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

The producers will be paid out of the network. So watching a videoclip is free, but both Farmer and producer make some money on it. I think that’s a good thing. It makes the network pay out to creativity. And it’s optional, if you share a videoclip without your wallet-address you make no money on it.

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I have no doubt people will come up with forks. Some might just want to get rid of any coin at all. Like a free PUT and GET network where they hope people will just provide resources. Others might get rid of some layers of protection in the hope to make things faster. That’s the great thing about open source.

Sure but wait.

Not by using Get request.

It’s been mentioned before but, if doable, rewarding app developer on PUT request is much more promising.

  • It incentives app developer to create valuable feature for the user.
  • It aligns the interest of the holy trinity of Safe in the same direction. Users get new valuable feature, App developers get rewarded for creating them and farmers get new valuable data to store. It’s win-win-win.
  • User’s get to make the jugemental call about what is valuable and what is not because they have to put their money where their mouth is.
  • Since users pay for PUT, it can’t be gamed.

This covers the goal of the app developer reward, having great app for the network and giving the open source community a new income stream.

What about the artists?

It’s obviously a very popular feature and it’s easy to understand why but wait, I think a reality check is in order.

The amount of money you will generate with your blog post, mildly popular song, book, essay, comic strip will be abysmal. The amount of data that these represent compare to all warez, porn and movies that will find their way into Safe will be so infinitely small that there is no way this will change anything in a significant way to your current state of living.

And IF you manage to create something that is so massively popular as to get your fair share, you are in a position where other business model would work as well if not better.

People who create value have already mutliple ways of getting value out of it, even more so on Safe.

Instead of thinking that we fixed the producer problem by rewarding uploaders with the Get reward, I think it would be much much more productive to develop platform that will help them get real money like: Shop plugins, crowdfunding, patreonage, subscriptions, ad network, gift, etc.

[EDIT: Discussion continues: Proposal: App Rewards by “Pay per PUT”]

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I voted “Yes, Depending on the Implementation.”

I agree with some of the concerns but also feel we have an opportunity to create an alternative solution. Here’s my thoughts on how I reached this decision.

Q: What if it fails?
A: Then it fails. Innovation rarely comes without the possibility of failure.

Q: What if it breaks or doesn’t work the way we expect?
A: Then we fix it, change it, or scrap it.

Q: Isn’t human feedback the best way to valuate a product or service?
A: Yes, but major networks still use “view count” to determine popularity. Even though some or all views were a negative experience. So they got clever and created a “like/dislike” system to filter out click baits. I’m surprised AD companies still payout on views, knowing about this flaw.

This is where I reached my conclusion.
The intention is promising because it attracts (uploaders) who pay nothing on networks like (youtube, facebook, google). On the SAFE Network, they must pay Safecoin to upload, which could be a deterrent.

PtP compensates uploaders by rewarding them for their effort and expense. After the Network is popular, it may not be as relevant. This is why new businesses hold “Grand Opening Events” to get the ball rolling. This is also the reason I think it should be done at the beginning, or shortly after public release.


This part is for the implementation options Poll, assuming we have one later. I’m putting my thoughts/ideas here before I forget.

Perhaps, a LIKE System would be a simple and most effective solution.

  • It requires human feedback.
  • It can incur a micro payment cost in SAFE GB, instead of Safecoin.
  • It can be made unique per account, preventing spam.
  • It measures positive views more accurately.
  • It removes the (File Size VS File Price) problem.

For people concerned about the Safecoin economy, I recommend rewarding SAFE GB as an alternative. By the way, this doesn’t stop: donations, pay per view, subscriptions, or any other revenue steam.

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Despite the publicity that you do of the safe GB, their existence would be a huge mistake. Would complicate the network understanding, could lead to problems in its economy, generates developmental problems and, possibly, will hinder its adoption.
The safe network must survive solely on Safecoin and the existence of any other altcoin, in the SAFE network, must be outside the core.

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13 posts were split to a new topic: Proposal: App Rewards by “Pay per PUT” (commission)

50 posts were merged into an existing topic: APP Developer Rewards (Discussion)

In Music, the prices are pretty well set… 70 percent of revenue for streaming services like spotify and 70 cents on the dollar – Apple pays a similar amount for itunes downloads.

If you want to attract established artists you are going to need to beat those rates. You may be able to get some indi stuff cheaper – but even there you need a 15 cents per download or so.

But we aren’t charging the consumer — So they will probably download to their heart’s content – And free is a really good price so we will likely have a TON of users – but all in it for free music – We need to make up for it by something entirely unrelated – Charging for uploads. They are not likely to be storing massive amounts of data – Because you don’t need to upload a lot of data to be allowed to download. If I download 100 songs, then I would need to generate 70 dollars in PtP funds pay artists what they would earn at itunes – but I would need to collect 11 times that to (100% for the farmers and another 10 for the pTp apparatus) So we need to store 770 dollars worth of uploads to fund enough for 100 songs to be downloaded.

For me as a farmer to have expenses deserving of 700 bucks worth of payment I would have to start bordering on owning my own datacenter. You would need one of those for every 100 songs downloaded.

That doesn’t count movies, TV shows, Youtube clips, whitepapers, Porn, or the thousands of other possible media…

The math just doesn’t make an ounce of sense.

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The GIGANTIC point you’re missing here is that those models only worked on an older version of the internet, where the main way to even ACCESS the songs was to BUY them.

As soon as anything comes out on SAFE it’s freely accessible to everyone on earth forever, so you can’t try to charge for it like iTunes etc used to be able to get away with

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No That is exactly my point.

If nobody buys them then there is no money and nobody gets paid.

And no – Pretty much any song or show I want to download is available for free right now (So long as I don’t get caught) and a buck isn’t worth the trouble most of the time. If I want a song I get it though the legit channel. Spotify or pandora etc certainly aren’t breaking the bank or lacking users.

But pretending to make a legit channel when there is no way in the world it would be is a joke.

Feel free to dispute the math.

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Where did the 11 came from?

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Well 100 percent to farmers and another 10 percent for the PtP. Several times we have been corrected that the 10% is not taken from the farmers… it is in addition.

Even if it was the math is still exponentially inadequate to replace the current revenue streams and no artist would switch unless they where willing to work for peanuts…

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I’m in favour of least postponing this idea until well after launch. I think there’s a good argument to consider this feature creep, and it may turn out to be a liability. I think we should first see SAFE’s economic model in action before adding another layer to it.

Another issue I haven’t seen mentioned here is that downloading does not equal endorsing. I regularly watch videos posted by groups I strongly disagree with just to learn what they are like and how they think. Example: The propaganda videos by ISIS. With the proposed system in place, I would indirectly fund a terrorist organization just by monitoring their activities. The result would be a disincentive to view anything other than content one already agrees with.

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That’s correct, but 1 could download that movie, cut off 0.01 sec and make it public for free. But point taken. Another thing that could happen is that people download the code for an App that downloads their own data from a different account. So I would have 2 accounts. 1 where I put all my files and pay to PUT. And another to run an App and request my own files 10 times in the hope to get my PUT money back.

I also have doubts about whether piracy is actually a problem. Take a look at the gaming industry for example. This year the game The Witcher 3 was released without a DRM system in place. This means that not even a crack was necessary to properly pirate the game, copy/paste does the trick. Yet they sold over 6 million copies at $65 a piece. That’s 390 million USD.

There are two big falacies in the discussion about piracy. One is that people always pick the cheapest option, i.e. they pirate when they can. The above example (and many others) indicates that that’s not true. Quality of service seems to be the big factor here. If an industry suffers from piracy, that’s an indication that their quality of service is really bad. The PC gaming industry got over this through high quality services like Steam and GMG.

The second falacy is that a pirated copy equals a lost sale. That this is false is made obvious by the concept of price elasticity of demand. With exception of products that their derive their (status) value from their high price, it is ridiculous to assume that (all other factors being equal) demand for a product with a price tag would be as high as demand for that product for free. Considering price elasticity of demand, it is not unlikely that demand from pirates mostly evaporates if piracy would be eliminated.

All this considered, I think many artists screaming about not being able to make a living because of piracy are simply unwilling to face an inconvenient truth: There’s not enough demand for your art because it is simply not good enough. That, or your industry suffers from a service problem. The latter can be solved by using SAFE without requiring a PtP mechanism.

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Although could help its rapid expansion, I am against implementing the PtP for several reasons:

Legal: Let’s face, the first to use massively this function would be pirate groups. That could bring legal consequences for Maidsafe. At the close of Megaupload one reason given was:

An incentive program was ADOPTED encouraging the upload of “popular” files in return for payments to successful uploaders.

The SAFE network will have against a lot of people, give more weapons to these groups is unnecessary.

Producers wishing to be rewarded can becoming Apps. Develop a simple framework for anyone to perform this function would be enough without be necessary implement PtP.

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I’m curious. How much money would 10 or 20% of farming revenue be worth? I mean if safecoin is worth $0.001 then not much but if it spikes in value to sell for like $14 a safecoin or more (maybe $300 or $400 like bitcoin) that value of that 10% is going to go up. We need to put this in perspective here. Instead of thinking about “I want 70% to 100% of the profits from MY content.” It’s “What percentage of the network data is my content and what are the odds someone is downlaoding it?” Remember any given content be it a historical document like the magna carta or hot porn is going to be all mixed together as anonymous encrypted data. Also remember the value of safecoin is not just determined by content creators but also by the raw security and anonymity of the network. If we compromise security, freedom and access for the sake of content creators we have FAILED as SAFE. In the grand scheme of things serving content creators isn’t the goal of SAFE, creating a secure internet 2.0 is the goal of SAFE. Therefore PtP must not compromise security or cater to special interests and must treat EVERYONE equally if it is to be implemented. I know this is probably obvious to everyone but I’m stating it anyway.

Now how would content creators make money if the moment they released something it would just be pirated. Well for starters I’d stop treating your art like product and start treating it like a service. Your “content” isn’t what you’re selling. YOU are what you are selling. You aren’t selling your art you are selling YOU, the artist. Your fans are developing a relationship with YOU and therefore that is what you capitalize on. Sure try to make a buck on content where you can but where you want to make money is not the content but rather things like live performances, book signings, personal interviews, donations, personal appearances, various bits of merchandise, and basically any chance to connect with your fans. And if you haven’t hit this level yet then why aren’t you thanking the pirates for giving you free marketing of your content, and therefore of your name?

Also content creators could create their own personal altcoins that could be used to buy discounts on their merchandise or special back stage passes and the like. Think the Free to Play model but you pay for special extras. Have you not played League of Legends before? What about Star Wars The Old Republic? Dota? Lots of games use this model. Basically you can play it for free but if you want that super strong armor or that experience boost that you don’t REALLY need you have to pay money. Same concept. The music/art/movie is free but you pay to meet the artist, get the autograph, talk to them on the phone, visit them back stage, buy the t-shirt and assorted merchandise, get your name mentioned in the book/in the lyrics of the next song/during the credits, and all that kind of thing, go out on a date with that hot actress you’ve always fantasized about, whatever. All that stuff you don’t really NEED but want. Which is where the idea of the personalized altcoin comes in really handy because some of this could get really pricey but if you bought enough altcoin and saved up enough you could afford it.

Frankly I don’t think “content creators” should be separate from devs since devs are just another form of content creators. If we’re going to create a PtP system we should reward content creators across the board somehow and if we’re going to specialize somehow, be it with altcoins or whatever, we should do it for everyone. People could buy devcoin as much as they could buy porncoin. One of the ideas proposed is that a “karmacoin” would be dispensed and that would be used to buy different altcoins. I think the point of this would be to force users to have a “bank” that they needed to devote to content creation of one kind or another. Somewhat like the “free to play” idea. Where you automatically get awarded a set amount of game tokens every month that can only be spent at the in game store. So if the PtP system did dispense “karmacoins” then those could be converted into some kind of altcoin of one’s choosing then it would be similar to “here are your monthly chips and you can spend them in whatever network store you choose.” But my question is doesn’t PtP undermine freedom by it’s very nature? I mean it’s great to want to support the artists but to hardcode AND all the issues of subjective value it brings up seems to bring up the very underlying issue of freedom to choose what one spends one’s money on.

Here’s a thought: make it subscription based. A little checkmark in the user preferences or whatnot. And those that check the mark get a discount or some kind of special deal from content creators, just like crowdfunders give their backers special deals as incentives to back the fund. What the incentive is could vary from creator to creator but in order to get your percentage from the program you’d need to have some kind of incentive for subscribers. This would also create competition between content creators for better incentives and therefore garnering more subscribers (and therefore more revenue from their respective farming percentages). Also make the percentage someone gives voluntary. If content producers are competing then users might want to give more or less in their respective percentages.

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The safe network is low level. We are talking about replacing servers, not necessarily the applications running on them.

Considering that the team is cautious about even adding time to the protocol, why should it concern itself with rewarding people for posting content?

Rewarding content creators is a social, subjective, decision. I really don’t think mixing this with the core network protocol is suitable. Another way needs to be found, IMO.

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I moved a number of posts back to this thread, since they weren’t about App dev rewards but about PtP.

Great poll.

Linking to this as it is relevant:

I agreed with @whiteoutmashups in the above because I think it’s only fair and here I voted Yes, depending on the implementation. But I think the poll should be asking another question also and that is; should the network be paying/rewarding anyone other than farmers?

There are pro’s and cons to both IMHO.

I personally think you either do one or the other. You cant half-ass around. You either do or you dont.

And if you do, than you need to be fair and Pay the Producer or at the very least prompt the app developers to implement strategies for this e.g. tipping.

If you decide to not pay anyone its great because its one massive weight off the shoulders of MaidSafe, but I suppose this will never happen because MS has already said it will pay app devs.

Anyway, all this is just hot air until this thing takes off so I think people just need to calm down before adding more ideas and suggestions to a network and system that is already so inflated that it could do it more harm than good.

Lets all remember that a tree which eventually bears fruit begins with simply seed, soil, sun & water…

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