If SAFE won't pay content makers, it shouldn't pay App makers

You aren’t paying developers. You are paying to PUT. How SAFE balances it’s books is up to SAFE. If it doesn’t balance the whole system will collapse…

New users bring new resources. (Space and bandwidth) Having adequate apps to attract those users isn’t optional. I don’t know how long MaidSAFE has funding for – but it will run out eventually…

You’re confusing metaphors here. Everyone needs apps but everyone also needs content. Not everyone can agree on what music they like or what video to watch, that is what KIND of content they want to consume. Likewise they can’t all agree on which apps they would want to use. Do you use friendica, twitter, diaspora or facebook? Do you use Libreoffice or Microsoft Office? Do you use Linux, Windows or Mac OS X? All of this is software but they are completely different directions of usage. While most people could agree we need apps they would disagree entirely as to which apps we need or how to build them or what values are most important when coding them. That is they can agree they like music but can’t agree on the bands or genres. Therefore we’re back to the Devs = Artists = Musicians = Writers = Content Creators which is what I’ve been saying in the first place.

Oh the roads the roads! No I don’t support having to pay taxes to support roads. I believe all taxation should be replaced with crowdfunding and other forms of voluntary interaction. You’re talking to an anarchist here man. Statist appeals will not work. Why should I pay for a road that I’m not going to drive on or walk on? Why should I pay for a road somewhere on the East Coast when I live on the West Coast? It’s not my problem. Likewise why should I be forced to pay safecoin to an app developer I do not know, in an amount I have not consented to nor control, concerning a project I do not use? I use Linux. Does that mean I’m OBLIGATED to give them money? NO! Likewise if I use maidsafe I should not be OBLIGATED via hardcoding to support the devs. Now I’m very much likely to support the devs, especially if it was easy to do either through a subscription or by buying an altcoin or something, but I still believe it should be my CHOICE to do so. In fact if given the choice I may even give them more than 10% because I’m bloody generous but I still reserve the right to make that determination and not have it dictated to me. Whether everyone uses a resource or not is IRRELIVENT, If everyone uses the resource then it should be a very popular resource to support because it’s in everyone’s self interest to keep that resource maintained and in good working order. To get back to your roads metaphor if people choose not to support road maintinance then the roads break down and get filled with potholes and what not. The bridges start falling apart and cars go tumbling into rivers and what not. Bad things happen. Likewise if people don’t support the devs then app development slows, updates happen less frequently and maybe David Irvine takes that long needed vacation he’s been dreaming about. How do we fix this? By subscribing heavily and donating heavily to the dev fund and posting our pathetic apologies and singing their praises. But the point is all this is done without hardcoding AND people need to take responsibility for where they spend their money. If you don’t support the devs you get less coding, if you do then you get more coding. But it’s still up to you to make that choice. All not hardcoding does is give people that choice and responsibility. And if people act irresponsibly then hey they can only blame themselves for the system falling flat.

Aren’t you kind of getting this in reverse? If you choose to support which content or content producer you wish to support specifically then you have more control of where your money goes than if you just let the network take a percentage of your farming rewards and reward everyone flat out. Hence the debate about subjective value.

Amen. All kinds of creativity should be rewarded or none at all.

If I’m paying for puts then 100% of farming revenue should go to farmers. Follow the money.

So get a devcoin or a subscription system going. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be funded. I’m saying do it voluntarily. And more to the point that what applies to one type of content creator can apply to all content creators, including devs.

That argument is not relevant. If you agree, why should everyone agree?

However, I also disagree with this part, and not with @Blindsite2k, but with this approach to the governance of the network. To clarify: Blindsite2K can disasgree, and not participate. He can also fork the code (once it’s ready) and tune a parameter to make it a farmer/client/appvendor-side setting. No problem.
But this Network cannot change this mechanism now, IMO, because the contract under holders acquired MAID specified that portion of tokens will go to devs. If this were to be changed, I think (litigious) holders would have full right to ask for redress. (Personally I hold MAID on and off and I’m not litigious, in case anyone’s wondering what’s my interest in this - I have no commercial interest, I just want to use the Network.)

IMO you could say this before the “IPO” and then - if it didn’t work - not buy in. Let’s say that now most people accept this and new rules take place. Obviously a minority would disagree (say, some app dev who holds 1 MAID) and would have the right to seek compensation for their losses (including time they invested in planning and development of their app.) That’s why I think your idea isn’t implementable any more. Even if the project manages to change the way payments are divided in the system, it would cause it to lose credibility, IMHO. The next question would naturally be: what else will be changed and when?

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Finally a decent arguement. Well I’m not familiar with any contractual agreement maidsafe might have made but if they are locked into a particular model then that makes this entire discussion and the PtP debate rather moot now doesn’t it? How can they add PtP if they can’t take away the dev fund or modify such ratios? It seems the whole thing would need to be done at the app level regardless if they’re locked in via some contract.

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Haha that was you?

Awesome. Thanks.

Yeah I honestly think that is how it should work and im surprised not one single large media organisation has not jumped onto bitcoin and implemented a BTC tipping feature to their app or website.

If I had a system where I could simply click a button or two and tip 20c here $2 there for great content it would mean I can directly support the artists and creators I want to support, It would reduce the need for ads and the cream would rise to the top.

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61% in favour of doing something for the content creators.

The argument is now about how.

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Well, I don’t know what can be done at this point.

Slightly OT: in the Polo Trading Thread I made a comment about Sia(coin). They have a “market driven” approach where coins are free floating on Polo, but farmers set their prices. I thought that made more sense (and would have bought some if I knew before they launched), but now I realize that that too isn’t very good: you can buy Siacoins, but it doesn’t buy you anything since you don’t know how much capacity will be available and at what price. By now I’m thinking if Sia’s prices will be “market” prices that reflect actual costs, why buy the damn thing when I can always buy it at the “real” market price so I don’t have to worry about either inflation or deflation?
On a more philosophical level one might appreciate the phenomenon of Bitcoin (and to some extent Litecoin, although it’s a forked copy) because it was naturally bootstrapped in a way similar to gold. It just appeared and it’s there. Quite amazing.

I don’t have enough time to read, and let alone understand the complexity of the Github proposals and on the other hand I am not even sure that they are legitimate because holders acquired MAID under conditions which should remain unchanged. What to do now? I don’t know. In my post about v1.0 without any coin I suggested to launch without the coin first and work out the coin economics and rewards within a short timeframe after that. It’s not a great idea and it only delays the final reckoning, I know. But on the other hand if you look at recent topics on this forum, I think there’s very little agreement on how things should work economically (or “financially”, if you will) which is something what I have been warning since August of 2014, when almost everyone was exclusively optimistic about it.

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Not at the network level I’d say.

We need to be careful how to interpret the result of the poll. Personaly I voted for yes depending on its implementation, but only to reward app dev on PUT. So other content producer gets no love from me.

What is clear with the result is the general concern about the feature.

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Tine print under the poll had a legal disclaimer in 6pt font and added that it was not scientific. :wink:

Seriously, that poll is just for fun and I am sure the idea was just to get people to argue uhm, discuss.

The only approach remotely resembling anything proper would be to invite MAID holders to vote via broadcast (as I pointed out above, results would not legally override the initial presale/IPO T&C’s.)

But IMO even that could not be valid and for not just one reason. For example, the “oversold” coins should be excluded from the voting pool because they weren’t paid for (that is already one complication that shows why those coins should have been burned right after the IPO and how the decision to keep them “just in case” is already hinting at possible governance complications in the near future). Another complication is that Polo could play a decisive role in such voting and they’re not even a MAID holder, but only a custodian. In a way this situation is worse than the bitcoin blockchain debate (which ironically was laughed at by some on this forum) because unlike with bitcoin where there are no “investors” to worry about, here proper decision making is more pressing, but less possible!

Funny thing is I knew of these potential problems all along and I was fully expecting this, but there’s no use of wasting my time explaining these things (not to you smacz, but in general) when most forum members “believe” in net neutrality and similar socialist* fables. [* When I say socialist I am merely describing an outlook, not judging it]

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The point if the poll was to allow the community to express it’s attitude towards PtP, in order that we can all know what the level of support or otherwise actually is.

It’s clear that the majority of community is not against PtP on principle, but that a significant number are not convinced of the how it can or should be done.

Of those who voted against, I imagine they include both people who are against the principle, and some who don’t believe it can be achieved without unacceptable negative consequences.

BTW, My comments on PtP are not intended to distinguish between content producers and App dev rewards, although of course they are different, and will probably have different mechanisms
if implemented.

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You complain about a bit going to better developing the ecosystem and infrastructure, but you have no problem with subsidizing he world’s Netflix subscription?

It’s a matter of scale. Paying people to build a freeway is a ton different than paying people to fill it with cars.

You keep putting these videos down, but they’re of a ton of value to little kids around the world, if they’re that viral.

There’s true value for a large part of humanity there, and you’re always putting it down: who’s to say that their enjoyment is of lesser importance than yours

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Content can be of VAST importance in all it’s forms. And as noted any ‘dev’ with an App will likely rely upon it. As what is their code written in? Where is it saved?

And what about less ‘appy’ internet undertakings. No one reads newspapers online? Or blog posts? Or listen to music? Or watch videos?

A lot of folks here seem to have a conflated idea of what an ‘app’ is/does. Sharing of content does not require an app. Email forwarding used to be how content was shared. Just that one program (‘app’).

To suggest devs – as many have above – are more important than other kinds of content creators shows very little understanding of what development is (or indeed how crucial ‘apps’ are; side note is that core development is actually funded elsewhere by the network [5% I believe], so to compare ‘app’ development to roads is a mistake).

I program for a living. I wish I could do more creative undertakings for a living. That’s why SAFE excites me. I don’t think what I do has mass appeal, but for a few folks it could. And baked / seemless contributions to creators of anything is great.

Imagine an internet without all the f***g adverts/clickworthy link bait nonsense etc.

Imagine small artists getting their share instead of being f***d via Spotify’s revenue sharing model (which benefits large artists heavily).

Having that as a base and allowing apps on top to ask for more strikes me as the fairest deal. Reducing friction and increasing the likelihood of people putting things onto the network.

Tipping on top, sure why not. App devs getting to set a rate as part of their app. Sure why not. That’s just the same as we have now (Apple app store etc). But it shouldn’t be all we have. The whole point of SAFE is to do better. And we can do that. So why would we opt not to?

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Well said, wish others were at least considering it from this perspective.

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Like I have said before – Somebody needs to show a mathematical model of how this magic money is going to appear that allows 10% of the farming income replace the revenue streams of the Music, TV, Movie, Magazine, news, and porn industries. I would submit that artists are going to be further f*_&ked… Not less so.

Paying artist would be nice - but it’s either nickles or pipe dreams.

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@jreighley. So you think something is worse than nothing? Could elaborate on why it would be more damaging? I also don’t think it’s intended to replace the revenue streams but rather to supplement or incentivize producers to upload period.

It costs to upload and what does the network need? Content and Apps.

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@Nigel, Yes. Youtube pays something . The music industry pays something. Adwords pays something. Radio pays something. Amazon will pay “something” to about anybody who puts together an unedited word doc. We need to match their ‘something’ to be competitive.

Unlike most of the above models, More downloads do not yield more revenue. Revenue is only generated at the upload stage. So if I pay 10 dollars to upload a video 9 dollars of that will be paid to farmers, 1 dollar will be set out for rewards to be spit amongst all of the content on SAFE. How can the artist win at that deal?

There is only 10% of the PUT revenue as a pie that needs to be divided x number of ways. It just isn’t enough to be a “good deal” that any smart artist would sign up for…

The carrot is pretty small. The stick (Which people don’t want to talk about much) is “We will publish your music anyway, there is zero you can do about it, so why don’t you put it out there first so you get the nickel instead of the pirate?”

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@jreighley. (Reply isn’t working on iOS so I’m addressing you by handle). Do you think the PtP % should be raised to help close that gap? I feel as though people will still use pay per download or donation buttons on safe just like current avenues only more granular with ability to handle micro transactions, which should be less restrictive to people’s wallets allowing them to “feel” more generous rather than torrenting everything or have things be ad based.

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I don’t think that farmers need 90% I suspect a much smaller amount would be adequate… Many P2P services run quite well with no payment at all.

But I do still stick with the analogy – You can pay to build a highway - but if you subsidize filling it with cars, the highway isn’t going to work very well.

I would much rather see alt-coins that are distributed by each community in accordance with member’s contributions… These could be used for karma within communities – transferring through up-votes, down-votes, Downloads, uploads etc… Each coin would have it’s own economy that would better match it’s real world worth… MusicCoin, ArtistCoin, PornCoin, VidCoin, SciCoin, etc. Coins could be exchanged in markets from one community to another or traded in for SAFEcoin…

The network SAFEcoin could focus on building and maintaining the freeway (infrastructure) , and the communities would focus on building and supporting themselves… If there are excess farming revenues the farmers could designate support for particular community coins, and those funds could be used to seed value into those communities…

I think that is the best of both worlds. Provide an avenue for artists to make money while separating the network currency from being too entangled in other transactions to be effective at maintaining the network. It would also make it so different media would be compensated more in line with their real world value rather than paying per GB or per download.