SMT Proposal
Voting for "Proof of Authorship"
About the Author: My name is Kemane Ba, today happens to be my 28th birthday and use this occasion to start the konduktum research project and the corresponding series that is burning to come into existence for the last four months.
konduktum will be:
A dapp that allows the commercial distribution of your digital assets.
The first truly decentralized copyright index.
A COLLECTIVE DRIVEN voting mechanism to decide who is granted a proof of authorship.
Since the last seven year's I have been working as a freelance Computer Graphics Artist & Illustrator and constantly had the impression that there was one thing within the community of content creators that was not being taken care of very well. And that is:
Copyrights.
It is Ironic as most people first think of the "evil infringer" when they hear the term copyright. When in reality it is often the Artists that rarely even care if their copyrights are violated. As they are either to busy making more art or don't see any point in filing a lawsuit against infringers.
I state that: within this year Steemit can become a " how to properly handle copyrights" example for the entire Internet if we start harnessing the power of voting.
Your Art Is Currency
It is true: The most direct way of getting your art out would still be on the street of your neighborhood.
However, today the challenge is a giant new wave of aspiring talented artists that all want to participate in the adventure that we call "internet". In turn, there's a massive amount of data that we have to structure in completely new ways.
Looking at the revenue that the major stock image libraries are making every month, It resembles a miracle, that it is even possible that there is one single artist still struggling with money.
All the images and all the money that is related to them flows to one central entity that feeds itself a big chunk of the of the artists accomplishments. So neither you nor the buyer of your artwork really benefits from a marked, that is run by centralized image banks. For an image tycoon, the most valuable asset is not the money that is made through the artworks. The most valuable assets are the artworks.
As Matters Stand...
contemplating on the following facts:
We live in times where virtual breedable cats are sold for over $100k.
We live in times where major stock Image tycoons are still hungry for cakes and acting as an intermediary between you and the buyer
We live in times where artists are coming up with massive amounts of content every single day on CG- and social platforms. And they are NOT rewarded for their contribution to the internet at all.
The first question that might arise is: But Steemit is already providing exactly that reward system, isn't it? Steemit is a good example of how the content creators are rewarded for the single post itself, but not (yet) for assets they provide. As the goal is: that the asset can be redistributed and shared from anywhere in the web, just like a wallet address, so all rewards go back to the owner of "the wallet" (i.e. "the asset").
We Learn:
Art has value.
Art is too valuable, to be bought and resold by any hungry intermediary.
Art does not have a "centralized marketplace or platform ". A website of an individual artist is already in the best place where it can reside! As the internet, itself is a vast collection of art...
And it is on the brink of becoming the largest decentralized p2p exchange, humanity has ever experienced. No more intermediaries. You are throwing a whole new light into the realm of cryptocurrency. Just by posting pictures, one single artist could end the debate about "cryptocurrencies not being backed with anything".
The Application
YOU define the value of your artwork. And you distribute it right from where it is. Whether you post pictures on your own website, blog, in a forum, or on a social platform. Everyone can access redistribute and share your content anywhere, and every single reward flows right back to the artist the content belongs to: You!
Cryptocurrencies are the superconductor capable of tackling the huge waves of data with the least friction possible. And in this very special circumstance, Steemit might actually be the first entity in the web to demonstrate how, as:
There is no competition
Let's closely examine and sum up the approach of the current copyright-related ICO's like gpcc.io, copytrack.io or the current kodak ICO:
They claim to have solved the copyright issue by referring to their own Evaluation systems.
So the proof of authorship & registration is handled INHOUSE. No external entity can participate in the decisionmaking of this step!Global copyright registers are, in fact: central banks of copyrights!
Don't be fooled by the word global, as It just states that there are branches of the same company in different countries to collect and store data and assist in law enforcement. Often Only North America and Europe can participate!The enforcement (= Punishment) Is still executed by the given government WITHOUT ANY room for democratic decisionmaking on how the punishment is executed and of what weight it is.
The result is a big amount of information going back and forth. A waste of energy, time and labor that could have been used more effectively. We can clearly see how the blockchain is forcefully bent around a very old and outdated system of law enforcement. When the actual law PLUS the execution can be defined within the Blockchain itself.
Don't get me wrong, I think the current copyright-related ICO's wonderfully demonstrate a proper distribution of assets and they are an important stepping stone in creating a use case to make more people wake up to crypto. But when It comes to the copyright handling and law enforcement itself, I think we barely even scratched the surface of what Is actually possible with all the "in real-world condition scalable" tool's provided by now. And we just start to learn how to actually harness the powers of the collective by:
VOTING!
Let's rewire our brains real quick...
...to keep up with the possibilities that the blockchain based voting system has in store for us. To do that, we have to unroot prejudices and assumptions that go along with legal terminology: The term copyright implicates, that there's a right to copy an asset, however: anything that considers usage remains an undefined variable and is therefore not useful for our rewiring. To define that variable we have to use the term "exploitation right" and that catapults us Right to the root of the matter!
Because: WE WANT TO MAKE MONEY WITH OUR ASSETS.
The old wiring of our brain was: If we don't have any exploitation rights, we don't have the right to make money with our assets. Now how about that:
- we don't need exploitation right.
- we don't need copyright.
- we don't need law enforcement.
If we are not participating in any commercial
or self-interest driven activities(ads) with the given assets!
That means there's a ROOM in which these terms apply. And now these terms lead us to believe that everyone is always in that ROOM, which is an assumption of our prejudiced monkey mind.
Main question: How does this apply to Steemit? We were complaining that platforms like Facebook or Instagram are not rewarding us with the actual value of our content, however, let's be fair and say that: if we or someone else messed up, they take care of deleting content, canceling accounts etc... Yes, Steemit can also blacklist accounts, however, the freedom on this platform and the responsibilities that go along with it are quite big.
One thing is for sure: Yet, we're not selling assets on Steemit. But the moment we're selling them: We enter that ROOM! Now there is one wonderfully simple mechanic of how to decide who's allowed to enter that room and who's not.
you guessed it: Voting!
Multiple Sources of Verification
Switching to a collective based intelligence, rather than a single government based intelligence, holds innumerable possibilities that are yet to be discovered. Since Steem is at present the only currency that has an actual userbase through its corresponding platforms, a real world example is much faster accomplished, than on any other Blockchain that is currently existing.
It might take a while to wrap ones mind around the concept of a collective body of verification.
However, if the core concept Is understood, I invite you to contribute and make this SMT become reality.
Thank you for reading,
Kemane Ba
With the series I reach out to all developers, artists and thinkers to cocreate a potential asset exchange on the steem blockchain!
contact
feel free to contact me via the folowing channel:
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors