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

Features
146

He has a point @janitor. Tipping might not work when the goal is a million dollars and you only get 10 people contributing at like $5 a piece but if you had a million people contributing $1 or 10 million contributing 10 cents that’s something else.

Say you wanted to fund that Star Wars movie you were talking about. Say it’s budget is… oh I don’t know 20 million? I have no clue what movies cost. They’re expensive. So instead of thinking of that in terms of sales let’s think of that in terms of getting 20 million users to donate $1 or 200 million to pay 10 cents. Did anyone in the movie business think of crowdselling the movie? Create a token representing the movie rights or something. Then do a crowdsale. Anyone to buys the token gets a portion of the royalties when it’s done and hits the box office. This would ALSO encourage the masses not to pirate movies since it would be more likely they’d have a stock, literally, in the movie’s success or failure. Or you could load up a site with teaser content and errect a low grade paywall to get in. Like really low, 10 cents or less. Something barely noticeable but enough to earn a tiny revenue stream from BILLIONS OF PEOPLE POURING IN DAILY to watch the content. Or do things like have people send in a photo of themselves, it gets photoshopped with the star protagonists and then gets signed and sent back to them. Custom personalized memorabilia. Or you could outright set up a fund where people just donate to fund the movie. Best is to do a combination of everything. But seriously I don’t know why movies aren’t started using crowdsales.

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147

This. So much this.

I’ve talked about the “human element”, and others have talked about the value that content has to people. The App devs are in a unique position to facilitate this type of personal interaction. The premise here is that the app devs get rewarded based on their apps’ usage (for my take on how, see my PUT Incentive write-up)

Now it’s up to the app devs to figure out what to do with that income in their “app wallet”. They have the ability to dispense that to themselves, and/or to the content creators.

Here’s where the innovations that we can’t even imagine right now take over. Sure, we’re all aware of the ubiquitous “like” button, as well as the concept of “tipping”, but think about dev-sponsored contests, fund-matching crowdsource events, and faucet promos. These and others can be integrated into and ran by apps.

The trick to getting paid is to remember that the money comes out of someone else’s wallet. Whether you’re talking about the Network’s wallet, the app’s wallet, or the consumer’s wallet - it’s all coming from somewhere. So if we can’t trust the Network to accurately discern the consumer’s value of the content, then we’re left with the app and consumer wallet to deal with.

The most rudimentary example that I have for “app wallets” rewarding the producer in mind is to set aside a portion of an app wallet’s income for content creator rewards. Include a “like” button on every piece of content, and dole out rewards based on a percentage of likes to total likes given app-wide. This works equally well for comments as well as OC. This specific implementation is obviously gamable as exemplified on reddit (vote manipulation), but is a starting point to understand the system that I have in mind. From there the possibilities are endless.

With that kind of system, you put the reward value in the hands of the users who choose to either value that content, or not.

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148

I agree with the PUT Incentive Model to pay APP Developers.

However, I don’t think it’s right for PtP (Pay the Producer).

Let’s assume
PUTS = Producers… these people upload content.
GETS = Consumers… these people download content.

In a normal economy, producers sell to consumers.

However, the PUT Incentive model earns income from producers to pay producers.

@eblanshey pointed this out a year ago on this thread.

A network is in imbalance if it’s based upon content creators funding content creators.

I’m in favor of these economic incentives…

  • Vaults… earn from GETS.
  • APPS… earn from WALLETMARK (Likes, Tips, Pay, Subscribe, etc).
  • Content… earn from WALLETMARK (Likes, Tips, Pay, Subscribe, etc).

EDIT: There are useful APPS that only do GETS and should be able to earn income. This means a WALLETMARK is better suited for both PUT and GET functions.

Q&A

Can a producer create their own APP exclusive for their content?
Yes, but I think most users prefer an APP with “global” utility, not just limited to 1 producers content… unless you’re HBO (Game of Thrones), or Netflix.

Can APP developers share their income with producers?
Yes, but I think it will be very little. There is more money to be made from consumers than from APP rewards.

How is the APP different from Content?
APPS are tools, providing utility for the content, like a fork or knife. Content is the food users consume, like a chicken or steak.

Why not let APPS earn from walletmark?
That’s a good question. Perhaps APPS should use WALLETMARK instead.

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149

Certainly can, offers a way to differentiate…with the bonus eventually it will be one app over all platforms. I can see a big marketplace for app templates, with link-ins from all the other disciplines that go towards a great user experience. The start of real collaboration and economy of scale, benefiting everyone.

I’m not sure what else content producers could want, once the eco-systems get built and later when search with ‘deep learning algorithms’ is implemented…wow wee real discover-ability.

If you cant get paid with this feature set, maybe your stuff is just not popular enough.

The network is fine as it is…just needs to be built out.

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150

Not commenting on any specifics I want to highlight a couple if points that I think need to be considered in these discussions:

  • piracy is going to be a lot easier on SAFEnetwork than on the internet (because anyone will be able to do it, reliably without domains being able to be taken down, with impunity because copyright enforcement will be very much harder)
  • current business models rely on and seek to maintain a system that both creates a massive incentive for piracy and tries to stop it (costly production and distribution, copyright enforcement, surveillance & targeting of both conforming users and transgressing users)
  • SAFEnetwork changes the whole system dynamic in ways that mean these business models will be replaced because the things they rely on will no longer work, which makes it very hard for us to imagine what could replace them, or what could work better for those we are most concerned about (producers & consumers)

If we consider piracy as wrong we ignore it’s role in providing a way to protest against the excesses of enforcement, and the exploitation of producers and consumers. It is those abuses that enable us to recognise the value of cutting out the middle man here, and piracy is an important safety valve, as well as a symptom of the problem. When Joe Public is willing to break the law in large numbers, there is a problem with the law (and the law is just a reflection of the system).

We’ll never design a perfect system, but the current one is so broken, it should be possible to create a better one. But that better system will be very different from what we have now, and I think it helps to realise that making piracy easier can in fact have a good effect - and good effects that we possibly can’t anticipate - rather than just what we’ve been conditioned to think (i.e that it leads to exploitation of producers - that’s already happening, and in ways that doesn’t serve an awful lot of producers or consumers).

Simply democratising production and consumption could have a dramatic positive impact for most producers and consumers (the 99% :slightly_smiling: ), and making piracy easy can help (IMO) prevent a return to centralised control of content, that would inevitably also resume the current inequities and abuses what have become so widespread many people hardly notice them.

In short, consider whether or not piracy can have a role in preventing one kind of abuse and exploitation, without itself becoming a worse source of abuse and exploitation.

So I urge, be brave, don’t worry too much about people being able to hijack popular content. If people do that, and make money by being good promoters that can be as much a service worthy of reward as producing the content in the first place.

If I create, get hijacked, become famous because the promoter created a demand for my work. How is that worse than if I never became popular? Paulo Coelho uses this as his business model - go read his thoughts on piracy if you want the opinion of a producer who is very successful. Not just yesterday’s rock stars! :slightly_smiling: They are products of the current system after all.

How is that worse than an unknown band of teenagers being signed up to an unscrupulous label in a drug induced stupor?

Neither is fair or ideal, but I don’t think fair or ideal is achievable. Better, on the other hand, is something we can do on SAFEnetwork!

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151

Paywall seems unrealistic except on a subscription streaming basis and then it invites ads and sponsorship even as these are destructive net negative no value added propositions. Paywall is like the enclosure game facebook plays. Paywall is about the producer setting the cost and the end user absorbing the risk premium on product fit, quality and valye, which allows for puffing and encourages lies. Its an obsolete model. Its not a trust or aligned interests model.

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152

Agreed. Payment to artists, bloggers, reporters, etc. should be market driven. A system cannot and will never be able to encapsulate the infinite possibilities of the market. If it was able to, everyone could predict the markets and become rich as stock traders.

And what stops an artist from being double paid? Paid by the SAFE network then paid by the public at the same time? Someone builds an app on SAFE that takes fiat or bitcoin for purchasing music which the artist gets; a tune goes viral; the artist get *hitloads of money, and we expect the SAFE network to pay again? Sounds ridiculous and subject to gamesmanship. What stops JZ and Beyonce from doing just this? This won’t be supporting starving artists.

My vote: bad idea.

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153

And how is excluding JZ etc possible or desirable. Every objection I see ignores the upside. For example, if JZ etc post their content it attracts users. I hope they do - but TBH the idea that they’ll do this for the relatively meagre rewards of PtP while risking their content by publishing on and therefore popularising SAFEnetwork doesn’t make sense. More likely they’ll be trying to ignore it until the last possible moment.

PtP is not a winner take all / rich rewards for very popular content system precisely because very popular content can easily be pirated. One effect of this is to share the rewards out, however unfair that seems at first glance.

While we can see there is an injustice there, closer examination of the overall effect leads me to think it will be more like a levelling of the playing field.

Small time producers will not be the high value targets of piracy, so they will be able to keep the rewards, and to earn much more easily than in a system that has high distribution costs, and is therefore dominated by big companies who are only interested in creating massive hits and grooming high earning stars.

As people get more popular, sure piracy will increase, but that just means they will lose an increasing proportion of their earnings to piracy, instead of to a big producer and distribution network as in the current system. They’ll still be earning more overall. Edit: This is precisely why Paulo Coelho encourages piracy of his work. He sees it as marketing: pirates promote his books and his sales increase.

So the dynamics will be different, but I see no reason to believe that the effects will be worse. I think far more people will benefit - all those small content producers - than will lose out: big corporations and their cash cow big stars.

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154

I’m happy if JZ can make tons of money. I just think it’s unfair that he or any producer gets double paid. It’s the double payment and attempting to know how to be fair to all is what’s troublesome to me. Piracy is a factor but just how big a factor is hard to predict. Just how SAFE will impact behaviors, governments, the economy, etc. is hard to predict. So producing algorithms to make things fair and to incentivize content is extremely difficult. Therefore, I think it’s beyond the purpose and scope of SAFE.

We should ask ourselves, “Will NOT having this feature cause the SAFE network to fail? Could the SAFE infrastructure still function?” Safecoin should only be used as incentive to support the network infrastructure. SAFE cannot exist without farmers.

Can the SAFE infrastructure function without the system paying producers? Yes.

And here’s source of hot debate. Can the SAFE infrastructure function without the system paying developers? I think the answer is yes.

Someone made a comment that farmers should be the only ones being paid in safecoin. After an initial jolt in the brain, I tend to agree with this assessment. I believe the pay-to-produce/pay-the-producer idea stems from the fact that SAFE pays the app developers so why not content providers? I think we need to step back and discuss if developers should be paid by the system. I think they can be paid by the free market as well.

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155

I’ve been saying this from the beginning. And indeed this is my only real bone of contention with the SAFE network. That it has paying the developers hardcoded in. More to the point that they included that in their legal deal when initiating the crowdsale was a lapse in foresight I think. The software wasn’t even fully written yet and one would think that perhaps discussions such as this would have yet to be had. I don’t think devs should get 10% of safecoin, not at the network level anyway. Same with PtP. If people are to do any PtP or PtD then it should be at the app level not network level.

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156

This is a really bad idea, please do not implement it. Revenue generation should be left to apps and individuals to generate their income, otherwise this just invites abuse. I also see this as a restricting feature, I have my own ideas I wish to implement, like many others I am sure. I see clickbait becoming a huge problem, its already bad enough without being guaranteed an income. Apps and sites running and changing data in the background invisible to the eye could also be a problem. Small effects but it all adds up and it has massive potential to threaten the inherent value of safecoin. I understand the nature of the network, but if you have a potentially huge number of artists whos work is being profited off without any oversight, and can be done so easily. then you are potentially attracting a lot of unwanted attention and maybe even inviting coordinated attacks from those with many resources and deep pockets. This looks good on the surface, but isn’t good. Surprised this is even up for debate to be honest.

If this becomes a feature of the network, I WILL abuse it. Think I’m the only one?

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157

The problem here is that PtD IS at the network level and so PtP would probably need to be at the same to balance out. Or we’d need to put PtD at the app level too, which would be far more appropriate.

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@upani

If this becomes a feature of the network, I WILL abuse it. Think I’m the only one?

Of course not, just like every other system man has ever devised! I reiterate my point: all the comments above have ignored the upsides. Nobody has said they either don’t want the benefits I outlined, or explained why they think they won’t be achieved.

The argument against is always this bad thing will happen without any consideration of without PtP this good thing will not happen. That was my point in entering this discussion, it is unconvincing because it is one sided. As if the existing system is not already unfair, allows people to profit in the basis of other people’s work etc

Everyone here arguing against PtP is to an extent arguing for the status quo - do you guys actually like that even a bit. I agree PtP has flaws, but I don’t believe the positives are being acknowledged or considered, and therefore casting votes here is premature.

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That’s not my argument. In fact I agree with you. My argument is it should people’s choice on whether to opt for PtP or PtD or not. Simple freedom. That’s why it should be at the app level not the network level. I actually agree with pretty much everything you were saying in your speech there.

Could a system of PtP and PtD work? YES! I agree and you’ve convinced me to download the app! But I still think it should be an APP not a core function that all the network is REQUIRED to use in order to use THE ENTIRE SAFE NETWORK! Could the SAFE network, could the INTERNET function without PtP or PtD? Yes absolutely! Would society benefit from such an app? Yes absolutely! Would it be a popular app? Yes absolutely! Just like whatsapp or facebook or twitter or youtube are popular sites and apps so too would PtP and PtD be.

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160

I thought I understood the nature of the network too but maybe that is the real question. Maidsafe (@dirvine) please help us clarify what is the nature of the network at the core level as you invisioned it? As a community we have many needs such as safe browsers, incentive plans etc. but how does Maidsafe the company view it"s core value and what it’s focus should be?

When it comes to privacy and security for everyone, I do not believe we can afford to be a Jack of trades but a master of none.

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161

Your APP level suggestion for (PtP and PtD) might reduce core development time and possibly give us an earlier beta release… very tempting.

I do think “walletmarking” should be a CORE feature so any APP can do whatever they want with it. I see it like signing your uploads, so APP users have the option to: donate, like, subscribe, vote, pay, etc.

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162

Separate infrastructure from use of the infrastructure. Separate SAFE infrastructure from the use of the SAFE infrastructure which are apps and content. Separate the roads from the cars. Separate the power lines from the dishwasher, the microwave, the light bulbs. Separate the internet from YouTube, Facebook. Separate Microsoft Windows from business software.

The roads don’t pay the cars. The power lines do not pay for the dishwasher. The internet does not pay for YouTube or Facebook. MS Windows does not pay for business software written on its operating system.

The roads can still be used without cars. Power lines can still function without the dishwasher. The internet still functions without YouTube. MS Windows is still useful without business software.

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163

Earlier beta would be good. :smile: And you know if you put the Pay the Producer and Pay the Developer at the app level then it would also allow for differentiating and competing methods of payment. What’s the best way of PtP and PtD?

Sounds good so long as it doesn’t affect anonymity.

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I mostly agree with you @Blindsite2k and even though I think PtD would probably be better at the app level in principle (to @TungSvard’s point of separate infrastructure from the use of infrustrucrture) I do support PtD at the core level because we have to strike a balance early on to help achieve critical mass. Incentivising the app developers to build the currently bare second level is a good idea IMO.

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165

It’s a wallet address not a user ID. As long as you don’t publicly associate your walletmark address with your public ID, you should be fine.

If you’re paranoid enough, just make another account for incoming payments, then transfer Safecoin to your spending wallet.

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