Sharing Copyrighted Video Material on DTube Could Put Steemit's Future At Risk and Devalue STEEM.. My Thoughts - Having Worked In This Arena For a Decade.
As we have seen, Steem continues to nosedive in value and I suspect this may be related to the continuing uncertainty generated by the lack of a clear anti-piracy policy and/or copyright protection policy here.
There are now full movies being uploaded to DTube and directly profited from via the STEEM blockchain and people appear to think that doing this poses no threat to us as a community - but they are very wrong about that. We only need to look at the history of the torrent sites that are unreachable via the normal internet channels in much of the world, plus the imprisonment of some key figures in that scene, to realise that just because a blockchain is hard to shut down - that does not mean that the websites that are required to access the blockchains are themselves hard to shut down.
Steemit and Steem are a noble experiment in anarcho-capitalism, but the rest of the planet is not joining in that experiment presently and furthermore, the governments that operate the courts are especially not participating in that experiment!
For the moment, the activity on Steemit is too small to draw major attention from the major publishing companies in the entertainment industries, but I can guarantee that if Steemit becomes significantly larger in the next year and people continue to upload copyrighted movies/music to it and profit from it - then significant threats to the system's future will arise. In short, the corporations involved can be typically pretty ruthless and unscrupulous in their dealings with others and they will not go silently into the night!
It is not going to be enough to downvote posts that contain copyrighted movies because the material will still be available on the Blockchain. It is also unlikely to be enough to point to the operators of the File Sharing Networks that DTube uses and to say that these people are the ones that must enforce controls, because they are probably not going to be able to do that and so they are more likely to then just shut their nodes down completely.
There appears to be 2/3 possible options here for Steemit:
- Implement a video/audio fingerprinting system like Youtube has done and renumerate copyright holders for uploads as Youtube does - instead of the uploader getting the payouts.
- Enforce manual removal of obviously copyrighted material (requiring active teams of humans to do so). (Messy).
- Prevent video sharing services like DTube from Using STEEM's Blockchain (goes against the entire idea of STEEM and will be unpopular).
A Clash of Ideologies
Steemit and Steem are deliberately designed to force to the surface, the metaphorical 'pus' that has been building up for decades in our society regarding the control imposed by governments and the will of the people to thrive and be free.
I feel that the lack of commentary on this issue by the main people at Steemit is probably part of the reason why the site is not thriving as many expected it to do. I personally would not be investing large amounts of money into a blockchain that could become a major target of world governments in any moment - especially when there's not even an official statement made on the topic from those who figurehead the network.
What do you think?
This is a complex topic in many ways, but generally the only comments I have seen from people here have been either:
- Yes, it's a big problem.
- Who cares.
Neither of these are inspiring!
What do you say?
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
@ura-soul Very important topic to be discussed. Steemit and Dtube should not turn into copyright quagmires. Self policing is important in order to maintain/increase the value of these platforms.
Coming from Reddit where people upvote stuff merely on feeling and it's hard to get a herd mentality towards policing, especially in a platform that spouts censorship free whenever it can. I agree it's necessary but I also see how hard it will be to accomplish.
I want to upload a ton of old video clips I collected since the late 90s but since I didn't create them I feel disinclined to post them. If I don't will someone else just do it anyways?
I would choose to disallow money for the video if given the option (perhaps it exists?) Of course we are back to the other point where someone else might not be so thoughtful and repost it anyways.
I never thought about this being a possible contributing factor to the decline in the price of the currency.
You do pose a valid point regarding copyrighted material / Dtube and steemit. It's unfortunate that self policing of copyrighted material within the community here may not be enough to push back and prevent it from occurring. I don't have the answer but I sure hope it gets addressed at some point and the outcome is a positive one.
Thanks for your comment. There are many groups and investors always on the lookout for 'the next big thing' to invest into and they would jump at something like steemit, provided there are no significant threats that could result in loss of investment and this is definitely one of the biggest threats.
Agreed! I think it will be quite awhile before steemit becomes a mainstream thing but it's definitely worth investing in right now for those with money to use in speculative investment as the community and currency are both relatively new. Of course one can blog for STEEM rewards too but I'm also putting my own money here.
Hopefully we've got the next big thing right here. Time will tell.
Yes, this is a very critical aspect that needs to be dealt with as soon as possible! Any updates on the subject? I just saw mr and mrs smith on dlive, and also a jackie chan movie! I was shocked!
Personally, I believe that Steem Inc - as they are responsible for the entire enterprise, should do one of the things you mention:
give all the money to the ones that own the copyrighted material, so that they can receive income from it
or have people manually take down stuff that is not legal. Yes, messy - but if we are HUGE, then we've got the capacity to do what governments and judicial aspects want us to do.
Or maybe a combination of both? Those that don't want their stuff on here could for example say they don't want their stuff up, and then Steem inc should be able to "hide" it in the blockchain somehow.....
I learned recently that Steemit actually already removes posts that are subject to DMCA takedown requests - you can see them being added to the code of steemit.com in github in realtime. This ultimately would need to be done for DTube too if they are to conform to prevailing rules in court systems.
I'm glad I'm looking into this, I have several video's mostly my parkour where i use other artists music, on Youtube it's no issue but being a new user here I want to do this right and feel legit about my content, it would be nice to share revenue but for now I'll keep looking more into this.
the chances are that if you credit the artist they will be ok with it (assuming they are indie type artists). often they will agree as long as you are not using it for commercial gain and steemit posts are not commerce.
Wow. yes this is a very important topic. If the industry sees to much of their profit being lost to dtube they will certainly take action. Just look at Kim Dotcom and Megaupload.
I believe you tube etc use something called perceptual image hashing algorithms known as pHash. Which i expect takes up a lot of processing power and/or server space.
So content IDing uploads is probably not possible at this stage. Maybe even impossible due to the torrent like nature of the dtube platform.
So I guess the only way for now would be to limit uploads to 5 - 10 minutes per video. Maybe even 4 mins max. This would stop films and episodes of stuff being uploaded which would limit the amount of copyright material drastically. But this isn't a long term solution.
Apart from that I can't see anyway around it unless there is an army of people vetting every upload.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Voted and resteemed.
Respect
@fortified
You are welcome! Thanks for your Support.
Originally, Youtube used the Gracenote system for Audio Fingerprinting, but I don't know what they use now and Gracenote don't mention video fingerprinting. It is possible to install such a system on Dtube, but the fingerprinting process would have to be somehow inserted in between the end points of the network. I don't know enough about the details to know how easy/difficult that would be.
I had begun to wonder about this when I saw dtube enter the scene.
As I understand steemit is supposed to be all about encouraging and fostering creators of quality, original content.
So on that basic premise there is no place for the posting of copyrighted work from other creators. And thus there should be no moral dilemma about somehow policing that sort of content off the steemit blockchain.
But theory and practice of course are two different things. Your first option would most likely be the best. But with the current rate of dev development, although this might be a (legal) priority, how long would it likely take to be implemented?
Have we got that much time? Some big kind and smiley music or film publisher might just want to give steemit a good kicking when it is down.
And as in all the best playground scraps once one person has starting kicking the guy on the floor the rest will quickly join in.
The software already exists to do what is needed, so the issue is just organising the payment of the licensing for it and then adding it in to the blockchain logic somehow. It would not be a simple task, but also not one that is too difficult to address either. I feel it would need to become a key topic in the community before action were to be taken on it though.
I have heard some people on Steemit saying they don't believe in copyright which I can't really understand. File sharing is one thing but people actively profiting from other peoples work is wrong. When I saw the movies appear on Dtube with the upvotes earning them quite alot in steem it was very unsettling . Mainly because of the upvotes. I agree that it will cause a very bad spot light to be shun on Dtube and it will happen very soon that people will begin to download popular videos only to upload it again and claim rewards. I think that these people who are against copyright will very soon change their tune when they fall victim to it.
I can sympathise with people who reject Copyright completely, but yes, to then go on and profit from the material is hypocritical in many ways. At the very least they could be uploaded with the 0% payout option - but maybe it doesn't matter much anyway, since the rules have been broken either way.
@ura-soul I just spent nearly ten minutes looking for a post that I would enjoy reading and upvoting and even to give a comment. Groupthink is so pervasive that many folks have a problem being able to express original thoughts.
There are about 15-25% real quality and original posts here on Steemit. The rest is the typical sociopaths who like to vomit on others and expect them to be happy about it.
Dtube is already a mess. One of the things that happened on You Tube was that copyright holders liked their materials being shown and they took the initative to be the ones who uploaded along with a user-friendly system which would allow a quick and easy purchase.
I have noticed similar, yes - but at least Steemit (if guided as was intended) will motivate people to increase their ability to generate unique content in order to get rewarded.. If half the world wants to talk to itself about the same subjects over and over again, without letting in anything new - then there's not much we can do about that (except possibly project a giant laser image onto the moon with more interesting content for them to look at .. but i digress) :)
The idea of identifying legitimate copyright owners and pointing payouts to them should be enough to fix the situation in most cases, yes.
A very valid observation @ura-soul.
Thank you for raising a red flag in this regard.
I also feel that it would be a big mistake for the operators of Steem/ Steemit to disregard your words of warning.
There is a forth possibility... which involves an enhancement of a relatively old suggestion that I made about data flowers.
The enhancement concerned would be the introduction of the concept of author payout nodes/ petals within the context of such - where part of the curation process would involve identifying the author of a given copyrighted work - and ensuring them a direct healthy cut of residual monies generated.
What that cut might be I am not clear upon - but its a possibility - the blockchain benefiting authors of such works that might otherwise cause a copyrights claim.
Where this leaves the purveyor of such copyrighted works is open to discussion. That they should not financially benefit from the direct 'sharing' of such content should be pretty clear.
Also - it may seem to be against the spirit of blockchain but one thing that should be considered is to (more or less reversibly) edit content uploaded to blockchain that is deemed copyright infringing such that both sound and visual quality is warped.
Again, the circumstances within which this is done - is open to discussion.
Thank you again for bringing this to light. :c)
You are welcome!
Typically, within the existing entertainment industry, copyrighted material may be actively used without seeking authorisation - but the profits from that material may be held back by the publisher (not spent) in case of a claim being made and there being a need to renumerate the copyright holder later on.
In that same spirit, it would probably be seen as ok if there was no ability added to edit the blockchain, provided an agreed upon process was in place to allow copyright holders a window to stake their claim. The fingerprinting technology that is already in use by Youtube and others appears to be as close to an agreed upon industry standard as we are likely to see.
Someone presented the question; "Is it infringement to share a Taylor Swift video here?" What's the census? What's your advice? Should I discontinue sharing artist links whose music I enjoy on Steemit?
The issue is where the material is hosted and who uploaded it there. If you find a video on Youtube then their systems should have analysed it and handled the copyright situation for you. So you are fine to post youtube video links here (and maybe other video sites too).
If you upload a video to DTube or some other video sites that don't check copyright - then you could find that you have breached copyright rules if you don't own the copyright for the material.
I agree with that 100% and in debate where conversation took place I felt the same would be rendered judgment. With this cleared up it's nice to know that I can share Taylor Swift, get an upvote, and not be in violation. I also felt that D.Tube upload in the way you've stated would be a potential infraction where use of copyrighted song materials without permissions could result in alerts. The conversation addressed the YouTube ContentID API. As a music producer, my iTunes and Spotify are links I want to promote. I use D.Tube to add content that is copyrighted. I have full permissions because I independently own the content. However, none of the videos have asked me for claims to furnish to D.Tube in consideration for royalty earning should any be deemed collectable from D.Tube. The content I have created is lyric videos like this one Love Is Ours https://steemit.com/music/@sutter/d68jm6uj. The song itself if it were placed on YouTube would result in copyrighted material and not allow for monetization without claim to property ownership. The array of processes that take place include that should no claim be made the content's monetization is collected by the distribution corporation as well as ASCAP or BMI. In my case BMI. Whereby, my uploads and upvote monetization are the additional award sought to make the endeavor lucrative as possible. I'm considering UUNIO because the IO offers claim in extended period to earn reward for content. In consideration to infringement you've lightened the load of my fears. I would never want to profit illegal from others music. In consideration to my own music on D.Tube has ContentID application similar to YouTube been on the drafting computer for @DTube? Does my content on DTube fail to reach the search parameters because it contains copyrighted materials? Is there an appropriate way to file ownership or permission claim when uploading content containing my published music content? Your reply is helpful. I do appreciate you taking the time to answer these questions. @ura-soul kind soul!
Yours truly,
@sutter
@iunit your question is answered here.