Hi Luke, not sure we've really crossed paths before now but your informative post appeared on my feed and read the comments section and found this comment you made
The content on the chain is completely open and public. I wouldn't at all consider it the intellectual property of the author since any website can access it and use it however they want (including using it to gain money through ads, etc). Posting on chain is at your own risk, knowing it's all completely public and immutable.
Now that's definitely an interesting perspective and not something I'd considered before. My understanding when I first joined steem was that having content published on a Blockchain would be able to act as a copyright timestamp and in a way, protect content creator's work but is this not the case?
I embed Spotify links to my music which I publish here via steempress so this revelation is sounding massive alarm bells now
Sure, you can certainly use it as a reliable time-stamping mechanism, even as a form of notary (example). I think that’s separate from thinking you can somehow control how the blockchain content is used. It’s completely public. How would you prevent someone from accessing it?