Yeah that makes sense. I think the problem is it's easy for anyone to go "out of band" with the data with a clone or copy of it that ends up having no link to the digital source it references. In that case you'd need some kind of monitoring or detection to identify these replicas and tag them in some way -- not actually that different from how something like YouTube identifies copyrighted material today.

I think a system like this has to be opt-in and part of a community's m.o., otherwise it gets too bureaucratic. The big question for me is whether a community like this (or many) could eclipse what exists today.

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Yeah exactly. One way to go out of band is to just shift it to analog and then this Metadata is lost.

This had come up in enough conversations that I thought it warranted a bit more reflection.

I also think about the oppressive nature of copyright. Not in all cases, but in some where the owner ends up exerting way too much influence and power over any use or interpretation of their IP. I could see a highly technical system of royalty management and payment streams reach a tipping point where it becomes a burden to creativity and new ideas.

There's a good read on this called "Copyrights and Copywrongs" that traces the history of copyright law in the US over the past couple centuries, and its relationship with creative output. It's interesting how perspectives on this have changed over time (and depending on where you sit along the royalty chain)