Continuing the discussion from Streaming large video files with a distributed network:
I think from this and other discussions we can establish that one won’t have much at his disposal to deal with copied content. The only (so far) way to lessen the problem appears to be reputation system (not in works yet).
As I’ve been thinking what I could do on SAFE Network [edited - please stick to agreed lexicon at least on this one! ] when testnet3 hits the Internet, I always return to this problem of dealing with copied content and conclude that it’s going to be difficult to protect it. The moment it’s available is the moment when it can be copied (to another public MaidSafe site, or anywhere on the traditional Internet).
I don’t think MaidSafe should come up with an idea what to do about it - the problem is basically unsolvable. Perhaps it’s the free market showing us that intellectual property doesn’t exist (I don’t quite subscribe to that, but let’s return to practical matters).
Considering all that, I don’t see a way to monetize content I have. Even if there was a reputation system, I’m quite sure a MaidSafe version of some Torrent site would have a higher reputation than any one individual (except maybe top 100 entertainers in the world).
My question to potential content “monetizers” is: do you believe you can monetize your content on SAFE Network [edited]?
I just don’t see a way to make it feasible. Fortunately I’m not a full time author, so I wouldn’t necessarily need to make a lot of money, but even making more than $10/month seems impossible unless one has a very small circle of customers and/or sells access to a product of very low value (not worth copying).
I see $50/mo as a bare minimum that would justify my screwing around with payments, setting things up, running the s/w, keeping it up to date, etc. For less than that, I could as well post the content for free and surround it with Google ads I hate that idea, but that’s what you can do without much effort and marketing - just setup a Web site and tweet/FB about your posts, and you’ll do quite okay with a minimal effort. Compare that with the amount of marketing you’d have to do to get 100 visitors a day on MaidSafe (and the first visitors would be MaidSafe-based pirates). That’s why I estimate the extra cost of marketing on SAFE Network [edited] would be at least $50/mo (if not many times higher).