I recently posted about Intellectual Property (IP) and shared a video from the excellent, James Corbett, in which he interviews Stephan Kinsella - an IP lawyer who is an anti-IP activist! They argue that intellectual property hinders humanity and turns against the principles that originally drove the creation of patents. Now I want to show another side to this which is extremely important, not just for patent - but for our future survival.
Much of our reality starts in imagination and in thinking. Therefore, it is reasonable to think that to solve our problems and improve our world, we need to improve our thinking. Part of this also means improving our communications and relationships too - since we need to share and create experiences as groups, not just as individuals.
Before social networking existed, actually before the internet really existed much, I wrote the dissertation for my degree in Applied Computing on 'equality in the future of the internet'. This wasn't about genders, skin colours or religions - it was about technical complexity and ensuring that the future of the internet (and thus the future of communication, ideas and business) was not restricted to the most geeky and technically knowledgeable. I realised very early on that many of our problems and even wars have stemmed partially from power being centralised and the rest of the people being exploited. I wanted to solve this using the internet.
While I wasn't quite prepared for the level of xenophobia, fear and limiting belief systems that were/are being held collectively - which social media networks have helped to expose as people become more connected - I was prepared for the top-down authoritarian, technocratic power-plays that we have seen over and over again through the actions of Facebook, Twitter, the NSA, the UK's MI5 and the Israeli Hasbara teams etc.
'Information is the new oil' and so it follows that every manipulative creep on Earth has tried to get in on the act - whether it be 'surveillance capitalists' seeking to profit from measuring our every move.. or NFT scammers seeking to track markets, memes and thinking in order to extract every last penny from everyone else - honest people are surrounded on all sides!
Against all of this, it is common for people to buy into the mainstream narrative that IP is a life saver - it keeps creativity flowing and free because .. 'people can pay lawyers exorbitant fees to try to keep control of thoughts'. On the face of it this already sounds ludicrous, but people fear the alternative - a world where other people can steal their creativity and profit from it indefinitely.
This is a legitimate concern - as a creative person, with decades of work in various fields, I know very well how frustrating it can be to put my heart and soul into something, only to find that someone else presents it to the world as if it is their own work - with few people realising that a kind of fraud has taken place. While it is important that ideas flow freely, on the other hand, this creates a new problem. THOSE WHO ARE MOST NOTICED and therefore THOSE WHO CONTROL COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS have most of the power. They are able to gather other people's ideas and then present them to the world, freely - gaining ad clicks and followers hand over fist.
The worst part of this is that they generally don't even understand the ideas they are sharing deeply enough to be able to educate in a helpful way. In many cases they deliberately and knowingly warp the ideas in order to mislead and profit personally in other ways.
So is the only solution to this really just 'pay lawyers'?! NO!
We have decentralised information storage on Hive, for example. It is possible to prove beyond most reasonable doubts, that information posted to Hive was added on a specific time and date via the decentralised timestamping system. Therefore, people COULD use Hive as a way to track the original source for creative ideas.
Imagine an internet where you are scrolling your most habitually addicted dopamine feedback system, such as Facebook, and you see a claim made by an 'internet celebrity' about something important. Instead of sharing to all your friends, driving up this celebrity's online clout, you visit a special part of Hive that lets you search the claim. You then discover that a certain Hive user had said this same thing and proven it years earlier and this 'celebrity' was trying to pass off their work as their own.
At the very least, if this became popular, 'credit theft' of 'idea credit' could be virtually stopped online. This can NEVER happen through centralised social networks such as Facebook, because even if they wanted to do this, there would still be the chance that their centralised networks would be compromised by them for their own benefit. Only decentralised systems can solve this.
So this 'credit' and therefore reputation tracking is one possible world changing feature that Hive can offer - assuming enough people value it and use it. Another is via the use of encryption. Encrypted ideas on Hive would allow people to record that they created an idea, but to keep it hidden unless they needed to publish it. This would allow people to post entire books or other creative works in an encrypted form, get a timestamp and then continue publishing/selling it as normal. If they come up against a case of others trying to publish their work before them (direct theft) then they can refer the world (and possibly lawyers) back to the encrypted and timestamped post that the other person will be unlikely to be able to beat.
These are actually pretty simple features to add to Hive and could entirely revolutionise large parts of our corrupt economic and creative systems on Earth.
I can come up with these at will. Anyone want to fund this and partner with me?
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
Read My User Guide for Hive Here
Powerful insights into the Hive blockchain are available at my website, Hive Alive.
Including the only way to track downvotes on Hive - The Untrending report
Yeah, a timestamped Blockchain is a pretty solid way to verify authorship, especially for independent journalists and authors not tied to newspapers and publishing houses. And with the Blockchain, we can apply shame-based enforcement to egregious plagiarists. That's one of the key uses for a downvote IMHO. And I am a fan of the BIPCOT license.
Although up and downvoting can be relevant to this - especially if Hive gets big and the token value increases significantly - I think the real value to society is the traceability of ideas. This traceability should be more valuable than tokens or even money itself - in that people's standing in society can be based on it.
My point is that people looking to exploit might not really care at all about getting downvotes, even if their account was totally tied to their ID via KYC (Which it probably wouldn't be) - because downvotes might not tip the risk/benefit ratio in favour of them being honest. However, having a system that works extremely efficiently and effectively would at least make it pointless for them to try to cheat in the first place.
I've never seen the BIPCOT license before, but it's pretty fun! :)
While I recognize your frustration, I understand the fundamental principle of value as deriving from people, and not money or material goods and services. This underlies my work, as I strive to accrue goodwill on account with people, whether here on Hive, or in my local community. I see money, particularly, as a mechanism that facilitates fraud. I also see government, and institutions of every kind, from religious organizations to capitalist corporations, as vectors for that fraud.
Therefore my solution is to interact with people directly and rather than seeking money, I seek goodwill. When I have financial expenses I tap that goodwill and let the people that I have a balance with know about my financial need. To date this has enabled me to manage, although I am inventing this mechanism as I go, with attendant errors and mistakes. What is apparent is that the fundamental premise is sound. Rapine thieves cannot steal my goodwill, and when such people try, they very strongly deprecate their own value. People that I have a goodwill balance with are not fooled by false claims, and only people incapable of goodwill make any such attempt, which is readily apparent to good, reasonable people.
Further, I find my social circle greatly improved as a result of this effort, because unreasonable people incapable of goodwill are generally unpleasant to associate with. The community I bless by my work and production is my wealth, and the fundamental reality of this principle is revelatory in ways I had not anticipated. It is because of this principle that I have not used Hive tokens as money, and have no regrets from that practice. Insofar as I myself seek to not use money, I am engaged with better people, and better live myself according to fundamentally sound principles of beneficence I am pleased to better exemplify in every way I manage it. The reverse is also true, that in every circumstance where I am seeking to benefit me I find I am diminished by that in my own eyes.
In reality we are fundamentally a community, and not merely animals devouring living things to survive (even if that consumption is indirect, as facilitated with financial assets), and the more we exemplify that mutual beneficence that a community depends on, the more we are content and at peace.
Thanks!
Edit: recently an elderly woman whom has lost both her children in a short period of time came to my attention as needing some household repairs. I approached folks with the necessary materials I did not have, and when I secured them I performed the work. I did not request, require, nor accept any financial imbursement for the days of difficult labor required.
Her neighbors were grateful to me for that assistance, because they deeply sympathize with her terrible loss, and value her as good people and a neighbor. I didn't only generate goodwill with her, but her entire community, and was fed and given gifts I would have been rude to refuse. Whether or not I ever am 'repaid' for my assistance, I have peace of mind and contentment as valuable compensation, if I am forced to look at the situation from that perspective.
Nothing is more valuable than that.
I don't disagree with you, I lived mostly without money for a few years too - though eventually gave up because it is virtually impossible in England (too tiny and compressed, with not enough people of like mind).
Ultimately, our first language is not words and our first exchange is not money.
Exchange of thoughts and feelings is the primalcy - they create experience and that is what we accrue in life.
My post here is intended to highlight that Hive is about much more than money. The decentralised data storage capacity is an almost unique feature even today and could genuinely be revoulutionary, regardless of the involvement of money.
I am glad you do emphasize that decentralized Hive is definitely more valuable than money. I remain ambivalent regarding IP, but Hive definitely is a sound mechansism, despite some flaws, for accounting it.
An open source mechanism where people can decentralise information is world changing - it just hasn't been fully harnessed yet.
I am not interested much in IP - but I am interested in real creators being identified as it gives the rest of the world a chance to hear from the world's deepest/smartest people, instead of just the repeaters and the stooges.
I also prefer to get the work of authors and creators of IP directly from the source. My understanding of the music industry reveals that folks that continue to produce and perform continue to market their IP. This is less possible to writers and coders, who release products but do not perform them, which limits their reach. Other IP has more or less performative elements. For some IP, the originator may not be available, for whatever reason, and then we must be happy enough with what they have provided us, and those through whom they are provided.
Certainly the blockchain can preserve provenance of IP and enable seeking those sources far better than all too easily censored internet and print sources.
Coders can create businesses and products, then update and refine them over time - that is basically how the biggest software companies got so big. However, there is also the open source movement - which seeks to circumvent this to some extent, but also to just facilitate it through giving people a jump start with ideas for free.
There is a sacred ground, which is the idea field for spiritual vision - in other words - the ideas that shape our minds and thus realities in big ways. This is the most powerful area and also the most corrupted and corruptible. The power struggles on Earth has led to a process whereby those seeking to live outside of loving balance (most people) have come up with an uncounted number of ways to try to take legitimate golden wisdom and 'adjust' it to their own vision. This causes them to have experiences that they do not like - often resulting in them blaming other people too. This lack of integrity would ordinarily just cause problems for the people doing it, however, due to mass publication and info sharing, the distortions can now affect millions of people and the entire planet.
In fact, the 'influencer' phenomena is like a metastatic process, where cancerous errors can travel around the world before other people have even noticed. In some ways I am pointing to the same issues that the self identified 'controllers of THE SCIENCE' did during COVID, which they used to justify heavy censorship and worse. These are real problems, but clearly there has not been much of a consensus on who exactly IS right on the key topics. To anyone with a reasonable mind and open heart, the answer includes full respect for free will - in the absence of any kind of agreed upon certainty, each person must be free to experience the results of their own actions and choices.
So, for me, being able to both demonstrate who exactly it was that got correct information about important topics - first - and also who was wrong.. Once there actually is greater clarity and consensus on what exactly reality IS - is paramount. This is part of why I value the 'proof of credit' or 'proof of creation' aspect that Hive can deliver, so much.
During the early days of blockchain there were several white papers and projects seeking to deliver this, but as with so many such projects they did not seem to achieve much.
I just did some research and found that there are already two projects doing exactly what I am describing here. OriginStamp and Digital Timestamps. One of them uses the Bitcoin blockchain and has already been used in court cases successfully!
Test post from ureka.org
Excellent!
Its like Ecency front end, and get point too?
Yes, it's a copy of ecency that is focused on the Ureka community. The features are mostly the same and you earn rewards for creating content. Posts that go into the Ureka community will be prioritised by the @resonator account for upvotes.