes when I'm sitting quietly somewhere this is exactly the sort of thing I think about.
My taste in paintings is nothing like my preferences for photography. Hyperrealism fascinated me long before I had any idea that there was a name for this movement or that multiple painters have figured out how to paint scenes so realistic that I genuinely feel like I could walk into them and never notice I was in a painting at all. It was a style of painting I was pleasantly surprised to see on occasion, and I only grew to love it more once I figured out what it was called and that many different artists have explored it over the years.
Of course, not everyone is going to agree with me on either of these points. There are people out there who don't connect with the pieces that speak to me at all just like I have been known to have trouble understanding other, most abstract types of art.
Subjectivity and Music
Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to get a group of people to agree on what a good song should sound like even after you've sorted out objective criteria like the quality of the singer's voice or whether or not they're singing on key?
I know plenty of folks who have incredibly strong opinions on this topic. Some of them even refuse to listen to certain artists or entire genres of music altogether because of how firmly they've made up their minds about what they do and don't enjoy.
Yes, I've done this, too. There was a long period of time when I didn't think I liked any form of country music at all. It was only after being exposed to many different types of it that I realized there were a small number of country artists that I actually did enjoy quite a bit.
There's Something for Everyone
While nothing is going to appeal to everyone, there is something out there for everyone.
I don't know about you, but I find that freeing.
It's okay not to like something. Someone else out there loves it.
On the flip side, you'll find plenty of books and other creative works that you do love if you keep searching for the things that speak to you.
What have you read, watched, or listened to that you've never been able to enjoy? What creative works have you tried and been surprised by how much you loved them?


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About Fu Works
Fu Works productions was founded in 1995 by San Fu Maltha and has grown into one of the most leading feature film production companies of the Netherlands. Fu Works is an independent and internationally oriented production company that produces films, documentaries and TV series.
San Fu Maltha started out in distribution working for companies like Warner Bros. Holland, Columbia Tri Star Holland, Meteor/Polygram Benelux, RCV and Pathé UK. Together with two partners he started A-Film, which quickly became the leading independent distributor in the Netherlands. In 2005 he sold his shares and focused on film production.
Fu Works Productions has produced and co-produced several successful and award winning feature films, such as SÜSKIND, TIRZA (Dutch entry best foreign film - Academy Awards), WINTER IN WARTIME (shortlist best foreign film - Academy Awards), KENAU, LOVE IS ALL and BLACK BOOK (shortlist best foreign film - Academy Awards) and documentaries 4-ELEMENTS, PARRADOX and MADE IN KOREA. Fu Works Productions also expresses interest in smaller movies, such as MILO, MAJESTY, KICKS and the Finnish-Chinese-Dutch cult film JADE WARRIOR.
Recently released films are A REAL VERMEER, ALBERTA, and the documentary ECHO'S VAN EEN OORLOG.
Fu Works Productions has many feature films and TV drama projects in development, such as WESTERLING, DE OVERSTAP, DE STILLE KRACHT, MOONFLIGHT and NADRA. Besides feature films, we aim to develop multi-platform projects, such as the TV dramas VIRRIE'S KINDEREN.
In 2015 he also launched Periscoop Film, a distribution company, together with producer Bruno Felix from production company Submarine. Periscoop Film distributes big international documentaries, animation features and genre-bending films that enrich the film market landscape of the Benelux and creates more diversity. Periscoop Film has released among others, the documentary LIFE, ANIMATED (Oscar nominee), feature film POESIA SIN FIN, documentary WHITNEY: CAN I BE ME, about Whitney Houston, and the Japanese anime movie YOUR NAME.


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Return Policy
Any item is returnable as long as it is in new, unused condition.
If you just decide you don't want an item, the shipping will be at your expense.
If your order is not complete, is incorrect, or has a damaged item, please do not panic. While we are a new website, we are seasoned veterans in the business and we strive to always keep our customers happy.NOTIFICATION OF DAMAGED OR MISSING ITEMS MUST BE EMAILED TO US WITHIN 48 HOURS FROM RECEIPT OF PACKAGE. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Please contact us via email at email@example.com and give us details as to what your problem is. Your picking ticket will always have a packer initials or handwriting on it. If you can send us a photo of your pick ticket, that will expedite the correction process. We do reserve the right to refund or reship at our discretion.
You can also call us at 769-203-1676. While we are there many more hours shipping packages, we only take phone calls 9 am - 3 pm Central time - Monday - Friday.Email is your best option as we have people that check emails periodically even on nights and weekends.


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by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka — (Ver. 1.0 — Summer 2009)
We are attempting to articulate the core principles of cyber-libertarianism to provide the public and policymakers with a better understanding of this alternative vision for ordering the affairs of cyberspace. We invite comments and suggestions regarding how we should refine and build-out this outline. We hope this outline serves as the foundation of a book we eventually want to pen defending what we regard as "Real Internet Freedom." [Note: Here's a printer-friendly version, which we also have embedded down below as a Scribd document.]
I. What is Cyber-Libertarianism?
Cyber-libertarianism refers to the belief that individuals—acting in whatever capacity they choose (as citizens, consumers, companies, or collectives)—should be at liberty to pursue their own tastes and interests online.
Generally speaking, the cyber-libertarian's motto is "Live & Let Live" and "Hands Off the Internet!" The cyber-libertarian aims to minimize the scope of state coercion in solving social and economic problems and looks instead to voluntary solutions and mutual consent-based arrangements.
Cyber-libertarians believe true "Internet freedom" is freedom from state action; not freedom for the State to reorder our affairs to supposedly make certain people or groups better off or to improve some amorphous "public interest"—an all-to convenient facade behind which unaccountable elites can impose their will on the rest of us.
B. Application in Social & Economic Contexts
The cyber-libertarian draws no distinction between social and economic freedom when applying this vision:
- Social Freedom: Individuals should be granted liberty of conscience, thought, opinion, speech, and expression in online environments.
- Economic Freedom: Individuals should be granted liberty of contract, innovation, and exchange in online environments.
Cyber-libertarians also argue that social and economic freedoms are inextricably intertwined: It is not enough to support liberty of action in one sphere; foreclosing freedom in one sphere will eventually affect freedom in the other.
C. How "Code Failures" Are to Be Addressed
The cyber-libertarian believes that "code failures" (the digital equivalent of so-called "market failures") are better addressed by voluntary, spontaneous, bottom-up, marketplace responses than by coerced, top-down, governmental solutions. From a practical perspective, the decisive advantage of the market-driven approach to correcting code failure comes down to the rapidity and nimbleness of those responses. Stated differently, cyber-libertarians have a strong aversion to the politicization of technology issues and efforts to replace market processes with bureaucratic processes.
Importantly, the cyber-libertarian defines "markets" broadly to include monetary and non-monetary transactions as well as proprietary and non-proprietary modes of production. To be clear, collaborative, non-proprietary technologies and efforts (e.g., Wikipedia and open source software) are not at odds with cyber-libertarianism. But the cyber-libertarian does reject the notion these models are the only acceptable model or that they should be imposed on us by law. The proper policy position with regards to the "open vs. closed" or "proprietary vs. non-proprietary" debate should be one of techno-agnosticism. Lawmakers and courts should not be tilting the balance in one direction or the other.
More generally speaking, instead of seeking to define or impose a single utopian vision, the cyber-libertarian seeks to enable what libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick called a "Utopia of Utopias:" a framework within which many different models of organizing commerce and community can flourish alongside, and in competition with, each other.
D. General Relationship to "Internet Exceptionalism"
Internet exceptionalists are first cousins to cyber-libertarians: They believe that the Internet has changed culture and history profoundly and is deserving of special care before governments intervene. [See Section IV for an expanded discussion.]
II. The Intellectual Foundations of Cyber-Libertarianism
A. Traditional Libertarian Philosophy
- Natural Rights philosophers –John Locke, Ayn Rand, The Founders
- Utilitarian philosophers – John Stuart Mill (On Liberty), Herbert Spencer
- "Austrian School" of Economics – Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard
- Milton Friedman (Free to Choose)
- Robert Nozick – argument for a minimalist state; "utopia of utopias" notion
- Thomas Sowell – critique of "The Vision of the Anointed"
- Richard Epstein – vision of "Simple Rules for a Complex World
B. Modern Cyber-Libertarian Theorists
- Ithiel de Sola Pool (Technologies of Freedom)
- Alvin Toffler (The Third Wave, Future Shock)
- George Gilder (Microcosm, Telecosm)
- Peter Huber (Law & Disorder in Cyberspace)
- Tom W. Bell
- Technology Liberation Front bloggers
C. Internet Exceptionalists[see Sec. IV below]
- Nicholas Negroponte (Being Digital)
- John Perry Barlow ("Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace")
- David Post
- Eric Goldman
- H. Brian Holland
III. The Contrast with Cyber-Collectivism
A. Cyber-Collectivism Defined
Cyber-collectivism is the opposite of cyber-libertarianism. Cyber-collectivism refers to the general belief that cyber-choices should be guided by the State or an elite class according to some amorphous "general will" or "public interest." The distant influence of Plato, Rousseau, and Marx can often been seen in the work of cyber-collectivists.
Cyber-collectivism comes in many flavors, however. "Left"-leaning cyber-collectivists, for example, are more focused on social concerns than economic ones. Some "Right"-leaning cyber-collectivists are focused on controlling the impact of the Internet on culture or security. In other words, cyber-collectivism is not as philosophically coherent as cyber-libertarianism—which, though it comes in many flavors, shares a larger core of common agreement
B. General Relationship to "Information Commons" Movement
There is a close relationship between the Leftist variant of cyber-collectivism and the "digital commons" or "information commons" movement, which generally refers to the belief that digital resources should be shared or perhaps commonly owned instead of held privately—both because cyber-collectivists think this is more equitable and because they generally think such arrangements will ultimately work better.
Cyber-collectivists are typically not Marxists; few of them call for state ownership of the information means of production. Rather, cyber-collectivists might better be thought of a "cyber social Democrats" (in a European sense) or "Digital New Dealers" (in the American tradition). They advocate a generous role for law and regulation in many online matters, but do not typically resort to full-blown nationalization.
C. Exponents of Cyber-Collectivism
Some notable cyber-collectivists or information commons adherents (and their key works):
- Lawrence Lessig (Code, Free Culture)
- Tim Wu (Who Controls the Internet?)
- Yochai Benkler (The Wealth of Networks)
- Jonathan Zittrain (The Future of the Internet & How to Stop It)
- David Bollier (Viral Spiral)
- Harvard Berkman Center*
- New America Foundation*
- Public Knowledge*
(*We are, of course, generalizing a bit here. Not everyone in these institutions is a cyber-collectivist and, again, there are many flavors of cyber-collectivism, just as there are many flavors of cyber-libertarianism. Individuals in some of these organizations diverge significantly in attitudes towards technological change and the proper scope of government influence throughout the high-tech sector.)
IV. Relationship Between Cyber-Libertarianism & Internet Exceptionalism
Some non-libertarians occasionally join ranks with cyber-libertarians out of a belief that the Internet is different and deserving of special consideration and care. This is commonly referred to as "Cyber-Exceptionalism" or "Internet Exceptionalism." John Perry Barlow's 1996 "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" was probably the earliest (and most extreme) articulation of "Internet Exceptionalism":
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.
You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.
Similarly, in 1994, The Progress & Freedom Foundation brought together four leading technology visionaries (Esther Dyson, George Gilder, George Keyworth, and Alvin Toffler) to pen A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age. In that manifesto, the authors argued:
Cyberspace is the land of knowledge, and the exploration of that land can be a civilization's truest, highest calling. The opportunity is now before us to empower every person to pursue that calling in his or her own way.
The challenge is as daunting as the opportunity is great. The Third Wave has profound implications for the nature and meaning of property, of the marketplace, of community and of individual freedom. As it emerges, it shapes new codes of behavior that move each organism and institution—family, neighborhood, church group, company, government, nation—inexorably beyond standardization and centralization, as well as beyond the materialist's obsession with energy, money and control.
Turning the economics of mass-production inside out, new information technologies are driving the financial costs of diversity—both product and personal—down toward zero, "demassifying" our institutions and our culture. Accelerating demassification creates the potential for vastly increased human freedom.
It also spells the death of the central institutional paradigm of modern life, the bureaucratic organization. (Governments, including the American government, are the last great redoubt of bureaucratic power on the face of the planet, and for them the coming change will be profound and probably traumatic.)
As that last paragraph suggests, this "Magna Carta" for cyberspace contained some hints of cyber-libertarian thinking, but the general thrust of the document was more generally of the Internet Exceptionalist school of thought.
Internet Exceptionalists are sometime critiqued for sounding like techno-utopians, but it is a mistake to conflate the two. There are not always synonymous.
V. Cyber-Libertarianism's Early Legal Foundations & Victories
- Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 is probably the best example of cyber-exceptionalism in practice. It grants broad immunity to online intermediaries for third party content except for criminal and IP law—breaking with traditional tort liability standards. Specifically, Sec. 230 rejected the "deputization of the middleman" model of liability.
- Overturning of the Communications Decency Act's indecency & obscenity provisions in Reno v. ACLU decision
- Various court decisions blocking enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) of 1999
- The encryption wars & the defeat of the "Clipper Chip"
- The Internet Tax Freedom Act of 1998
VI. Applications: How Cyber-Libertarians Think about Various Policy Issues
- Free speech & online child safety: Favor parental empowerment and industry self-regulation over censorship. "Household standards" should trump "community standards."
- Privacy policy & online advertising: Privacy is a subjective condition and efforts to regulate to "protect privacy" could have unintended consequences for freedom of speech and the growth of online content and commerce. User empowerment and industry self-regulation represent the superior way to address privacy concerns.
- Net neutrality / infrastructure regulation: "Open access" regulation is nothing more the infrastructure socialism. Network operators should be free to own, operate, and price their systems and services as they see fit, subject only to enforcement of their terms of service and other voluntary disclosures as contracts with their users. New entry and innovation are better alternative to regulating yesterday's networks and technologies.
- Internet taxation: No special taxes should be imposed on online services or Internet access. To the extent the Net disrupts traditional tax bases that should be seen as an opportunity to reform those tax systems.
- Online gambling: People should be free to do what they want with their money and Internet gambling is likely impossible to shut down entirely anyway, given the nature of the Internet.
- Antitrust: "Market power" and "code failures" are best dealt with by spontaneous evolution of markets and new entry, not bureaucratic micro-management of old technologies or market structures. Regulation often creates, or tends to foster, most monopolies. As Ithiel de Sola Pool once noted, "The force that preserves most monopoly privilege is law… most would vanish in the absence of enforcement."
- IP issues: Cyber-libertarians are deeply divided over IP issues (especially copyright) and this reflects a long-standing division within libertarian ranks on these issues more generally. Some believe IP rights are a natural extension of traditional property rights and/or a sensible way to incentivize scientific and artistic creativity. Others believe no one has a right to "property-tize" intangible creations or that copyright is simply industrial protectionism. And there are many views in between.
VII. Prospects for Cyber-Libertarianism
A. The Pessimistic View
- Government's will quash online freedom and bring the Internet under their thumbs.
- Regulatory efforts are expanding at a breathtaking pace and will not slow anytime soon.
B. The Optimistic View
- "Technologies of Freedom" (tools and methods to avoid online regulation, censorship and control) will ultimately triumph.
- Technology is evolving faster than government's ability to regulate it.
VIII. Related Reading on Cyber-Libertarianism & Internet Exceptionalism
- John Perry Barlow, Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996).
- Tom W. Bell, Free Speech, Strict Scrutiny, and Self-Help: How Technology Upgrades Constitutional Jurisprudence, 87 U. Minn. L. Rev. 743 (2003).
- Esther Dyson, George Gilder, George Keyworth, & Alvin Toffler, The Progress & Freedom Foundation, A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age (1994).
- Eric Goldman, The Third Wave of Internet Exceptionalism, Santa Clara Magazine (Winter 2008).
- H. Brian Holland, In Defense of Online Intermediary Immunity: Facilitating Communities of Modified Exceptionalism, Kansas L. Rev. (2007).
- Peter Huber, Law & Disorder in Cyberspace: Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm (1997).
- Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies of Freedom (1983).
- David Post, In Search of Jefferson's Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace (2009).
- Adam Thierer, The Pragmatic Internet Optimist's Creed, Technology Liberation Front Blog (Nov. 11, 2008).
- Technology Liberation Front Blog, About the Technology Liberation Front (August 2004, revised 2008).
Cyber-Libertarianism: The Case for Real Internet Freedom [Ver 1.0 – Thierer & Szoka]