I think all of this is possible, it's the enforcement that's difficult. Not necessarily saying this should be something that's regulated by a entity, more that it would be challenging to codify and automate these kinds of payment splits that accounted for the ancestry of the source material/contributors.
And then, of course, after a certain point, doesn't an idea enter the public domain?
Well so one of the conversations that stemmed back to Cory Doctorow was this. Imagine if when you sign up for Facebook, your personal data has this Tag or Metadata. Then when it was used, you get paid.
So this is a very different use case, but it's the same abstract idea.
And in this case, not that I'm calling for it, but in these conversations the idea was suggested that perhaps Facebook etc... be forced to adopt this via regulation.
So yeah, that's tricky I think. But the there is something to perhaps a Metadata like a split that can ride with the "work."
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.
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)
