>If Flattr was really all about helping others, the fee would be much less.
How much less? Five percent? One percent? The only other micropayment processor I'm aware of that has better rates than Flattr is Paypal's micropayment service at five percent plus five cents. Given Paypal's massive size advantage I'd say Flattr's doing well so far.
>...talked about how everything should be shared/free.
I'd think founding a startup aimed at micropayments for all kinds of artists and other creators would indicate that Peter's ideas about distribution of art and creator compensation are more nuanced than simply "everything should be shared/free." He says as much in TPB AFK. He certainly doesn't believe that copyright as it stands has any place in a digital world and Flattr seems to be his manner of investigating ways to share content while still giving back to creators.
>With the amount of advertising on TPB (and traffic), I know he was making a profit (and paying his salary).
I've found no numbers on just how much has been made via adverts or what it was spent on, though I'd imagine the costs of bandwidth for coordinating the majority of the planet's bit torrent traffic could easily reach thousands per month. The recently released documentary has one of the prosecutors arguing that there were 64 unique ads on the site at any given time, each costing 500 dollars per week, coming out to about 1.7 million in revenue each year. Gottfried says in the documentary that there were four unique ads, and that even 110k annual revenue was bigger than they had typically gotten but a more realistic figure. I'd love to see the actual balance sheets, though I doubt anyone from the defense or prosecution has any to speak of.
>...at the same time saying they shouldn't be able to earn a living?
90% of flattrs that cost next to nothing for the creator to take advantage of constitutes an incapacity to earn a living? Sounds better than what an artist would get via itunes or an old-fashioned record deal. Of course, this is all operating on the poor assumption that most artists would ever be able to earn a living off their work, no matter how draconian copyright law became or how perfectly DRM was designed and implemented.