Dealing with copied content

I am not sure that is correct, digital has created a whole new world for digital art and has never found an answer.

Or it’s saying others already are subverting paying you, the artist, here is an alternative approach. This new approach also means put up your highest quality goods and produce what you the artist feels you want to portray.

I feel this is a new model being judged by existing models which can be difficult.

4 Likes

Long ago, artists had to learn living on their exploitation by people who crave to consume their work but don´t see any need to pay for it, so my issue here is not people copying the work of creators - it´s about other people making money on their back. Also, an automated “tax” on content consumption doesn´t apply to the individuality of cost. Content creators will also always use other instruments to get paid, because they have real cost to cover, they cannot wait for the network rewards to jump in. So I don´t really see why the reward is needed, while on the other hand it´s clear what it incents (piracy as business).

It would be quite different if uploaders could charge individually and afford consumers (not farmers) to make a payment. In this case consumers would pay more attention where the money goes to, but as I understood that is neither possible nor intended.

This is not about judging a model, it´s rather about concluding what an automated reward may cause and why content creators may feel offended.

Am I getting you wrong? Do you believe you have any right to enjoy the work of others without asking them in advance? We can certainly discuss the political problem of unequal distribution of property, however your argument sounds as if you think that property and the restriction which comes along with it is something negative by itself.

It doesn’t matter what my philosophy is, only the argument I make and the effects it has.

However, you are taking something incorrect. I don’t have a political position here, and am not saying I have the right to your output. Its a position worth exploring though - I wonder about the consequences. But seriously, what I am saying is that the attempt to enforce copyright (and patents) has gone from something that works in favour of creators, into something that centralises power and control and is driven by profit, and which is now - through the laws and practices I mentioned - oppressive, suppresses creativity and innovation, and a threat to the future of humanity. Did you understand or check the reference I provided to Cory Doctorow?

I think you make a valid point about not wanting people to profit from the labour of others, but this is a small and narrow point in a much wider debate, and focussing on it both ignores all the other ways people (corporations, shareholders and those who they bribe and support in power) profit from the work of artists, and in general from the work of others. I don’t believe you make a strong case by focussing on this narrow point, and by not exploring the impact of the status quo, and this alternative, in the broader picture.

To be convincing you need to consider much wider effects than a narrow principle, whose effects are double edged to say the least.

3 Likes

This is deceptively clever!

How many aggregators will go out of their way to alter files for reupload?

I think most just link or reupload the original file. In this case, the system directs GET payment to the first uploader. I just realized the amount of frenzy upload activity this might ignite.

I am in favor of Pay the Producer, but SAFE doesn’t know who the producer is… so it must substitute that with the uploader. It’s actually Pay the Uploader hoping they will also be the producer.

This is a hard problem.

1 Like

I agree, but only for

  1. Existing data
  2. Future works where the artist does not upload it themselves

These seem to be the contentious points, I am not sure they can be solved and I am not sure they should be in all honesty. Backwards compatibility with an already broke system may be difficult. On point 2 I feel that if artists do not upload then they may miss out, I have some sympathy with that point, but then again if we are trying hard to reward and folks don’t agree, then I don’t know what we could do (fairly).

I also feel on point 1. we have pirated sometimes low quality rips etc. if original artists replaced this with high quality products then it would work, also if they had their distribution site or used others (does not matter as long as they upload first), sprinkled with say short videos of them explaining their art, folks would surely go there and support them, consuming content direct from where there is high quality and closer to the artist?

Not simple, but perhaps not trying would be wrong as well.

4 Likes

How hard would it be to turn off or adjust the GET reward for content?

If things don’t go as expected, could we disable or change it?

Pretty easy, for PtP anyway it is a single line of code change almost. For Get in general then it’s a lot to change that paradigm.

2 Likes

Yeah, I was referring to PtP only. In that case, you have my support. :smile:

2 Likes

Oh, it does. Because the belief that property and the restriction which comes along with it is something negative by itself opposes the idea of safe access for everyone. This might raise questions in which way the proposed strategy relates to the project.

[quote=“happybeing, post:138, topic:4891”]
I don’t have a political position here, and am not saying I have the right to your output. Its a position worth exploring though - I wonder about the consequences. But seriously, what I am saying is that the attempt to enforce copyright (and patents) has gone from something that works in favour of creators, into something that centralises power and control and is driven by profit, and which is now - through the laws and practices I mentioned - oppressive, suppresses creativity and innovation, and a threat to the future of humanity.[/quote]

Well, this IS a political position, it´s not just analysis - and there´s nothing bad about it. I also agree that abuse of copyright exists, but imho your statement is way overgeneralized. DRM is one thing, dominant platforms another and artists charging individually for their work again another. Anyway, my point was just about “depriving almost all human beings of access to things that they could otherwise enjoy, and benefit from” which is false. Restricting access to others is NOT an act of deprivation, because anyone has a right to have access to your data.

Anyway, the crucial point here is that the network doesn´t care about creators - it only cares about uploaders, so I guess we should keep the wording straight and not conceal the issue by assuming that uploaders and creators are the same. Rewarding uploaders is an incentive to convert attention to money and this will give rise to piracy as business.

Right, and I don´t believe you make a rational point by arguing I would ignore “all the other ways people (corporations, shareholders and those who they bribe and support in power) profit from the work of artists, and in general from the work of others”. First off: where do I ignore that fact? Secondly, how is that an argument for rewarding uploaders? Following your argument there is not much of a reason to reward them with a flat tax. So again, what´s the point of rewarding uploaders?

Actually I don´t. It doesn´t really matter to me whether you are convinced of my argument or not. You are not convinced that removing is a good idea, you also didn´t provide any good reason why rewarding is necessary.

Surely people would rather reward the creator though? I would certainly rather download an official copy, from an official site, rather than someone else’s. Why would I want to reward the latter?

2 Likes
  1. In many cases there will be no “official” copy
  2. Even if there is an “official” page, people usually consume through aggregators. In this case you won´t see who is rewarded.
  3. The only solution would be to provide “added value”, as David suggest. Here again, people can simply copy your work, alter it slightly and upload to a more popular place.

If you want to pay the author, you will do so. There is no need to pay rewards to uploaders by taxing farmers.

Here’s another thought:

The reward assume a correlation between size of content and value of content. For the network, all megabytes are created equal and it rewards it all equally, but the reality is totally different, value is subjective and can only be appreciated by the person consuming the content. I could value a great book that weight less than a Mo much more than a video of a cat that farts but yet, for the network, the video is worth so much more. So the reward is not for all type of content, it aim specifically for content that takes a lot of place, like videos. And because of caching, it’s the type of video that is easy to create that takes the edge because quality video that are hard to produce just gets cached once it gets popular.

So what kind of video is easy to produce and fast to consume? Porn. The reward on Get request makes the safe network the heaven of the porno industry. In a way, it’s a good thing, where porn goes so does the average Joe so I guess it could help make the network mainstream, but I’m not sure this is what the reward was intended for…

Well, you’ve completely ignored all the rationale I provided for the scheme, and against your stated reasons for removing it which seem to me weak: very narrowly based and short sighted.

You finish by saying I don’t provide any good reasons, but have not addressed any of the arguments that I did make.

I see that you don’t get what I think is good about this scheme, for creative people and for wider humanity, even though I took the trouble to explain this at some length. But saying I didn’t provide any good reasons without pointing to any flaws in the case I made, or in the very clear examples I gave further undermines your case in my eyes. You could at least say what parts of what I said you disagree with even if you can’t point to any errors.

You seem to have a view but not the willingness to debate other views or to make a case for yours in preference to them.

The only rational points you made were to say let’s call it reward the uploaders because that’s what it does, and to suggest this gives rise to piracy. I made the point that it will have little impact on piracy either way, but you’ve ignored that so the issue on which your view is based is moot, certainly not made.

I continue to prefer to call it reward the producer even though it may be misused, because that is the purpose of the measure. Many things don’t function ideally as described, but naming according to the intention can help. Here it encourages people to use it for that purpose by indicating the opportunity, and makes it clear to anyone whether they are using or abusing the intention of the network designers. It also reminds us of the purpose and encourages people to spot flaws and try to make improvements, or in your case to say it should be withdrawn.

3 Likes

Why so negative? I’m a huge Radiohead fan, in 2007 they released their album “In Rainbows” and they said, pay what you want! I already new they were millionaires, I already paid enough to see their shows, that album got available as a download, and was on the Piratebay within hours. And guess what? I paid them a very fair price.

Lead singer Thom Yorke pushed it a bit further, he uploaded his latest album to Bittorrent, you got some songs for free and the whole “bundle” for $6. I gues rewarding that uploader isn’t that bad.

https://gigaom.com/2015/01/05/thom-yorke-made-as-much-as-20m-from-his-bittorrent-experiment/

And what about Netflix? You can watch even more series on the illegal streaming App Popcorntime, and still Netflix is a huge hit. People like to pay for content, they tip people when they like an article or a picture etc. On Safenet it would even be more easy to do things like that. You create something beautiful, you get rewarded for putting it online (part of the “Farming Reward”) You can create a tip-button, you can ask a little fee for membership of your site, so many options. Way more than on the common internet. Micro payments are great, Safecoins will make it happen. No need for tippingbots etc. Just click that little button, and confirm you want to tip an artist 0,20 Safecoin for that nice videoclip.

2 Likes

Aw…well…while that´s actually untrue, I will go into it again, so you cannot complain about me not reacting to your arguments. Remember the core question was: Why is it better to reward the uploader?

First off: no matter how often you repeat that you like to “pay the producer” (which btw is exactly what I advocate), what you propose is a “pay the uploader” function, and even if you continue to call it “reward the producer” it won´t change the fact that “the producer” doesn´t exist to the protocol, but only the uploader. I will repeat this several times, because it´s the main reason why I didn´t address your arguments: they refer to a mere theoretical case.

Don´t see why, already said that. Didn´t hear a proper rationale.

[quote=“happybeing, post:133, topic:4891”]
Firstly, I don’t think the impact of pay the producer or not will be very great on the amount of popular content that is uploaded. The incentive is already there - people already upload all the most popular content even with risk of draconian penalties for doing so.
Not having pay the producer will have little impact on the amount of this happening on SAFE. It just means that those trying to profit from it will use advertising (eugh - there’s another threat to humanity IMO) rather than have to compete with SAFE sites that don’t inflict this, but survive purely on pay the producer revenues.[/quote]

  1. I don´t understand why you say “even”. Piracy is a business. The people who host these pages don´t use advertisement and occasionally malware distribution to “survive”, but to make money. As you say, it is a precarious business and if you do things wrongly you can get locked up in jail - not at all appealing to most people and one of the main reasons why this isn´t a business for everyone.
  2. Coming back to the “survive purely on”… Actually there is no reason NOT to have advertisement on SAFE. You can host the file on a platform and make money through the APP, the uploader reward, advertisement etc. Ka-ching. People can copy your content (as they could before) and reupload elsewhere. It´s likely that they do, because they as well can make money through those channels. You are not describing an alternative scenario, but an ADDITIONAL source income for pirated content.

Has anything to do with the necessity of rewarding the uploader. The SAFE network gives people the chance not to depend on a platform (technically, effectively there will be platforms, 100%, they may look different than today), not the reward. They can generate income other than taking it from farmers, e.g. by asking people to pay, to donate or through advertisement - however many people won´t feel inclined to pay someone who is not the author. They will bother much less if anyone asks them to pay.

Again a general argument for SAFE, no indicator for the necessity to reward the uploader however.

  1. That really depends on the aggregator. Popular aggregators may only list content which they uploaded on their own, so they will receive the cut and pay out a share at their conditions to the artists. Not to mention that they are eternally paid for the content…
  2. I wonder why you believe that it is not easy to compete with the original source, since that again depends on the place of release. You probably know how enterprises such as H&M run their business? They hire scouts and send them to places where unknown talents which you do not know design clothes. They buy single pieces, send it to their headquarters to adjust some details, hand it over to a middleman who orders to create a mold in China, produce 100K pieces and sell it all over the world throughout their stores. It´s that simple to compete with the original - you only need the right infrastructure.

Actually this really sounds to me like an copyright advocate (“You wouldn´t be famous without me!”), whereas actually this is a classic contract case: If anyone asked you to distribute my piece of work you have any right to charge money for that. Contrary, If I asked you to help me disseminating, you should name a price/cut and we set up a contract. However, the proposal is an automated reward, so the creator has no voice in the decision of payment plus it goes to the uploader, not necessarily to the producer.

In general this discussion seem to come back again and again to music, while other content creations are often much more interesting. Assume I wrote a software that is really awesome. I´m about to prepare the release, but my flatmate makes a copy and releases it to the network. The program is a huge hit, my flatmate gets a nice bunch of royalties and I am unable to sell because a) everyone can get it for free and b) I cannot prove that I´m the rightful owner because anyone knows me.

You should really protect the stuff you make. Same goes for your little garden in the city, some kids could steal your tomatoes. I mean, you’re just talking about someone stealing stuff. No reason to blame a P2P-network for that.

Actually I waited for this example to come up. You could have also come up with Panera Bread Co who offered their customers to pay as much as they wanted. The business worked! For some time, then people got used to, so they decided to install a bouncer and eventually went back to regular payments.

I also bought the Radiohead album, but to look at it properly it would need them to have a general PWYW policy to see whether it´s a sustainable model, which they don´t. They could do it everywhere, even with their merchandise shop, which they don´t…for good reason I guess or maybe because they forget to offer it. PWYW works, but it doesn´t work well if it is repeated over time.

Netflix and Popcorntime…Hardly anyone in the mainstream knows popcorn time and some people believe they can be jailed for using an illegal service so I don´t see why this is a good comparison.

Wait, are you saying it’s my fault? Really? Oh, PS yes I´m talking about stealing stuff, same as publishing content that others worked hard for and cashing out is stealing from them.

the greed is maximum with software developers. they create a program (nothing to say here), they use the ability of the computers to multiply their program (copy) and they charge for every copy of the initial work, even if no more work has been put into those copy. and the same developers are crying because other people use the same ability to copy the program which they bought from them. this means only one thing: whenever someone makes an APP, he doesn’t put a price on it as when you put a price on something physical. they want to get continously income for their program, using computers copy ability, but in the same time bitching about the computers copy ability

Here in Holland they’re both a great hit. We have 16.8 million Dutch users and over 1 million are on Netflix. it’s estimated that 1 million are on Popcorntime as well.

Great taste! :wink:

Thom Yorke showed you can ask a very low price for an album on Bittorrent and make good money on it. He just cut out the record company. Just a studio, a producer, get it get mixed and put it on Bittorrent. he could do the same on Safenet and even put up some videoclips and make money from streaming.

Where did you read that?

Even if you feel that way, do you want to blame Tim berners-lee for that? Or Bram Cohen (inventor of Bittorrent)? Or maybe your power company that provides electricity to those thieves! Nope, they just created technology. Just like Maidsafe is doing. It’s a technical protocol.

And you know what’s weird? Musicians should be paid over and over again because people enjoy what they’ve made. But what about that nice building on the other side of the block, or that nice train station you go to from Monday to Friday. Should the architect be paid every time you look at it? I mean, all those people are really enjoying that building. They’re enjoying the art that the building is! Let’s send them a bill!

correct, and this happens because if you create digital work (musig, drawings, games, programs etc) you do not set a price for your work because of the copy ability. the weird thing is that the creators would wish the copy ability to work JUST for them