I don’t agree, a client is identified by the public signing key; only if you link that public signing key to your artists name would it make you publicly known. Additionally this can be an opt-in mechanism?
The privacy is lost if the worth of the alt/painted coin is reliant on me being popular. Worthless if I am not known by anyone. But Bob D. is well known.
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I like your thinking. Maybe we can see that any SD can be an effective coin. Say an artists creates a unique SD and signs the SHA of the art and the ‘reproduction number’, this is a proof that you legitimately bought the art from the artist. Basically with standard SD, anyone can already claim his own minted-by-client coins;
Whether a minted-by-client coin is valuable is for the market to determine? It would not block anyone from getting the content, but does make it an exchange safecoin vs artist-signed SD (token); perhaps the network needs to provide additional tools for this?
You could become popular/known on a pseudonym (by default your pseudonym is 256 bits) ? If you or your art is truly unknown, can it then be “valued” ?
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A lot harder to be rewarded if you are only known as a pseudonym. What if I write a definitive work on China but cannot easily redeem tokens, but I can sure use some SAFEcoin to “buy” network resources and pay for things outside of china. That person may have a lot of difficulty in shifting their token because of the perceived danger in dealing with that token and what would the next person use the token for.
There will be more pressure to reveal/forgo some privacy in exchange for worth on the altcoin.
Why not be rewarded as per the current concept of a %age of farming rewards and let an APP that is designed as I mentioned earlier do the rest. Eg rate your work, help others find your work, allow you to have tokens for additional whatever.
I was making a comparison between 2 torrent sites to highlight a difference between a high traffic and low traffic SAFE Network site. Uptime and performance aren’t the issue, the size of site (number of items available) is (Wallmart vs. Mom’s & Pop’s).
Your SAFE site will be up and running just like all others. But the safest bet to find content will be to go to the largest site which by default can’t be any individual author’s site.
Maybe an artist collective of sorts could have a portal where artists could register their “official” sites and then voluntary “compliance” in content consumption might work a bit better.
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I am hoping maidsafe will make big “wallmarts” or itunes" be the thing of the past.
As a consumer, I would like to search for my favorite content and be directed to a fan page where I see a twitter type of page full of content, I can preview, see video logs and interviews and if I like what I see or hear can make the choice to purchase the content that suites a XBMC type of app.
I watch trends and see many people going back to vinyl records of limited release, reason is a record is durable and unique and holds it value as collectible.
I believe the digital world can not compete in this niche market because if one purchases a digital copy the value is lost and can not be resold
torrent sites are created because the digital product has no value to the person whom purchase the product. Is the digital file signed by the artist or has any personal touch like a book purchased from an author.
This is why maidsafe will change this world along with blockchain technology and bring back the blending of the old with he new and bridging this gap. we will see proof of orginal, proof of human and what ever we can think of to create digital files something of real value as like a physical object.
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Couple questions and points:
I would suggest tags instead of/in addition to set catagories due to the fluid nature of art. Metal + Classical = Symphonic Metal for instance. New genres and styles emerge quickly.
You assume one cares it’s distributed by the original artist. If the original artist charges more and someone else charges less for the same product who do you think I’m going to download from? And short of offering their product in say FLAC quality a musician isn’t going to make much difference quality wise and no one is going to care anyway because they trade in mp3 and ogg quality anyway. In fact a muscian might distribute in mp3 and a pirate might make a credible position just by porting the music to a different format like ogg or any number of formats and that would be the only change. Same for art. Quality only matters if you CARE about the difference of standards of quality between that of the original artist and their compeition. The artist ONLY has a market advantage if their standard of quality is significantly higher than that of their compeition.
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Good point. I am interested in overall concept rather than particulars, so feel free to expand or pick at it 
This very discussion is going on in some Australian forums now over “pirating in AUstralia” and there have been some interesting reads. Studies have repetitively shown that only a small %age will pirate no matter what, and the other 80% are on a sliding scale. That scale is basically the time from release to being released in AU, the formats and the costs.
Boiled down anywhere upto 80% of so called pirates who download content in Australia will pay if the conditions are suitable. Suitable is different for different people, but if the content is quick to market, cost effective and in suitable format then they will buy.
The SAFE system proposes to pay the creator at no cost to the person using the content. So after these 80% of people see that they can get the content quickly (artist uploads ASAP), price is right ($0.00), and format is good (Artist best interest to have best formats), then those 80% will migrate to favouring the original content over hit-n-miss pirated content
In my opinion the other 20% of “pirates” who would never pay anything, have no reason to not use original content. What do you think will happen??? it will be interesting to see.
That is not to say that there will not be a reasonable amount of content copied to make alternative versions. For example some will re-edit a movie and so on. But typically these only cater to a much smaller market, but if some cater to a large market then so be it.
In my opinion I think using SAFE’s system of rewarding the artist will profoundly change the “pirating” situation. And if the major players refuse to participate and keep to their old models of business then “pirating” of their controlled works will continue, be it on SAFE or bittorrent.
Exactly, its a new world for the artist, and they will need to adapt to take advantage of it. If they don’t then they will lose as you say.
But as history shows whenever new technology appears the “art” world moves with it. How long it will take is the question. It will not happen from day one and pirates will fill the gap, but I am sure as the benefits become known the artists will adapt.
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I am sure that this is a something for SD data types can help with. Just like an alt-coin on SAFE, but an Artist’s token given to those who donate to them above the network rewards for accessing their works.
No need for blockchain though.
This totally floored me yesterday: New Studies for an Old Story: Mammography Screening Isn't Saving Lives | HuffPost Life (Totally off topic, but still interesting – and I know SAFE wants to be a platform to advance medicine)
With one blanket currency we have artists playing music competing with scientists curing cancer, competing with the local model train club. And we expect the scale to be one-size-fits all…
SAFEcoin needs to be of the scale that it takes to keep the network running – but other currencies may scale to the needed size to feed other industries and interests better than a blanket “content gets 10%”
Aside: I guess the reward could change to terms of the “split-SAFEcoin” currency sometime in future, or it may never.
This is the problem isn’t it. How does the Core protocol/network know what it is that it is rewarding???
If you add to the watermark/payAddress some sort of marker/tag that gives an indication of the “worth” of the data stored, then how does the network “police” to make sure people are “honest” in the “worth” they ascribe to the work being stored. Do we set up review panels to decide?? Voting?? what??
We must answer the how to ascribe worth to the work being stored before we can design into the network (protocol) rewarding according to worth.
Yah, it would almost be better to have the farmers get paid a “living wage” and have the excess automatically donated to “public good” funds or content providers that they specify… x amounts to arts, Y amount to medical research, z amount to the taco truck directory… etc…
The network is smart enough to know what the network needs to keep the network alive and well, but it is pretty ignorant of what content is furthering discourse and contributing the the good of society. Individual farmers could make that decision better…
Perhaps the living wage portion would be redeemable for cash, but the “excess for public good” would have to be routed through other currencies. MedSAFEcoin or ArtsSAFEcoin MediaSAFEcoin, etc and those could be governed at the scale in accordance to the amount funded.
That is just a wild brainstorm not a proposal…
Unfortunately you still need to establish who fits into what category and keep both privacy/anonymity and honesty. Hey that file I uploaded really was valuable science research, honest : 
And much needed too.
This is a difficult question, and maybe will only be solved easily by having the network reward a stock “wage” no matter what the content is to keep SAFE as it was intended to be - does not know what its content is. Then have some sort of alt-coin or tipping system that allows people to give to the creator according to their desire to support the artist or project or cause or whatever
Self classification and Autotipping might work though. If I have MedCoins and I visit a site that classifies itself as a medCoin site, I could automatically pay them a bit. If I am not in the medical community, I probably wouldn’t have MedCoin… If I ran a porn site, I would be better off to accept my own communities money, because the crossover would limit my revenue stream.
That might work using the browsing app to pay, and because its built on top of the network rather integrated into its core, then there should not be any problems caused to the working of the network.
Also it allows you to make that decision based on your valuation of the worth of the information.
I doubt this could be built into the core network since the problem of requiring the network to know the data its storing.
Omg now we’re going from free market to taxation again lol. What you want to predict maidsafe will be forked to get away from such a statist model.
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See the problem here is that we’re arguing about rewarding different types of content but that’s the same argument as censoring different kinds of content only with a different twist. If you slap a kid every time he does something you don’t like that’s NEGETIVE condition. If you give him a reward every time he does something you do like that’s POSSITIVE conditioning. But what happens when you have two kids competing with one another and one sibling gets more treats than the other? Then little johny who gets more treats than johny-ray is going to feel neglected and put down upon. Now let’s introduce the concept of a “living wage.” First off: Why do only farmers get a living wage? You’ve just differentiated between “farmed content” and “non farmed content” and introduced competition. Smooth! Second: Where does this “living wage” come from and how is it determined and based on what? A living wage in one country or geographical area is not the same as a living wage in another. You live in an area where the rent is cheap but food is expensive and you need gas money to get to work/school/whatever that’s different than if you live in an area with public transit but expensive rent but moderately priced food vs somewhare that’s isolated with REALLY expensive food but no rent cost. Nevermind stuff like inflation, different country currency prices and so on. What is a living wage?
Then why is it that an artist can excel at his career but a farmer can’t? Why shouldn’t the farmer give up trying to farm and start pumping out tunes or something? Woudn’t that kind of bungle the whole system of incentivising data provision? I know you mean well but seriously stop trying to turn maidsafe into a welfare state. It’s bad enough they’ve got a 10% tax to begin with.
For that matter why is it the farmer gets the living wage but the artist doesn’t?!?! Think about the issues you’re creating here!
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Expounding on this –
Anyone can issue a community token and set the policy by which it is issued.
That community token can be used for moderation, reputation, anti-spam deposits, etc… Kinda like Karma or points are used on forums… ArtSAFEcoin MedSAFEcoin MediaSAFEcoin etc…
Farmers are payed a wage that is set by market conditions as to what is needed to maintain a healthy network. They are also allowed to specify where their portion of the Networks surplus earnings are directed. (Be it the 10% currently scheduled or a differing amount)
These would basically “buy at market and burn” a community token of their choice, thus increasing the value of the community tokens that the farmers choose to support. and providing a way for forums that help further the public cause to earn SAFEcoin without doing so in an blind “10% to everybody” manner which pays the pornographers the same as the cancer researchers and the pirates the same as the artists.
I don’t see this as taxation - as the farmers really are only owed market wage… If the network is short on capacity you pay them more, if it has an excess you pay them less. There is no sense in overpaying them just because you can. They provide a service to the network and they deserve to be paid for that, but so do content providers… As content improves, the demand for Farmer resources increases as well, so a rising tide will lift all the boats…