Project n99 - An Interactive Platform for Creators

I apologize I never meant to dismiss you or be dismissive. I’ll admit you did seem to be American and be making a lot of American presumptions but whether you were or not from the states wouldn’t mean I’d dismiss you or think you any less able to understand suffering. There’s suffering going down everywhere. I think a lot of this drama has result from a couple key miscommunications and misunderstandings.

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Just to interject with a lighter note. I’ve read some (not all) of the posts above. I’m really pleased to see you working on N99 Lee. You seem to be very bright, decent and humble. The things you are trying to achieve are difficult and that makes them worthwhile. The lessons you learn will be important whether you fail or succeed. As long as you are open to learning and being challenged - which you genuinely seem to be after being tested by that exhausting dialogue. :wink:

Anyway, I just thought I’d share the fact that I’m impressed and pleased to see you working on the project. I agree with some of what blindsite2k says. I’m not really a fan of copyright. But I appreciate that none of us know what the next era will look like and we are all trying to make educated guesses about how the next phases need to play out to keep us on our evolutionary path. It might be that blindsite2k is ahead of his time and the rest of the world just isn’t ready for that kind of paradigm shift yet. I’d rather see content creators owning their art than middle men leeching from it. Although ultimately I do hope we can keep reaching for better solutions. .

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A songwriter’s / musician’s / producer’s time is scarce.

Recording studio availability is scarce.

Musical instruments & equipment is scarce.

But you think that freedom means preventing artists from being able to require payment for their work if that’s what they want?

Recorded music isn’t an idea - it’s a product of hard work and real resources.

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Thank you! @jabba I feel honored to be able to work on this project. and I realize That there is a lot to learn and I look to you all for the wisdom and strength to make something that is of reasonable quality. and I am up for the challenge and I don’t mind being wrong and learning what is right.

I do too! And thank you @blindsite2k, for your deeper insights into things. I will try my best to make something that isn’t just another crappy machine to mine people for all their worth, and make something that could possibly make the world a better place :slight_smile: If it isn’t perfect the first go around which I am sure It will not be, I will keep striving to find better answers.

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You have the concept in reverse. Copyright is an ARTIFICIAL construct to create artificial scarcity. When one uploads a file it because next to nothing to copy it infinitely. That is the practicality of the situation. Copyright is an artificial construct to try to PREVENT the reality of abundance that LITERACY, or the printing press, or the internet introduced. So yes it does take hard work to express an idea be it music, or an essay, or a book, or a poem or a painting or whatever else but it’s STILL the expression of an idea, an intellectual concept. And yes you are very much correct it does take physical resources to create and as long as that expression stays offline then it stays as a single product or service. This is why many artists refuse to upload their work, or are very guarded about doing so. Because the moment you do so it ceases to be a finite product and becomes infinite.

Think of this in terms of currency inflation. If you print or mint say 100 bills or coins your currency will be more valuable than if you made 1,000, or 1,000,000 or 10,000,000 and the more you print or mint the LESS valuable each coin will be. Back in the day only priests could read so we needed to get all our knowledge from them but then slowly literacy began to spread. When the printing press came out it was extremely expensive and could easily be controlled by big publishing houses. But now everyone can copy a file on their home computer or phone in less than 5 seconds. Everyone now has the capability of the printing press in their hand. They have broadcast capability and publishing capability.

Just because you invest time and calories in preparing and giving a public speech does not mean others can not go out the door and talk about it. Just because you invest time and resources in giving a musical performance does not mean others cannot go out and share that music. A CD is a product, the music on it is not.

Sure an artist can ask for payment for their work be it for a live performance or a copy of their CD. But it’s foolish and naive for them to think they can prevent others from copying, exporting and uploading that music to the net. It’s even more foolish and naive for them to believe they have any control over the value of their art once it is released to the public in a digital format. They have influence yes but not control, they do not own it. Once their music is uploaded to the net and spread all over could an artist dictate their music be recalled? No, most likely not. In fact if they tried it would most likely spread further. Banned books tend to develop a kind of infamy among pirates. He who can destroy a thing owns a thing. Conversely if you cannot destroy it you no longer own it. Put another way the artist is no longer in CONTROL of their art and therefore no longer owns it. I’m arguing this from a sense of practicality. If you upload something to the net you should not expect to stay in control of it, at least not for long, and especially if it is to be published exhibitionally. Moreover the artist’s freedom to take ownership or not of their art does not overrule another’s ability to take ownership of their own data and hard drive or their right to privacy. To put this another way and to paraphrase a commonly used metaphor your artistic ownership ends at the download to my hard drive, or the transfer into my safedrive. Artisic ownership is not an excuse to violate peoples online or offline privacy.

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I get that, and I think its a very useful artificial construct.

I agree that in practice nobody can completely stop piracy, but not everyone wants to be a pirate.

Intellectual property rights can at least prevent people profiting greatly through ripping off creators for their own gain.

If you believe that just because something is possible it is right, you can feel free to rip off artists left right and centre. For those who want to contribute and make sure artists are rewarded for their work, or believe artists should have a say in how their work is marketed, there will be platforms like N99.

The whole point of N99 is to reward artists without loads of middle men taking such a big cut, as they do with Spotify / iTunes / Amazon etc. If you prefer to just take everything for free against their will, N99 is probably not for you.

I’m sure there will be other platforms popping up on the Safe network in due course that make it very easy for people to get everything for free against the will of many creators… but those that support and use such platforms may be worse than the middle men of today in terms of their negative impact on artists. I’m not a fan of that.

Apologies if I am misrepresenting you in saying that you want a free for all. If that’s not what you’re after, can you concisely suggest a model that would fit your convictions while also benefiting the artists?

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Yes but why? Your whole argument seems to negate it’s usefulness.

Then what is the point of copyright? If people WANT to contribute to the artist then that’s great but that totally negates the point of copyright which is to MAKE people pay for content.

Most people do not pirate content for profit. Even if one was to try to sell bootleg copies one would face the same problem as trying to sell the original: people can just pirate their own copies. The argument Big Media ha against pirates is that they cost them revenue because people just pirate copies instead of buying them. But people also are exposed to content they later then might buy.

Pirated content is usually lower quality than a bought DVD or CD and some content is simply not on the net in the first place. (Wild concept there eh?) So there are valid reasons to buy content EVEN IF one has already pirated it and viewed it. The question is: Was the content WORTH the money or was it just advertising hype? Advertising can get you to buy anything once but real value is the real selling point that will make someone go out and buy something AFTER they’ve experienced it.

What’s you’re describing isn’t sale it’s charity which is why a tipping economy might make more sense.

I totally support cutting out the middle men. But you’re creating a false dichotomy here between cutting out the middle men and piracy. There are independant artists already and they get pirated as well.

Being independent doesn’t make one immune to piracy.

Why would n99 not be for me either as a consumer or as a producer of art? I buy art. I’m just more selective about it and tend to want to try it out first or buy in bulk but I will most definitely pay for everything from games to music to movies. But I’m not naive enough to believe pirating doesn’t exist or to attack it. I use that too both as a consumer and an artist. This is not the 1970s or 1980s anymore. This is the 21st century and it’s time artists adapted and stopped whining.

Why? That’s free advertising as I’ve explained above. And why do you assume any profit would be made by such platforms? Or by using your own argument: it takes resources to code and maintain a program so why SHOULDN’T they make profit on that which they created?

Here is a practical example. Awhile back I pirated an audio ebook of one of my favorite authors. I burned it for a friend who HAD NEVER HEARD of the author so they could listen and enjoy the author and by doing so exposed them to said author and spread that author’s REPUTATION. Which means INCREASING the possibility of SALES of books. Also keep in mind they have multiple series and I only shared the one of them. All because of piracy. Hence free advertising. The more people are exposed to an artist and talk about them the greater the chance sales will be made one way or another.

Another example is when you share an ebook that is better viewed as a physical text. I have a couple of these ebooks in my collection. Good to have for quick reference and to share with people on a low budget but really getting the hard copy version is the best option. Which means by sharing the pirated copy one i actually encouraging others to buy the physical text.

What about TEXT BOOKS? It’s cost prohibitive to buy all the text books you need these days. What about reference texts for research? That’s REALLY expensive. When a book is $20 or $40 that’s one thing. When a book is $200 or $400 that’s another thing entirely! When a text is as expensive as a laptop that’s definite incentive to pirate it. What about scientific papers? Publishing houses charge $40 - $60 per paper which leads to piracy of papers. Yes that’s changing but it still highlights the problem. Fuck “morality”, your “morality” is too expensive.

@Blindsite2k Would you be so kind as to explain a tipping economy? Would you please present an example of some tipping economy that is currently in use, if there is one, that pertains to a similar subject to the one n99 is trying to solve? Thanks in advance. :slight_smile:

Have you ever been on Second Life and experienced the HUGE music scene there? Lots of artists performing regularly at venues. My mom sings 6 nights a week now on SL so I know. There are basically two ways an artist or those in their employ make money: The venue pay them directly OR they work for tips from the patrons of the venue. And the ONLY way the venue makes money to pay rent to Linden Labs for virtual “land” to stay open is from tips from those who come to enjoy the various performance. There’s a whole culture on SL about tipping. For example I told you my mom sings, and I work for her on SL. Which also means I attend her shows. It’s only common courtesy for me to tip the venue when I’m there. So the venue pays her, she pays me, but both she and I tip the venue back a bit. She also reminds patrons to “tip the venue” during her show, and if she has a host that is working for tips (which she sometimes does) she reminds patrons to tip her host as well. If patrons like her show then they tip her and the venue. If they REALLY like her show they tip generously. Same for any other artist. It’s more or less a case of put your money where your mouth is.

Another example is the sex scene on SL. I don’t want to be explicit but suffice it to say there are strippers on SL that require you to tip to various sums before they will perform various acts. This could be applied to other situations of course. If you want performer to do a custom job then you tip to x sum. If you want them to do a more difficult job you tip x + y. etc.

How this could apply to n99 is that if people like an artist then they can tip the artist. If artists don’t get enough tips for a given song or for performing in general they could take part or all of their album off the n99 service. This would create the preverbial carrot and stick approach: Tip me or I’ll leave. Like was previously pointed out an artist’s time is finite even if the digital copy is not. So one could tip a particular song, an entire album, or the artist in general. Essentially “This song is awesome!” “This album is awesome!” “We love you!” Instead of costing seeds to buy likes perhaps it should be simpler. You tip and you review. The tip is a direct money transfer to the artist and the artist essentially gets a little analytics message saying what the tip was for. The review is a service performed by the user FOR the artist and network that can earn them seeds which tells how much they like something. It’s a 5 or 10 star thing, then a text field to explain why. If you just hit a star you get less than if you explained why too. This would INCENTIVIZE feedback for the artists and also allow people an easy way to generate seeds they could use to tip their favorite artist or use to host content of their own.

You could also think of it another way. The artist is essentially saying to the Public “You are hiring me to create art for you but I’m letting you decide how much to pay me. But if you don’t pay me enough I’ll pack up my stuff and go home.” I believe Humble Bundle does something similar to this. :smile:

Actually come to think of it Humble Bundle creates tipping competition by creating different game packages that can only be accessed if you tip high enough (remember the earlier scenario mentioned above :wink:) so why couldn’t n99 or those that use it do something similar? Tip $x and you get a signed copy of the CD. Tip $y amount and you get the signed CD + a hand written letter of thanks and appreciation. Tip $z and you get the signed CD, the letter and the band’s lead hot female singer’s panties. :smile: Lol. But you get the idea. Escalating care packages.

Also consider that downloading music takes bandwidth. If you live in a remote area and there was a deal that allowed a signed CD, or group of CDs to be shipped to their house physically, that could be worth it. Even more if there were albums in such a package that had not been released. Consider there are places with prohibitively slow internet. Or one may travel into areas with NO internet. Physical disks may be more useful than downloading masses of digital files. And if one is making video that’s going to suck even more bandwidth.r.

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Thanks for your input, it is much appreciated, I have a clearer understanding of a tipping economy now, although I tried Second life last night, and not really a fan but I get your point. :slight_smile: Great idea If everyone shares tho love. I really like Cryptopia’s version of tipping economy inside their troll box seems to work great but I can’t see how someone could make a living that way. Then you have Steemit but it seems only the rich and powerful rule there like Jeff Berwick and his 15,000 dollar first celebrity post.

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I think the problem on SL is that Lindens, the in game currency, aren’t worth much. There’s plenty of activity and a vibrant economy. Also consider the price of land on SL is set by Linden Labs and requires regulate payments which ultimately affects the entire economy. And Linden Labs doesn’t account for things like the price of real life flat inflation. It’s not that tipping can’t work but like any other form of free market it doesn’t function too well when you have a regulatory body attempting to take it’s cut or influence the market. Linden Labs acts much the same way to SL that government does to society.

I don’t really have a problem with whales myself and even less so on SAFE given it’s architecture. What would be the worth of hoarding seeds? And would there be any way to disincentivize it?

The only worth in hording seeds that I could see is if you could buy real goods, gas, food, and real estate., edit: ( but I am not sure about that). If it were only good for intangible consumable goods, such as entertainment Then active accounts don’t accumulate to continue consuming. What do you mean by disincentivizing the token?
Steemit doesn’t seem like access is fair when it comes to wales.

Admitting something has down sides / imperfections doesn’t negate its usefulness. I believe intellectual property rights including copyright are useful. Flawed and with many limitations, but still useful.

The point of copyright, and other intellectual property rights is to, in your words create artificial scarcity.

You can’t have a market for something that doesn’t have a degree of scarcity, and people can’t protect their own work if others are free to take it without consequence.

If I spend years innovating a new technology, I should benefit from it more than some rip-off merchant with a big factory and big wallet, and patents / design rights are important in enabling me to do this (and to raise funds to carry out the R&D in the first place).

It’s the same for musicians in my view, but with copyright instead of design rights / patents.

The point is giving people the ability to make a return on their investment by marketing their work, or giving a degree of monopoly power over their intellectual property that would be impossible without intellectual property rights.

I think elements of a tipping economy make a lot of sense for this kind of thing, along with the ability for artists to set pricing and control access where they choose to.

I’m arguing that nobody should profit from the distribution of other people’s work unless the creator permits it. Though of course I’m happy for creators of legitimate platforms to make money from their own work.

I believe that this is a kind of mechanism that can be harnessed in a powerful way that still leaves a fair amount of control with artists (I won’t go into the details here, but I have concepts for a platform that does this). The fact that the industry isn’t encouraging and taking advantage of this kind of behaviour is a missed opportunity, just as Napster was a missed opportunity when digital downloads weren’t offered legitimately.

Absolutely. The option of piracy is a great incentive for creators to use a good business model, sensible pricing, and offering their work in a way that fits the market.

I believe that if spotify / apple / Amazon were allowed to do what they do but without paying artists anything, they would probably do it. Unless users on a large scale decided to go out of their way to tip artists / buy a physical copy of an album, this would be a raw deal for creators. Copyright is important in preventing that from being able to happen.

Can I just make a remark here about something without giving any value judgement on copyright.

In Australia before netflix got here a year or so ago, pirating movies was big. Now with the availability of cheap streaming of movies and movies being released here years earlier, the pirating problem has reduced dramatically.

To my understanding this is the effect n99 will have too. Maybe greater if it works well. Very cheap & timely access to works without paying big bucks to middle men who extort money from the people and pay the artist peanuts.

Now a remark on copyright itself, I agree it has its place, but the length of time now and the increased restrictions is bad, very bad. It should be brought back to its purpose and that is to allow the artist to recoup and earn off her/his works. Patents are 15 years and this to me seems a reasonable time, well in the digital age even 5 years should be good. The restrictions should also be relaxed.

Personal copying is considered infringement and a civil matter. It should be recognised that in the digital world that trying to prevent this only makes a lot of middle men a lot of money and only drives up the cost of the material without any benefit to the artist or the people. So this issue should be approached differently or even removed for personal/household copying. Distribution is a criminal case and really should remain.

Basically the artist should always retain copyright and cannot be removed and only conditional rights be granted for production and distribution given to third parties. n99 seems it will solve the need for 3rd parties to do anything for the artist so copyright simply becomes a case of “others cannot distribute the work without the artist’s permission”.

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You are misquoting me here. I did not say disincentivizing the token. I said disincentivizing the HOARDING of the token. That is holding large amounts of the token or currency over a long period of time and thus stagnating the economy. One of the things that disincentivizes the hoarding of safecoin for example is that the network adjusts the value of safecoin according to all the safecoin in existence so hoarding really doesn’t do a whale any good because if he sits on his coin the remaining value of the rest of the network is still going to adapt and more importantly the value of his coin may sharply drop if farmers find themselves unable to make profit at farming or a whale may find himself burning through his safecoin just to carry out day to day activities if there is a sudden shortage of farmers and a sharp demand of resources from the network. Moreover if someone dumps a ton of money into the network to buy safecoin they are affecting the value of resources for the entire network. The more safecoin is bought with fiat the more farmers want to farm safecoin which means more resources get devoted to the network. The network adapts and DROPS the amount of safecoin distributed to farmers until even if the price of safecoin is super high it’s not worth farming because one can’t get enough of it from the network. Hoarding would not make sense because anyone can farm and it would be prohibitively expensive to do anyway.

Yes and I’m glad you agreed it is artificial scarcity. I do not however agree with you in promoting or supporting artificial scarcity or basing a market upon it.

I agree with you completely that you can’t build a market on something that does not have a degree of scarcity to it. That is why I oppose copyright and think building a market upon digital uploaded art, which has a rapidly declining value at best from the moment any given piece is uploaded, is a futile attempt.

I believe in basing a market on things that are ACTUALLY scarce not on creating artificial scarcity. We have enough REAL scarcity in this world without creating artificial scarcity.

Why? And more to the point consider the opposite. What’s to stop you, the little creative inventor, from copying something THEY did, modifying it and creating something new? There are cultures that consider copying the work of others a form of flattery and praise. Consider how many law suits are issued by big corporations against small businesses for even the smallest infractions against their brand or possibly using their product without permission, or God forbid creating a cheap knock off or a derivitive. Imagine if fan fiction worked like that. All the Harry Potter fans get sued for creating derivitive works because they took their favorite characters and used them without permission. Teenage girls drawing yaoi fanfic of Snape and Harry Potter. Epic sagas and alterantive endings. Now consider how Monsanto sues organic farmers if their seeds BLOW onto their land. Organic farmers who don’t want the GMO seeds, who are cost money by the cross contamination, and by rights should sue Monsanto for the damage. But Monsanto sues the organic farmer on the grounds they used the product without buying it. You mentioned R&D? Explain to me why a giant corporation should be able to sue a small farmer for usage of a product they don’t even want and that is costing them money to be infected with. All in the name of protecting a brand, intelectual property and ensuring artificial scarcity.

Funny thing is we had music long before we had record audio and musicians still made money. When people say something is impossible more often than not it translates into “I don’t know how”. Now we have things like internet streams, digital broadcasting, dozens of ways for artists to connect with fans and clients all around the world and even more mediums of creativity. But you don’t think there is a new business model you could use?

I don’t think people should invest in recorded media the same way they did prior to the internet. That is not to say recorded media isn’t useful or desired but it isn’t the same kind of tool it once was. I’m an author. If I would publish my book I’d publish hard copy not digitally, or if I published digitally I’d do so AFTER I published the hard copy version and was onto my second book. Now if I wanted to pique readership interest in my work I’d definitely publish digitally because it could be easily shared over the net. I might even make a few audiobooks to get people really interested. But I wouldn’t expect to make money on any recording that was uploaded. Notice how movies have been coming out on DVD faster? Because that’s where the sales are not at the box office. 1. Because everyone can pirate movies so easily. 2. Because it’s just a pain to go to an expensive theatre. So companies are adapting.

Good at least we agree on some things. :smile:

He who creates owns. He who creates and owns and therefore create a license on his property. This seems to be the crux of your argument.

However I would counter with two points. 1. There are those who would not acknowledge the existence of IP in the first place or one’s ability to create it. 2. More importantly a law that cannot be enforced means nothing. If you cannot enforce your so called intellectual property rights they do not exist.

It’s similar to saying you have land, even showing a deed then being kicked off it by a hoard of thugs with guns when you have nothing to your name to back up said deed. Or if you own a house in absentia and come back to find it filled with squatters who do not recognize your ownership and insist they now own the land because you were not around to claim it. A law or claim, or belief, means NOTHING unless you can defend it with force if necessesary.

There is no practical way to defend copyright on the internet. This is a FACT. It is even more impractical on the SAFE network. Therefore the concept of copyright is impractical bordering on ludicrous. Copyright in fact only guarentees one sale of any given piece of art. Buy a piece, upload it, and now free for everyone. The age of creating intellectual monopolies has ended.

Well let’s consider this for a moment. What if a company did do this? But then what if they had a competing company that did the same but DID have a tipping system or promoted buying of physical discs etc? Which company do you think artists would gravitate to to submit new music and art to? The one that tips or the one that does not tip? Copyright isn’t as important as you think. Reputation is.

I’d agree shorter terms would be better. As with having things more relaxed.

I’m going to really have to study up on things here. There just seems to be so much competition.

Can we do a thought experiment? Really all I want, need here are very simple answers, and I’d like to limit the environment to not all world possibilities but the key 20% such as in the Pareto Principle. If piracy is a problem and so is copyright in the digital age, and inexpensive content isn’t worth pirating but needs to be distributed, then why not also credit consumers when they distribute?

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I think crediting / incentivising consumers to distribute / share content they like with others they think will like it is a mechanism that could seriously disrupt the music industry by getting around powerful middlemen / gatekeepers. Crowd marketing of music could be fantastic.

I think copyright still has a role to play, but the key is to provide this in a format that works for consumers so that even without copyright, they choose to use a platform that benefits the creators because it’s the best way to consume.

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The skills, time, and resources that go into making recorded music is scarce, but a digital file is not. However, some people want to make a business out of selling recorded music, and hence for that purpose copyright is a useful tool in creating a degree of scarcity for their product.

I know you don’t like it, but that doesn’t mean nobody should be allowed to do it, even if it’s effectiveness is reduced by the internet.

Everyone is free to create open license music, but they don’t do it. If copyright is pointless and giving music away for free is the best idea, why do very few artists do it?

Because if you can’t benefit from your own innovation, you’ll find it harder to justify investing in R&D. Try raising funding for an R&D project while stating to investors that you don’t believe in protecting your intellectual property rights and give free reign to copy cats.

With the patent system everyone is free to build on what others have done after 20 years, or before if they agree a deal to make sure it benefits the inventor.

If your example is as you say, the legal system in that case is wrong. It doesn’t follow that intellectual property rights are always bad or unjust because they have been abused in some (or many) instances.

The thing that I said was impossible was having a degree of monopoly power over a digital good without enforceable intellectual property rights, which I think holds true.

Of course there may be business models for musicians that are great and don’t involve the protection of intellectual property rights. That would be fantastic, but why then is almost nobody doing it (except perhaps in second life)?

Perhaps it’s because on a playing field with powerful middle men and gatekeepers who can enforce intellectual property rights, you can’t get any airtime if you don’t play their game.

Or maybe it’s just not viable to invest in high quality recorded music while giving everyone a free license to have / sell / modify it without permission or paying.

I absolutely think there are new business models that can be used to improve the music market for creators and consumers of music using this new connectedness.

I also think that copyright has a role to play in these models, but artists will be free to not use copyright if they don’t want to. If turns out the protection of copyright isn’t needed, then great.

You make a good point about copyright or any rights being pointless unless they are enforceable, and that with the Safe network enforcement will become very difficult.

Copyright would still be useful in stopping identifiable people from ripping off other people’s work, for example an artist stealing lyrics or samples, and offline activities like selling bootleg CDs. So yes enforcement may be reduced, but not to the extent of making copyright completely useless.

I don’t think it’s worth discussing this much more - if you make a music platform, tell your artists not to use copyright and not to charge for their music. If I make one, I’ll leave it up to the artists to decide.

For today’s artists I can’t see the first step they’ll take towards getting rid of middlemen being the choice to not charge for their music.

I’m looking forward to innovations that get rid of middlemen, and to be honest I don’t care whether copyright ends up being useful or useless - if it doesn’t help, I won’t promote it, but nor will I write it off if it’s useful and artists want to use it.

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What I’m saying is trying to make a business out of recorded music, or any other kind of art form for that matter, has a declining value and viability as a business model. It’s becoming increasingly impractical.

Should be people be allowed to copyright their work? Of course they should! They created the work, they can license it however they wish. But that’s beside the point. As I said before copyright becomes meaningless if it cannot be defended. It’s not a question of whether I like it or not. My feelings on the subject are irrelevant. The fact is copyright and freedom of speech are mutually exclusive concepts. And SAFE is based on Freedom of Speech and encryption. Copyright is based on an authoritarian body monitoring and dictating what can and cannot be published. This is mutually exclusive and runs counter with the values of Freedom, Privacy and Security. It undermines the privacy of the public because you cannot have copyright if one must monitor what does or does not abide copyright laws. Which in turn in one way or another undermines freedom and security. On a more practical note the decentralized nature of the internet and with encryption on top of it can and does undermine the effectiveness of copyright to the point of ineffectiveness.

Why don’t people charge their business models? Because people are slow to adapt at the best of times. And many are largely ignorant of just how easy it is to pirate their music. Because they believe “government” will protect them from the big bad internet whilst they simutaneously use the big bad internet to promote their shows. Like I said copyright is an authoritative model that runs counter to decentralization and freedom but so many people really can’t wrap their brains around actually building a decentralized business model.

Maidsafe seemed to raise funds just fine for their crowdsale, ridiculously well in fact. Bitcoin also seemed to manage to gain plenty of investment for it’s own R&D. So did Linux and it’s plethora of distributions. What about Reprap? Numerous kickstarter projects? The Open Ecology Project?

I would challenge the underlying idea that in order to gain funding or do research that you need to copyright your work. Maidsafe has defensive copyrights yes but most seem to be under the GPL. Linux is open source. Most kickstart campaigns and such don’t reward investors by with copyright rewards but by offering them little prizes or early access to the product. The purpose motivator can be just as powerful as the profit motivator.

You have a point here. Copyright seems more of a corporate legal issue to keep giant corporations restricted rather than a practical technical one against piracy. That being said the internet is becoming a more dominant medium of broadcasting so artist actually CAN get air time without the middle man. But I do see your point about giant radio and television conglomerates.

Ripping off lyrics and claiming you created someone else’s work is just tacky. But yes I see the point. Couldn’t this be solved with a public registry of some kind like a blockchain or MD data? Register your lyrics and/or music and register them to your name so we know it’s yours. Then if someone else comes along using it who isn’t you there’s a date/time stamp showing who came up with it first. That would solve the rip off problem and conflict over who created what first. Granted it wouldn’t stop people from selling anything but at least you’d know who was the copy and who was the original.

As for CDs I don’t know if anyone still does that but really selling physical bootleg is kind of pointless. You’re just burning an iso. What would be the point of selling it if anyone else can download the same iso and sell it? And you couldn’t stop this anymore than selling illegal drugs anyway.

My goal is not to tell people not to copyright. But rather not to base a system on a central authority and thus compromise decentralization, privacy, freedom and security. N99 wants to be a decentralized distribution base that is anti corporate. I don’t see that happening if they adopt an attitude of a central authority. Like I said before copyright and privacy, freedom and secuirity are incompatible, particularly copyright and privacy. Corporations are authoritarian. If n99 wishes to not be corporate they should focus on NOT being like a corporation and not be a central authoritarian entity.

Moreover any information n99 knows about it’s users can be used not only against said users but also against n99.

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