In followup of my post (here) on @chainflix and the newly discovered @cartoontv accounts recently created on Steemit, uploading copyright movies and cartoons to DTube and publishing these uploads to Steemit, I like to inform you what I've seen and done and the reactions I got in the last 24 hours.
Note: In essence the uploads itself is not involving the Steem blockchain and Steemit User Interface directly, therefore it can be argued Steem and Steemit is not involved at all. The fact that DTube is very tightly integrated with the Steem blockchain and therefore also Steemit User Interface, makes it a grey area IMHO.
The following topics are presented and discussed remainder of the post.
- What Happened After My Post Yesterday
- My Opinion on Publishing Copyright Material
- Am I the Stupid One?
- The GRAND Questions
- What Do You Think?
What Happened After My Post Yesterday
Yesterday my post on topic of the potential harm to Steem and Steemit by uploading Hollywood Blockbuster to DTube and publishing these in form of posts to the Steem blockchain, got some traction. It resulted in some Steemians starting flagging the movie uploads at the chainflix account, including the support of some high power and high REP Steemians. My post got a lot of support from Steemians believing uploading copyright material, especially those from Hollywood, should not be done.
Since the flagging rounds of the chainflix posts yesterday, I've noticed the initial whale voting for all the content, upped his votes by increasing his vote percentage, bringing the posts back to visibility - and give it some rewards I suppose. I also noticed that at least one of our respected whales who generally help in a good way to try and keep Steemit clean of all sort of abuse, is also upvoting the chainflix posts, probably to counter the downvotes, but the exact reason is not know to me. Other Steemians are also upvoting the content, not a single post but 10 to even more in a row. That suggest they are countering the downvotes that is also continuing. I'm not saying the countering of the downvotes is a bad thing, since when downvotes are casted for wrong reasons, it is actually a good thing. In addition I know from another Steemian his effort to contact Steemit INC CEO @ned last Saturday, and subsequently they had some communication, but no further results from Steemit INC side other than the request to present more information and evidence (as far as I understood the feedback correctly). Yesterday, I also DM-ed @ned, so far without any feedback.
I also chatted with the owner/creator of DTube. His argument is; we provide a general service and can help boost the popularity of Steem enabled services, like Steemit. We cannot enforce people to not upload copyright material. I do respect the fact it is probably extremely difficult to prevent copyright material to be uploaded using technology. Of course some content verification could be done with the original content, maybe in an automated way, but then the to-be-uploaded-content needs to be verified somehow with a DB with all the original content. In the music industry these systems are used at events to auto recognise what music is played to allow to compensate those artists. In the Netherlands this is done with (some) success at the bigger music events and festivals. The event/festival promoters are required to pay up to 5% of their ticket revenues to the authorities, who will then distribute this to those artists who's productions are played and are registered with the authorities.
My Opinion on Publishing Copyright Material
My take is that Hollywood is powerful and fierce, and therefore we shall be careful not to get into war with them, since that may result in discontinuation of Steem and Steemit... I say "may", since nothing is guaranteed. In the past some distributed/de-centralised networks were taken down, by authorities, but for sure not all. Also, a lot of copyright material is flowing through the internet and in essence it is not a problem for anybody, since either the content owner is ok with it, or the content owner is not going after it. For instance the music industry abandoned copyright protection already years ago and essentially not caring anymore about what happens with music online, more or less. In the Netherlands we pay taxes on empty CDs and DVDs to pay the artists, since downloading copyright content (music/movies) was allowed under the Dutch law until recently.
However, the movie industry is different, and especially the production powerhouses in Hollywood. They are trying to fight piracy more and more, and also more and more with successes.
Many of us are including copyright material in our posts, I know, I do too. I use images from Internet and not always check if they have copyright or not; But I do provide links to the image at the bottom of my posts. I use emoticons in a subset of my comments, those emoticons I take from the internet without checking if copyrights are stuck to it. Most of them have no copyright, since once I checked a bunch of them and could conclude that for those I checked. But some may have. I also posted links to music on YouTube and Soundcloud. Since I mostly shared music in the electronic dance segment, I feel 100% ok sharing such music since most of the artists in that industry segment create and sell their productions to stay visible in the market and provide promoters the right tools to continue booking them. In addition when promoting music to others may result in (some of) the others to actually purchase the music from an online service, or maybe even a CD or some other physical carrier for which deals are in place how the content creator and/or artists are compensated. Therefore, I'm of the opinion that sharing the music I share is pure extra and free marketing for the original creator and/or owner of the content. I must admit, I don't use the 'no-payout' option, so I get rewards on these posts. But since the rewards are so minimal, my argument is that the rewards I get is for the work I put in to creating the posts to provide the extra free marketing to the original creator and/or owner of the content.
Am I the Stupid One?
Last week(end) I was trying to mobilise countering the uploading, but more importantly the publishing of the Hollywood owned copyright material because I thought this may be harmful for the future of Steem blockchain and Steemit User Interface (and other user interfaces connected to the Steem blockchain), basically harmful for the future of the total eco-system that we are trying to build here.
Today, I do not question my opinion and/or changed my opinion, but I start to question the fact - since not so many powerful Steemians seem to be against what chainflix and cartoontv are doing - why I should not take my DVD collection, rip them and start posting to DTube or other decentralised video platforms and publish them on the Steem blockchain? When the majority of powerful Steemians is ok with such practise and Steemit Inc seem to be ok with it as well since they keep quite, why should I spend up to 4 hours creating posts that gets limited rewards, and not turn to spending just 10 to 15 minutes of my time to share a movie with you that for sure will get more rewards then I get on my other posts?
The GRAND Questions
The question is this: Is uploading and publishing copyright material a bad thing? The law in many countries says yes. But the law is the law and one can argue the law is not good.
The next question is: Is publishing copyright materials on the Steem blockchain a bad thing?
What Do You Think?
I'm very much looking forward to your views. I like to know from you if this post may also give you a different perspective on publishing copyright materials knowing the facts I shared with you on what happened last 24 hours. We can be saints, but in a pool of non-saints, why try to be the saint?
Selfvoted this comment for visibility
This account @rahuljaichand flagged this post without giving any reasons; It also seems @rahuljaichand spams the system and is flagged by cheetah and others. Please be aware.
He flagged you again :( I just muted him
YEP! :)
Keep steemit platform clean & legal as much as possible so we have a good tool to express and share productive positive thought...
You want to watch movie online go to netflix or other torrent platform...
How many time does people need to do same mess again and again before realizing whats is the real goal of life... Harmony and respect... If you be the one doing those movies or music with hard work then find them free on a public platform how would you react? Make sense... Dont do to other what you dont want them to do to you... Like wise, do to other what you want them to do to you ;)
POWERRRRR!!!
So TRUE and I cannot agree more!
Hmm, I like your opinons , but copyright is the stupidest thing existing, the artists/creators have already made their money and are continuing to do so... this isnt taking any silver spoons out of any of their mouths this isnt doing any harm unless you have interest in keeping a controlled and regulated world.
If you go to youtube you can find most of these cartoons, even on the day the new rick and mortys come out, nevermind the first season stuff and the bugs bunny cartoons from the sixties, no one cares, theyve made their money, and are making even more with the free promotion and distributuion,
In this day and age its all about getting the content into the person, money and copyright is NOT a concern, I feel like you guys are missing the whole point of Why we are on steemit, to dismantle the system,
3 controllers,
dont be one of those people supressing others when it has nothing to even involve you, it doesnt involve me and here now I seem to be advocating for the cartoons!
just thoughts, maybe watch some of those Rick and Mortys you might get some insight into how big of joke this reality is.., you dont think savvy people are already aware of steem! don't be naive .
For movies and cartoons from Hollywood you may be right in the fact they already made there money. That was indeed also the topic of copyright material. Although the music industry is not fierce at all regarding illegal copying copyright material, do you think music producers already made their money in times nobody buys CDs anymore and their music is only offered online. Back to movies/series/cartoons: how about when we do not watch TV channels anymore (they pay for the content) and we dont go to cinemas anymore (they pay for the content)? I'm not saying copyright shall stay as it is, but we also should not simply think "a well, no rules, copy as much as we want", since this may result in less art to be produced, when creators cannot make money anymore.
I have brought up the same issue multiple times.Infact I see witness and seednode will be responsible to remove content if and when a DCA notice is issued. I almost became a witness but haven't gone online yet. not sure how the steemit architecture handles this ?? If an even like that happen and get publicized sure it will have negative impact on steem valuation and steem ecosystem in general
Removing is not possible due to the nature of blockchain technology. I think what can be done at best is to hide the content, but that needs to be a function of the blockchain / API or something. We have the nfsw function to 'hide' content, but I think this is a frontend function, since on some of the non-Steemit UI's this content is shown, not hidden as in Steemit UI. So I suppose something needs to be on blockchain level, with a marker to show some content to be 'removed' and when checked never be accessible through the blockchain APIs. But so far, I'm wondering if anybody owning video UIs to the Steem blockchain, or STINC is seeing this as a problem that needs to be addressed. I did not see any evidence so far. But that doesnt mean that eg STINC is not addressing this already, but just not communicating.
I did a lot of search regarding this topic, in bitcoin forum there is discussion in this regard but it wandered off. I never got a solid answer from anyone and I am still searching. Seems like furion atleast is trying to include tools for the hosting providers to look for such content and take action. Many of the architecture have just reference and video/pictures are in some other server.So when the video/pictures are removed from the servers, the reference in block chain becomes invalid providing the "delete" effect .. But if they use IPFS to distribute video/image, I have no clue
The techies have to find a solution, since IPFS based storage means not possible to remove it. So it needs to be hidden forever when the authorities demand removal.
I think youre right. Theres enough places elsewhere on the web to find copyright material. With Dtube still in the early stages its not even worth the risk of a lawsuit against the steem enterprise!
Thank you for your feedback. I wonder why I/we shall be saints when several powerful people in our community are countering the downvotes of the posts. Are nt we the stupid ones? Not creating such posts as well and get some additional rewards into our pocket?
The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
- Albert Einstein
Although your comment is not really relevant, you seem to like to post statements made by important people fro history. Since your comments are not all the same, but different statement, I give ou a comment upvote, since I kinda like this. But generally I see such non relevant commenting, as spam.
Hi @edje
I've read both your posts on this subject and I'm glad you have raised this to the community.
I understand that dtube is a seperate entity but like you, have concerns as the platform seems so closely tied to this one.
Clearly your concerns are honest and you are trying to think ahead for what's best for Steemit - which certainly isn't agitating Hollywood for example.
I hope we see more on this from the powers that be soon.
Asher
This one is not over yet. Cartoontv announced to stop today, so that is something at least. But we have chainflix and musicbox still. The later I'm pretty ok with, music industry works different then movie industry. Next to that we have all those who will copy this from chainflix. And we also have at least one account uploading copyright porn, but I dont think porn industry is powerful so not really a threat to Steem.
Glad to hear it sounds like progress in the right direction. I'll be looking in for future developments.
Lets see, since although I understood that Steemcleaners is looking into this, I did not see further results. But it'll need some time I suppose since it is a very difficult to manage topic and may require development to solve things, next to alignement and agreement between various parties.
upvote for u
Thanks
good post....bro
Thanks
-Excellent post thanks for sharing
I am a new steemians, maybe i should study first with you, regards know me
https://steemit.com/@movietrailar please follow me
I followed and upvoted.Would you like to follow and upvote me.
Can you stop spamming? All your comments are the same, and there is a begging element in it. Are you even reading the posts? Be respectful to others, then they will be respectful to you.