Is there a way to reward people for popular content?

[Seneca]

I think too much is reasoned out of the perspective of new content that will be produced after MaidSafe is operational and not about content that’s already out there at the moment. That content will be uploaded by pirates on a massive scale, original authors don’t stand a chance to beat the pirates unless they’re among the very first who know about and support MaidSafe. We can’t stop pirating, but we can refrain from paying pirates for sharing copyrighted contents.

Allow me to catch up a bit to earlier replies:

@luckybit

You haven’t exactly shown how it can be gamed in a permanent way.

I have shown how it can be gamed, until someone shows a solution how it can be stopped I can’t be asked to show how it can be done in a permanent way. All the solutions so far are vague:

@luckybit

pay people who are uniquely identified as the author in some way.

It also doesn’t solve:

@Seneca

the author could create a system where users get a share of the popularity reward. While the apps offers nothing of value, people would simply visit it daily (using an automated script or something) to access it and reap a part of the reward.

@luckybit

(one vote per unique human)

This is also still vague. The Proof of Unique Human thread hasn’t produced a truly reliable or feasible solution, and the ideas that are there would also be implemented on a higher level than the content reward system, which tends to be problematic. That higher level has to constantly evolve to fight new exploits and thus constantly changes. Security is a big issue here, how do we determine which systems on that higher level are valid input for the content reward system? That’s an insane challenge if the systems on that higher level constantly change.

@luckybit

I don’t see how it would affect MaidSafe’s reputation more than anything else would.

I think for-profit piracy would harm MaidSafe’s reputation far more than traditional non-profit piracy.

@luckybit

Popularity is the only way you can monetize these things because what else do we have?

Advertisements? That’s popularity.Micropayments? That’s popularity.Profit sharing? You measure value on popularity.

We also have donations. It’ll work relatively well since the payment system (SafeCoin) is on the same platform as the content being accessed, allowing a seamless donation experience. In my opinion that’s the way to go for free content, donations/crowd funding.

An automated reward system by the network itself needs to have well defined rules and robust algorithms that can’t be cheated, and that requires an objective unit of measurement of popularity. ‘Views’ or ‘Downloads’ are not good objective units of measurements, since they can be faked or automated. A view or download from an automated script using a valid MaidSafe account that belongs to a unique human is counterfeited popularity. People can make arrangements and software that gives them financial motive to do this. Groups can view/download each other’s contents through automated means every day and all share the reward.

So far I don’t see how an automated reward system is going to work well, it’ll be a mess.