Poll: Should MaidSafe implement PtP (Pay the Provider)?

I have mentioned that before, and yes the poll doesn´t point unambiguously to a overwhelming support. However, there is no reason to re-run this poll for it has 0 meaning in the decision process. Maidsafe apparently wants to have it, so why should there be another poll on nothing?

Anyways…good to have you back. Try not to get banned so soon, will you?

1 Like

Then why did we have the poll in the first place?..lol[quote=“Artiscience, post:441, topic:5805”]
Anyways…good to have you back. Try not to get banned so soon, will you?
[/quote]

Thanks, much appreciated, though knowing what I was “officially” banned for in the first place would help! Lol… :smile:

1 Like

To get a feeling for what the community thinks about the concept? Maybe? Maybe you ask @neo if you really find that interesting.

I guess because you broke the forum guidelines. Also asking would help if it is in your interest. I wouldn´t be surprised if you broke forum guidelines :wink:

2 Likes

10 posts were split to a new topic: PRE - Ok What are you on about

So, kat.cr gets paid for game of thrones movies… this model would enable the kat.cr’s of the world to more easily make money with safenet. while it might attract users, it won’t help safenet. it might help the coin price for a little while… but it won’t help in the long term.

Hello everyone,

I’ve been following the progress of MaidSafe for a while, as I’m very interested in the possibilities a decentralised Internet has for the music industry. In particular the potential it has to break down monopolies and cut through the layers of middlemen that the industry is particularly fond of creating; and making the connections between the artist and the audience as short and frictionless as possible.

My views are formed from my experience as a musician, artist manager, label owner, and from negotiating download service agreements with distributors, indies and major labels.

I work for a company called Linn: we make networked music systems and technology based on principles on open systems; so this whole project is very much up our street.

I’d like to add a few thoughts as to why PtP should not be implemented as currently proposed:

The network shouldn’t determine the value of art

I believe that value of art—be it music, film, visual, or anything in between—should not be assigned at a network level, in the same way resources are. This would be to assign objective value to something which intrinsically has subjective value, through an arbitrary measure, such as file size.

An open market is an effective way of establishing subjective value, and as such the sell-price should be in the hands of the artist

Business models should not be imposed on artists

Creative endeavours and making art can be cheap and quick, or it can be devilishly expensive and risky. There are as many different business models as there are sub-genres, so it is a mistake to impose one globally—or assume that one will become prevalent—be that pure PtP, pay-what-you-want, or a giant tip jar.

An example: the idea that recorded music is really just a marketing tool for live performance—and that the concert hall is the only place musicians can expect to get paid, or set their prices—is a romantic notion, but also a fallacy:

Many recorded works cannot be performed live; Many musicians cannot perform live; Some music cannot be performed live; Live music, although related, is not the same art-form as recorded music.

It’s a similar argument to: all movies should free to promote theatre. It’s a different art-form; there art artistic tools and a palette of materials that are distinct in each art form not available in the other. The same is true of recorded music vs live performance.

MaidSafe should not seek to impose a particular business model on artists, but give them flexibility to choose their own.

The artist is not the uploader

Establishing who the artist is is difficult. In, the case of music, the artist is rarely a single person or entity. Often there are multiple artists involved, and it’s not always the individual performing the work that can be considered the primary artist.

Even setting aside—very common—intellectual property (IP) licensing agreements like simple record deals (where the owner of the recorded music IP is not the artist), the most basic and grassroots music projects are, more often than not, collaborations between artists. E.g. a band; with each individual contributing to the composition, and a single member composing the lyrics.

Additionally, in my quite extensive experience, the first uploader of a work to music services such as this is most likely not be the original artist, but be a representative, or record company. This is notwithstanding the file-sharing scenario of course.

With a goal of a decentralised music industry achieved, we would most likely see significant simplification of commonplace contractual relationships and chains, however they will not be reduced to a the basic level modelled by a PtP scheme; Particularly if it has no way of accounting for joint ownership of IP, or transfer of IP, which is problematic insomuch as it does not take account of real-world, human relationships which are unlikely to change, even if the industry structures currently imposed above them undergo wholesale revolution.

It rewards inefficiency

As a little aside, assigning the value of art based on file size is inefficient and a poor use of resource. File size and quality cannot be linked. For example, a losslessly compressed music file, would be worth less than its uncompressed equivalent, despite having identical content.

An alternative proposal

If you will indulge me, i’d like to present an alternative approach, comprised of three layers. (And please excuse some of the somewhat nascent terminology here).

  • The Network Layer
  • The Platform Layer
  • The Curation Layer

The Network Layer

This is SAFE network as conceived, without the PtP facility, serving as the infrastructure to a decentralised record industry.

The Platform Layer

This is where a music platform is created allowing artists and musicians to determine their sell-price, with smart contracts dealing with—potentially complex—obligations arising from artist collaboration or other business and contractual relationships.

Different competing platforms could also emerge, be them pure single artist distribution with more raw pricing with the assumed risk/reward, or say co-operative models where artists pool resource and then establish equitable royalty distribution amongst members.

The platform layer would also be the preserve of the music/art metadata—again another complex yet critical issue—and could also provide an avenue for some form of arbitration, measures of trust etc.

The Curation Layer

This is where services such as Spotify, Tidal and the like set up shop. And of course other kinds of broadcasters, and music services.

Rather than being monopolising middlemen as they tend toward currently, they focus on and compete in what they do best: curation, user experience and financial services. They are there to provide an effective end-user experience and smooth out the bumps of price fluctuation and complexities of platform layer access.

Curators would be able to set and present their own buy-price, along with other parameters, to the platform layer based on their own business model and strategy.

Let’s not make the same mistake twice

The centralised nature of the internet has lent itself to domination by corporations that reap huge financial rewards by offering advertising alongside creator’s content; whereas the creator is hardly rewarded at all.

Let’s make sure we don’t fall into a similar trap with MaidSafe and the approach to the arts.

The solution is decentralisation, but in a form that hands genuine control back to the artist. This is what we should be seeking to achieve, and not simply a proxy for it.

Jim

20 Likes

It’s been a while since the forum hasn’t been submerged by a sea of PtP threads. As you’ll see, it’s a polarizing subject :slight_smile:.

I had this to say last time (micro pay-walls).

In short, it’s simply to allow to set a price on any piece of public content. The price needs to be paid before the data can be downloaded.

It won’t stop pirating content, but if the price is fair and the process simple, it wouldn’t need to.

2 Likes

@JimCollinson Thank you for the informative post and great details.

I might make one comment and that is the PtP is more like helping to assist in the materials required for the artist, the uploader, the whoever. I don’t think (now/ever?) that PtP would be a replacement for paying an artist their worth and effort.

The reason for PtP might be seen as an incentive to use SAFE as the network to store and deliver the works with PtP helping/assisting in the costs to deliver the art.

There will be or should be APPs that can provide much of what should delivered to do as you point out. I really don’t think that PtP was ever going to be a replacement for paying for quality works. But be at least some assistance for choosing SAFE for delivery.

Remember that a lot of PtP is to assist those who don’t wish to earn from their works but would appreciate some assistance in the costs to make the works available and that is one area PtP would greatly assist. Oh also in a selfish way for the network itself to gain more use by attracting them, which is of upmost importance since the network needs content to survive…

N99 is one project that is being created. Maybe you might like to search for it on the forum and see what you think.

6 Likes

I completely utterly disagree-
If you had to pay to rewatch a youtube video would you even use the service ???

3 Likes

Fantastic first post! I tend to agree with your conclusions too.

1 Like

I agree with @traktion Jim, a really good well explained post, and that it’s great to have your experience and thinking on the issue. But not because I agree with you, at least not yet :wink:

I’m yet to be convinced and am still of the opinion that we should test out PtP before dismissing it. I’ll present two reasons for this, other than we won’t know until we try which I think is reason enough tbh.

The first in relation to your argument is that I don’t see your approach and PtP as either/or. If a PtP like system is created, I think it will have little impact on artists who reach the point of being able to market and set the price their works. I see it as serving a different and very important need that is not currently met, and I don’t see how it interferes with those building platforms such as you describe, and which indeed network99 and I hope others are already building.

Which leads me to the second point. I’m only a consumer here, but I don’t like the centralisation and control that is currently evident in the domination of the film, TV, music and encroaches on other areas where ‘star’ quality and control of distribution can be exploited to make money, and where this is often not done on ways that benefit individual artists (stifling their creativity for example, taking excess rewards etc), or in the interests of the many others who together - artists and workers - who together enable the industry. Not to mention the up and coming artists who end up in a lottery, many of who will never get their work to an audience of any size because the distribution is so controlled and organised by those with money and position.

So this is where I see PtP as offering some potential. Not to rival big money artists and the industry that already serves a relatively tiny proportion of the total talent well, but to give others at least an alternative and maybe create a new means for those without power, a famous name, good connections, or just blind good luck, to get exposure - and a way to capitalise on their popularity without giving up creative our economic control of they prefer not to.

The beauty of PtP is not that it will make anyone rich or even provide a living for people, but that it is so easy to understand and enable that pretty much anybody with content that is deemed useful and interesting (anything from music to a blog comment), can be rewarded with no effort on the part of its author. They can just have one setting in their account checked and that’s it.

I won’t get into detailed arguments about authorship, piracy and so on because we’ve had those already, which is why I’m now focused on let’s try it and see rather than speculate and argue.

I see PtP as more like a safety net that raises the bare minimum available to everyone, rather than a new model that replaces the status quo, but I’m also hopeful that systems such as network99 built on SAFEnetwork will improve on those systems too. I look forward to many new models in fact, and I don’t see PtP as undermining that at all.

But as I say, my interest is in seeing what we can make and to test it out before dismissing it. I’m disheartened that in the past some argue against even trying it, which seems both daft to me, and not in the spirit of SAFEnetwork or the creativity we want to see fostered by it. As with anything about SAFEnetwork, what doesn’t work can be changed and removed, so what’s the issue with trying it? :slight_smile:

5 Likes

Just thinking… maybe PtP would be a way to do analytics on usage. I am not sure if there are other mechanisms or statistics planned, but tiny payments could be a way to track popularity if nothing else.

2 Likes

That’s a very interesting and useful side effect @traktion.

I don’t think it will be easy to do in other ways without compromising privacy, at least not without something at the network level which I’ve heard no talk of. So this is something to bear in mind.

In fact it see worthwhile for this alone!

Turned on its head, the network could ask for micropayments in exchange for providing a measure of popularity for tagged content. How about that anyone? @dirvine

1 Like

If your goal is to reward artists, don’t.

It simultaneously incentivises authorship fraud and creates a culture where people take it for granted that creators get paid automatically. You’ll end up with a lot of scammers and a culture of complacent consumers.

By comparison, look at what’s happening on sites like Patreon and Band Camp. Instead of creating a world where artists have to fight their own popularity and a complacent consumer culture, they create tools that encourage artists and fans to have a pro-active, mutually supportive relationship. There is little incentive for fraud, artists are succeeding in ever-increasing numbers, and fans have a much better relationship with the creators they love. Take a look at folks like Amanda Palmer and I think you’ll appreciate that artists need us to cultivate a culture of gratitude, not complacency.

Automation and passive accessibility are excellent features when you’re talking about data storage and machine tools; however, creative people don’t thrive under the same circumstances. If you want to support artists, find tools that strengthen the relationship and connection between them and the communities that support them rather than trying to automate that connection out of existence.

5 Likes

Patreon has fallen to the siren song of censorship.

Any centralized site will eventually be pressured by political correctness or by advertisers or by governments to reward or punish content producers based on how the organization doing the pressuring feels about that content. That’s the system we have now, and it’s a problem.

1 Like

You are changing the subject - I didn’t suggest centralizing SafeNet, nor would I. I would like to encourage you to re-read what I said about the importance of artists and their fans having a proactively supportive relationship, regardless of your feelings about a specific payment processor.

1 Like

yeah I’ve come full-circle on this PtP thing actually, as of a while ago.

I totally believe that a donation / tipping economy (if we have a truly highly divisible cryptocurrency without transaction fees) will be 100% the way into the future, so PtP isn’t needed.

People just make great works, get a following if they deserve it, and their supporters take care of / literally “support” them.

There can be apps that take this to fun new heights with bonuses, flashy things etc,

but at the core, I believe that people tipping each other if they like what someone is doing will be 100% the way into the next level / evolution of capitalism.

1 Like

A very interesting topic indeed.I’d like to share something that I came across the other day that essentially tackles this area. Note that I haven’t looked into any of the technical details, so any techies please chime in.

Check out the video of WildSpark which is a project by Synereo. Essentially, from what I can tell is that their aim is to reward content producers and curators with their own cryptocurrency. The end game is that all content is decentralized and walled gardens such as Fb and gatekeepers like big studios and the rest no longer rake in revenues just for being a platform. The artists and creators of content should be rewarded for their hard work.

It seems to me that this can be implemented on top of the SAFE network. The SAFE network provides the infrastructure and the currency unit (i.e. safe coins) and an application layer sitting on top of this would handle the tipping and transaction details. Note from the video that consumers are the ones that willingly pay for the content. That is, there is no pre-defined value built in. These donations are then split between the creator and the curator.

As to @JimCollinson’s excellent post about sharing royalties, this can also be built within the application layer. Actually I’ve seen something like this working at the recently-suspended watchmybit where creators of content decide how to divide the proceeds of donations to their videos. Note, you may need to Google around to find a demo as sadly, the site is in hibernation.

At this point, I’m not entirely sure if baking in this type of ‘attention economy’ and donation for content creation is necessary for an MVP as part of SAFE or if this should be abstracted up to the application layer and perhaps have competing apps handle this.

2 Likes

PtP isn’t planned for the beta. As the community could not agree it was decided to put PtP off with the idea of trialling it at a later date rather than discarding it altogether.

3 Likes

This seems to be the way that things are heading. I think that it would be a specific ‘artist coin’ though, not SAFEcoin itself that would be used.
This morning I listened to two podcasts that both talked about tokenization. Quoting from Olaf Carlson-Wee regarding tokens: “you create a real narrow incentive around that application or around that token…Tokens in this sense are really more of an incentive structuring or like a kind of game theory hack to get really powerful network effects around a specific application. So this is kind of a rough metaphor, but ostensibly, in the United States, we all benefit from the strength of the US dollar, but when I create a new company, I create shares specific to that company, because although even though I might help the US economy and thus help the US dollar, or the underlying network as you might think about that, I want narrow network effects around what I’m building.”

2 Likes