Content Bridges, Mirroring, Encouraging content providers to use the Safe Network

Features
1

I was just reading up on the content threads (Reward People For popular Content, and @ioptio Complimenting the Granularity of Digital Consumption etc). Throwing an idea out there that I did not see mentioned, starting with an example:

There is a creative commons content producer on the regular internet that I am a fan of. They produce content (videos/blog posts/lectures…) on a regular basis and I would love to see their content made available and kept up-to-date on the Safe Network. As a fan and regular consumer of this content I go ahead and copy what is currently available into the Safe Network which automatically gets assigned as “mine” and all content producing rewards go to me. Not ideal. What I really want is for the content producer to start using the Safe Network in the future and some way to pass over any rewards/ownership to them once they join the Safe Network.

Ideas: A formal/standard way for a person to declare “This is not produced by me I am just acting as a bridge, mirroring existing data produced by another.”. Any content producing safecoin rewards accumulate at a holding SafeCoin address waiting for the original owner to claim them (see below for more on this). A percentage of those rewards can be given to the content bridge builder(s) mirroring the data for making the effort.

Two obvious discussion points:

  1. The system can be abused, who is to say the original owner is etc etc.
    Yes, but this can and will happen anyway without any bridge/mirror system. Bad actors will upload data that is not theirs and not bother to claim they are just mirroring content. The aim of this mirror system is not to try to create some foolproof way of identifying original owners, it is simply a way for honest people to help encourage the content they want to see be included on the Safe Network, and more importantly encourage the producers of that content to start using the Safe Network quicker.

  2. Who would decide the percentages of SafeCoin rewards to go to original producer and the content bridge builder. Who will release the rewards?
    Obvious straighforward choice would be the content bridge builder that started mirroring content. Again like in point (1) If they are doing this at all it is because they genuinely want to get the original producer and the data they produce onto the Safe Network. The content bridge builder would also be the person that sends the private key for the SafeCoin holding account to the original content producer once they joined the Safe Network, handing over control of the mirrored data.

Other points:
Such a system would benefit from a “many to one” setup in that it will be common for many people to be cooperating and competing to mirror the same content producers data onto the Safe Network (mirroring quicker, specialising, in better and different formats…).

A natural extension of this idea would be someone already produces content on the Safe Network but other people want to see it in another format or with some other modification or adaptation. The above setup could be used to encourage an ecosystem around some content producers popular content - allowing other people to modify and create something new as well as give credit (and SafeCoin!) automatically back to the original producer.

This kind of idea may or may not tie in well with the rumoured reputation system(s).

Food for thought. Apologies if this has already been proposed/discussed somewhere already - there really is a lot to read around here :smile:

1 Like
2

I think what you’re looking for is the Watermark feature that will be implemented into SAFE. you can look for more info about it on this forum.

3

As far as I have read, Watermarks are assigned to your public ID for “your” data on a first come first served basis. I do not see how this encompases what I am suggesting?

4

Maybe they’re dead or imprisoned.
Or maybe they don’t have a computer (e.g. some old writer or painter).
There’s nothing that prevents you to posts all sorts of stuff and donate collected funds to original authors, maybe even in the form of a check and fiat money.

But, but… if the content is posted to Public SafeNet, the poster wouldn’t make any SAFE from it, only the farmers would. So there’s no money to be made in that case.

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I think this is incorrect. If public content is watermarked then the watermark owner earns when it is accessed, alongside farmers.

6

I meant to say in cases in which content hasn’t been posted to Public MaidSafe shares by the original author, there would be no watermark of any kind (unless the posters attempt to watermark something they haven’t authored as theirs).

Related to author-watermarked content posted to Public shares, I wasn’t discussing that but I also wasn’t aware of the status of that feature. I just searched for it (there’s a relevant mention of it here: SAFE Pod SF - SafeCoin - The SAFE Ecosystem - #26 by dirvine) and it seems it’s something that can be added relatively easily.
If watermark-related payments can be tracked easily then it would be possible to have content earnings pre-collected (e.g. by the foundation or some similar organization) for authors who aren’t yet on the network, although that would create complicated “digital paperwork” if said authors do get on MaidSafe.

7

My understanding is that there’s no intention to regulate. The uploader can apply their watermark, whether they are the author or not, and we’ll no doubt see content being uploaded and wrongly “claimed”. However, the way to deal with this is to ensure users have a way to “prefer” access through more reputable portal apps. In general people want the authors to receive their reward - they like their stuff after all - so given the option, I think many would prefer to access content that has been uploaded somewhere they trust is rewarding the authors. Like an App store etc. It won’t be watertight, but it won’t be onerous to administer, sign up to, or access either, so it just might work :smile:

Its a great opportunity for app developers too - create a the best portal for content, or for a particular type of content, attract authors, attract consumers etc.

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8

What does water marking do along side popcorn time on SAFE running the stuff stripped of the marks?

I hated that thread about increasing the granularity. The very notion was about premium-izing and wanting to avoid bundling content rates and doing anything possible to weasel the sponsor toll filter in to profit from limiting access. It was also about attention theft. Current content aggregators need to go through a mulch machine.

9

I see an opportunity here. For any decentralized digital content store. Part of the business model and marketing is that they investigate true creator or authorship of content submitted so people feel better about knowing the right person is getting their micro payment.

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10

Opportunity for whom? The continent would have to be watermarked using the author’s watermark for him to benefit, and he would have to have a SafeNet account.
Do you see an opportunity in organizing this? Helping authors get registered? Or something else?

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Like I said “any decentralized digital content store” opportunity to a service that wishes to work in best practice for artist in line with their true audiences. They would only publish content from the original content creator. Like any music streaming or download service today. This is something I would use because I often make choices off principle. You may not understand that because if there’s a free version somewhere then go for it, which I do as well if there are a bunch of corporate middlemen. But if it comes to pennies and it’s going straight to the artist then at that point trying to seek it out for free is just ridiculous. And an artist wouldn’t necessarily have to have a safe network id, the service could provide them an id and watermark potentially and reimburse them outside of the network potentially reserving an artist id if they decided to join. I see more possibilities than impossibilities with the Safe Network. And consider this business model somewhat legacy but far more fair and granular. If actual people are vetting the artists through traditional means then there may have to be a small subscription fee if the sites popularity gaining safecoins isn’t enough. Which would be highly likely.

12

Thanks very much for kicking the tires of the idea @janitor , it is much appreciated. I will attempt to defend what I am suggesting against your useful critique.

[quote=“janitor, post:4, topic:4097”]
Maybe they’re dead or imprisoned. Or maybe they don’t have a computer (e.g. some old writer or painter).[/quote]

These edge cases do not invalidate the idea of providing an standard avenue for mirroring content onto the Safe Network as I am suggesting. There is no requirement that the original authors migrate to Safe Network to claim any SafeCoin accumulating by mirrors of their work. In fact this will be the norm unless and until the network effects kick in. If the worry is having SafeCoin holding accounts accumulating and unreleased by the mirror creators forever, smart contract style expiry dates could be set where the SafeCoin gets released back to the network (destroyed I think I read) after a certain time.

No, but this ignores the two main premises of the idea: First a system like I am suggesting gives people an official way to mirror content without claiming it is their own and more importantly, secondly encourages content producing authors to use the Safe Network. When content producers on the regular internet see that their fans have mirrored their content (most likely informed by the same fans “please publish your stuff to Safe Network!”) and they have X SafeCoins and counting accumulating in various mirror holding accounts setup by those same fans - that creates incentive to look into this Safe Network thingy and maybe start an account, publish to it. The odd person that bothers to jump through hoops to send cheques through the mail, pay wire fees etc does not create the same level of incentive and is not visible to content producing authors beforehand.

[quote=“janitor, post:4, topic:4097”]
But, but… if the content is posted to Public SafeNet, the poster wouldn’t make any SAFE from it, only the farmers would. So there’s no money to be made in that case.[/quote]

Even if true this is besides the point mainly because there will be many like myself that want to both mirror creative commons data that we did not author and encourage the original authors to start using the Safe Network so we do not have to mirror data second hand anymore. Showing content producers that there is no economic incentives, however small, is not optimal IMHO.

Watermarks at least as I have read so far are an all or nothing proposition - you watermark the data as yours or you do not watermark. This does not appear to accommodate a way for people to mirror data and specify that they are not the author. Foundation/organisations are just a form of centralisation and as you point out is problematic, slow, bottlenecks of “digital paperwork” doomed to fail. As mentioned my original discussion points 1 and 2 but perhaps not made clear enough, this sort of centralisation complexity is not required or desired. Bad actors will just watermark data as their own claim 100% of any proceeds. However fans of certain content, if given the facility to do so, will mirror it. These may well be the majority. Like consensus prediction markets, who better to determine the authenticity of a original author than a distributed army of fans that have been mirroring the content of their favourite content producer onto the Safe Network? Allowing people to officially mirror content producers work into the safe network also opens up new avenues for reputation systems and consensus prediction of which accounts belong to the original authors, if any, on the Safe Network.

13

Considering there’s no (and there won’t be) enforcement digital ownership on the SafeNet, I think the system would function easier as a distributed and decentralized donation/tipping service (for example, users watermark posted assets as theirs and make a commitment to pay out a fraction of earnings (say, 80%) to some MaidSafe address (presumably the royalty-collecting address of the original author.

Earnings and payouts could be easily determined and the author or those who commit to pay out more to the author would hopefully get more traffic.

Generous users would tend to use contents from the author or, if the author or his legal rep aren’t on MaidSafe, from posters who give most to the author or his legal rep.

To me this seems simpler and easier to figure out, but maybe I’m missing some unique features of your idea.

14

I certainly agree that tipping is a easy and powerful method. A system like the one I am suggesting does not require any enforcement of digital ownership nor does it replace or detract from any tipping system but rather is complimentary to it filling a gap that Tipping misses: The main problem with tipping is that it requires that the author has a Safe Account (at “some MaidSafe address”) to send tips to. If a content creator already has a Safe Account then they would presumably already be providing content on the Safe Network and so there there little need to mirror their data. So in that sense my suggestion is complimentary to standard tipping.

My suggestion provides a robust distributed way of tipping before the content creator is on Safe Network in a smart contract like way where the person who makes the effort to mirror data is also the one responsible for setting the reward percentages and releasing the holding account to the original content creator if they join the Safe Network. It allows people to mirror other peoples creative commons content not yet on the Safe Network without feeling bad about being forced to watermark it as their own. Finally the idea provides a way for encouraging the original content creator to start using the Safe Network by letting them see SafeCoin accumulating for their content that others fans have mirrored.

Technically how might this suggestion be achieved: A user wishing to mirror some data they are not the owner of has the ability to add at least two watermarks to the mirrored data and specify percentage payments that will go to each watermarks associated SafeCoin address. The second Watermark has a special “Not My Data” meaning and which by definition has a temporary SafeCoin Holding Address associated with it. The user that created it cannot spend any SafeCoin in it directly but can transfer its ownership to another Safe Account which can (which presumably will be the original content author if/when they join the network as identified by the person who setup the mirror). All these actions are on the public record including the total SafeCoin in the holding account. This provides data for any reputation systems so if some user changes their mind and wishes to spend the percentage of funds they had earmarked to go to the original content producer, it would eventually reflect on their reputation. Bad actors would be better served by just using their own single watermark making abuse almost pointless but still may happen.

Thanks again for the critique!

15

I think the best way for that user to act is to get in touch with the owner of the material and tell them to jump in the network. A user wishing to mirror data they are not the owner of is called copyright infringement. Or if it’s something free, the EULA or other owner-user license usually states that if somebody is to distribute the material, they need to contact the owner first

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16

We perhaps move in different data circles. There are literally terabytes of Creative Commons licensed data available right now that is a perfect fit for the Safe Network. See https://creativecommons.org/ for an introduction.

Your comment is probably best directed at those that want to rip off copyrighted works and pass them off as their own on the Safe Network to generate SafeCoin for themselves. As I have explained several times above, the idea I am presenting is not optimal for the bad actors that wish to do this and so will be of little point for them. The idea is a good fit for those that want to encourage their favourite content producers that have an open creative commons license model for the data they produce to adopt the Safe Network. What I am suggesting really comes into its own for people who follow blogs, videos channels, video lectures and pretty much an endless list of other types of regularly updated content published on the standard internet under the creative commons licence (explosive growth every year) and as fans/followers would like to see these authors adopt the Safe Network. The method would allow people to both mirror the creative commons content so it is available immediatly and at the same time help promote the safe network to those content creators that produced the data and who might not be aware of the potential of the Safe Network as a distribution medium for their work.

2 Likes
17

Sounds like a grand idea. A community supported place where you can say, “I’ve done this. I’m not trying to profit.” And where, perhaps the creators can find out about SAFE and get in touch with the Bridge person easily.

I’m not sure if it would need to be anything ‘official’ in terms of SAFE, I think, as you’ve pointed out, the impetus here is honesty and so forth (and the content being CC anyway), there’d be no real trouble in doing this.

It could be as simple as a website where you register what you’ve bridged, alongside some info for the content creators about SAFE, why they should care and how to get in contact with their Bridge.

18

I really don’t understand why a middleman (bridge, fan) should have anything to do with managing incomes from other people’s material. In the case of Creative Commons you want to mirror something free into the network to make money out of it, money that will eventually end up in the artist’s pocket. So if on the internet the artist made it free, why would somebody encourage the making of money out of it on the network? If the author is acknowledged to jump in the network and he don’t want, i find inappropriate to make a proof-of-income for the artist to motivate him to jump in the network, especially if his work is free on the internet.

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19

Get on the network or else!
Plus a small dose of unsolicited mail/calls.

I agree.
For anything to work right, it has to be simple.

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20

As far as I have read, In the currently setup of Safe Network when you post any data to the network it will generate SafeCoin for the person that posted that data (@happybeing kindly pointed this out to @janitor previously in this thread). There is no facility for responsible community members to upload Creative Commons (CC) work to the Safe Network and not collect the SafeCoin for it… that is the “simple” solution and I have seen no easy straightforward way to do what I am proposing.

In essence what I am proposing allows exactly what you are requesting: It allows people to add creative commons work that they did not produce and not collect the SafeCoin for it. It further allows you to declare in a consistent way that it is not your data (and/or that is based of other people works). As a responsible community member your helping extend and/or promote the content you want to see on the Safe Network. You can post CC data set 100% proceeds to go to the holding account and forget about it. You cannot manage or spend the funds that are collected in the holding account yourself - and if your a bad actor that wanted to do this you would not bother to use this mirroring watermark system in the first place - the standard watermarking system is for these bad actors. If the original author joins Safe Network and your satisfied it is them then you release the SafeCoin holding account to them. As this is all on public record various reputation systems can use it.

Perhaps your “managing incomes” concern was about why should a user be able to set the percentages when you create a mirror of someone elses CC data. I alluded to this in my first post but to clarify: it is for flexibility, You are free to modify and extend many CC works as long as you cite the original creator. At that point it is no longer 100% owned by one person.

Thanks for challenging the proposal it is the only way to help weed out the problems, please keep the criticism coming. It would be useful to also contrast criticisms of my proposal vs those directed at the Safe Network as we understand how it will function right today. I have the impression that the concerns you and @janitor have raised are really aimed at the Safe Network as it is specified to work right now and not directly at my proposal per se. In the current specification only original content creators can post data and there is no facility to post data that you do not own but have the legal right to do so (i.e. CC content). IMHO the current setup creates a chicken or the egg problem: Little content, few users will use the Safe Network. Few users will mean few content providers will be attracted to the network. I believe my proposal helps alleviate this problem.