RE: TTR - Duplicitous Duplicator Dithers Deceitfully
In my view, this is a serious threat to the value of the Steem cryptocurrency and could cause a price crash.
First, the underlying value of this blockchain is currently content of the articles. There may be other sources of asset valuation being contemplated for the future (e.g., advertising, selling user/story data, developing software tools that require Steem for payment), but until such supplements are realized, content is king. Now, if someone is stealing the intellectual property (IP) of others and posting that copied material here, it will significantly undercut Steem value. The IP owners could file a lawsuit seeking all sorts of nasty remedies, including: monetary damages and an injunction to shut the Steemit interface down.
Second, potential investors would run as far away from this as possible. Current holders of the crytocurrency would see the writing on the wall and engage in panic selling. The value of Steem on the cryptocurrencies would plummet. This would be no different than a sales frenzy and crash on a Wall Street stock, or a run on a bank.
If you currently hold a significant amount of Steem in your account, you really should take something like this very seriously.
I might have a few recommendations:
Modify the user agreement to prohibit IP theft and plagiarism, and specifying sanctions to include complete forfeiture of all accounts and banning from the site.
Form a group of high-reputation users to police these infractions and use downvoting to reduce the violator's reputation to zero.
Empower admins to delete all copied material. To compensate for the loss of content, and not risk harming the value of the blockchain, divert the violator's funds to an "IP police" account, which could be used to compensate members spending time to expose the illegal activity. I believe this would preserve the value of the blockchain, because it's no different from a corporation hiring accountants and auditors to verify that the financial documents (balance sheet, transactions, etc.) meet generally accepted accounting practices.
If that "content" is plagiarized, not only does it not create value for the Steem community, it exposes the owners to litigation risk. Why would you think that you could steal the intellectual property of others and then try to sell it here like some sleazy pawn shop? What puts you above the law?
I see you got its attention, he's rather sensitive to anything that derails his income.
I appreciate your comments, they bring more depth to the conversation than this copy-paster ever did.
If anything, it only shows that Steemit itself is easily gamed, which unless it changes will ensure its lifetime will be spectacular and brief.
Hopefully there will be a fork to address the issues you raised, or parasites will bring the entire platform down.
And this one can't even see that - that's how blinded by greed he is.
I assume that you meant.
"First, the underlying value of this blockchain is currently THE content of the articles."
Please walk me through how you pay to access the content of these articles.
No, because that's not the issue. When you steal the intellectual property of others and post it here, you force the Steem community into the position of "receiving stolen property." We have every right to out you as a thief, a criminal, and a fraud, and reject your "work" as violating community standards.
You're like the guy who finds a house that is vacant because the owner is vacationing in Europe, and then breaks into the house, changes the locks, and rents the property out to an innocent third party. The third party pays you two months rent and a security deposit. Later, the owner returns and demands that the third-party tenant pay him damages for trespass. The fact that he paid rent to you is irrelevant, because you never had the right to demand payment from anyone.
Property rights are like a quiver of arrows, where each defines what you can legally do with that property: convey to others, rent it out, make capital improvements on it, offer it as security for a mortgage. Since you do not own the articles posted at the web site www.zerohedge.com, your quiver is empty. You have no rights in that intellectual property, at all. When you received part of the Steem blockchain for posting the stolen articles here, you're like the fraudulent lessor in the example above. At any time, the real owner of the articles can sue the owners of Steemit and demand compensation, and we will have no defense if we say that we already paid you for them.
Any member of the community has standing to challenge you on this, because every time you post plagiarized material here, you reduce the value of the blockchain. A blockchain supported by worthless, stolen content is worth far less than a blockchain supported by original content. The former is weighed down by litigation risk and market risk (when people flee the currency). The latter isn't. Your actions are similar to diluting the value of a stock through fraud. And our right to complain is much like a shareholder's lawsuit.
You're not answering the question:
What you say would only make some sense if you assume that Steem value come from the blockchain itself making money by suing people for reusing the content on the blockchain outsite of steemit.com.
What if someone display the content of the posts from Steem blockchain on it's own front-end and make money from adding advertisement? and doesn't even say anything about it being taken from the Steem blockchain.
I think it is acceptable to do and it happen to also be completely unstoppable.
No, because your question has no material bearing on any of the issues involved here. It's nonsense. Whether or not I pay for "access" to intellectual property does not solely determine the underlying value of that property. Value doesn't come from mere "access"; it comes from the rights to modify it, trade it, distribute it, make copies of it for others. I have an app that displays news from the BBC, for which I pay nothing. Yet, copyright law is very clear. I do not have the right to copy BBC articles and distribute them to others.
I've seen posts on this social media site that state that the value of the blockchain is created from the content on this site. But if that content was stolen, plagiarized, and/or violated copyright law, it has no value. If everyone using Steemit did the same thing that you do (copy the works of others), the market would view Steem as a fraud. Steem holders would rush to sell their shares of Steem, causing the price to plummet. And exchanges would halt trading of Steem for other cryptocurrencies and/or cash.
The manner in which you have plagiarized on this site is a violation of copyright law. You are not the creator of the work, so you do not have the right to make and distribute copies of that work. Copyright infringement is a crime and a civil tort in many jurisdictions.
Regarding your question about adding a front-end with advertising, if the content was stolen from another site without permission of the creator of the original work, that would also run afoul of the copyright law. Wrapping the content with layers of abstraction (e.g., computer interfaces) does nothing to change the underlying legal problems. I imagine that a judge would laugh at your attempt at "intellectual property laundering."
In any event, I'll leave it to @ned and @steemcleaners to determine whether open and flagrant plagiarism should be punished. So far, everything I've read on this platform suggests that it should be.
What give value to this blockchain is that the outcome of the sort order of it's content is done in a decentralized way by it's token holders.
The content on this blockchain is free to be reused and lots of effort are being put to promote reuse of the steem blockchain on other front-ends.
I think what you should have problem with is miss-appropriation of production claims.
I do not claim that I wrote this content, I merely share it.
BTW Steemit.com like every other user content hosting website on the internet have procedures in place to deal with DMCA takedowns.
Wrong again. A cryptocurrency blockchain has value to the extent that a stable market exists for the purchase/sale of the currency and for its use as a medium of exchange. Its value is also dependent upon the rate of growth of the number of tokens. Add too many tokens at once, and it becomes worthless. Your position that a GUI feature (providing sort order) creates value in a currency is naive and uninformed.
Whether or nor people are promoting reuse of content is irrelevant to the issue whether some of that content has been stolen. There are laws and treaties in place making the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material illegal. Stolen property has no value, except on an underground, black market hiding from law enforcement. No rational person in the Steem community wants to see the platform become a black market.
The DCMA is not the sole authority. If you are a US citizen, you are also subject to copyright law. If you are not, you are subject to the laws of your country as well as applicable treaties. And the procedure that you quote is not the only remedy available. Thieves and criminals are not in a position to dictate to others how and under what circumstances they are to be disciplined/prosecuted.
If you are so sure of the legality of your position, and the merits of your business arguments on valuation, you should show yourself. Tell us your name and the country in which you live. As things stand, you hide behind an anonymous account stealing the intellectual property of others. Even worse, the name of your account is a fraudulent deception attempting to confuse Steemit users. Steemit governance promotes the authentication of accounts and their association with known persons.
So before you post one more thing on this, you really need to divulge your identity.
Including @patrice on these posts regarding flagrant plagiarization and copyright infringement of articles from www.zerohedge.com.