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License anyone who holds an NFT to distribute copies to other holders of the same NFT for profit. (Holding proven via cryptography) This would allow legal torr

by cwkoss 5y ago

License anyone who holds an NFT to distribute copies to other holders of the same NFT for profit. (Holding proven via cryptography) This would allow legal torrent-style distribution where hosting generates funds like mining. (It'd probably just be a nominal fee like $.10, but hosts could choose)

acdha 5y ago
How would that be enforced? The problem is cheating and the blockchain has no way for me to prevent you from buying a copy for $10 and giving the epub to all of your friends, letting them pay you some other way. The current systems wouldn’t even require that first payment — anyone on the internet can just download it - so it’s unclear why any author would offer their works this way at all.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  That's already happening right now regardless. This is a mechanism for licensing digital goods distribution. Currently, you need to sign up with a platform that will sell your thing for a significant cut, and the thing is stuck to your account and at risk of disappearing if the platform folds or decides to ban you. With this, your works could be distributed at no cost to the creator in a way that is legal and sanctioned by the creator. This is a way to make torrenting entirely above board. Digital ownership is more durable for consumers, and distribution is cheaper for creators.
  - roywiggins 5y ago
    Authors might as well just sell non-DRMed digital downloads from their own websites- which they already do sometimes. I can't imagine the hosting costs for that are really a problem. They can even accept Bitcoin if they want. I don't get what actual value the NFTs give you, it's not like I am ever called on to prove my "digital ownership" of the non-DRMed books I buy already.
  - acdha 5y ago
    The difference is that this requires the author to make their works freely available to everyone on the internet in the hopes that enough people will pay. If you torrent stuff, you have to worry about legal repercussions (think about how many people talk about that as the main reason they use a VPN) and spending time on dodgy websites with a history of malware. This would avoid all of that risk and prevent ISP blocking since your traffic would be indistinguishable from paid downloads. Similarly, this requires payment of not only the often considerable NFT overhead but also the maintenance of the content delivery servers because storage and bandwidth aren’t free and you can’t accept payment without the guarantee that someone will get what they paid for. That’s only “no cost to the creator” in the same sense as it is currently where it means lower net income. And, don’t forget, that means the author is paying to serve pirated copies out of their cut, which is unlikely to be a popular feature. Finally, these are complex distributed systems to keep running. It seems far less likely that Amazon will break your Kindle library than that a blockchain network will become too expensive or even collapse.

by cwkoss 5y ago

acdha 5y ago

How would that be enforced? The problem is cheating and the blockchain has no way for me to prevent you from buying a copy for $10 and giving the epub to all of your friends, letting them pay you some other way. The current systems wouldn’t even require that first payment — anyone on the internet can just download it - so it’s unclear why any author would offer their works this way at all.

cwkoss 5y ago
That's already happening right now regardless. This is a mechanism for licensing digital goods distribution. Currently, you need to sign up with a platform that will sell your thing for a significant cut, and the thing is stuck to your account and at risk of disappearing if the platform folds or decides to ban you. With this, your works could be distributed at no cost to the creator in a way that is legal and sanctioned by the creator. This is a way to make torrenting entirely above board. Digital ownership is more durable for consumers, and distribution is cheaper for creators.
- roywiggins 5y ago
  Authors might as well just sell non-DRMed digital downloads from their own websites- which they already do sometimes. I can't imagine the hosting costs for that are really a problem. They can even accept Bitcoin if they want. I don't get what actual value the NFTs give you, it's not like I am ever called on to prove my "digital ownership" of the non-DRMed books I buy already.
- acdha 5y ago
  The difference is that this requires the author to make their works freely available to everyone on the internet in the hopes that enough people will pay. If you torrent stuff, you have to worry about legal repercussions (think about how many people talk about that as the main reason they use a VPN) and spending time on dodgy websites with a history of malware. This would avoid all of that risk and prevent ISP blocking since your traffic would be indistinguishable from paid downloads. Similarly, this requires payment of not only the often considerable NFT overhead but also the maintenance of the content delivery servers because storage and bandwidth aren’t free and you can’t accept payment without the guarantee that someone will get what they paid for. That’s only “no cost to the creator” in the same sense as it is currently where it means lower net income. And, don’t forget, that means the author is paying to serve pirated copies out of their cut, which is unlikely to be a popular feature. Finally, these are complex distributed systems to keep running. It seems far less likely that Amazon will break your Kindle library than that a blockchain network will become too expensive or even collapse.