In followup of my post (here) on @chainflix and the newly discovered @cartoontv accounts recently created on Steemit, uploading copyright movies and cartoons to DTube and publishing these uploads to Steemit, I like to inform you what I've seen and done and the reactions I got in the last 24 hours.

Note: In essence the uploads itself is not involving the Steem blockchain and Steemit User Interface directly, therefore it can be argued Steem and Steemit is not involved at all. The fact that DTube is very tightly integrated with the Steem blockchain and therefore also Steemit User Interface, makes it a grey area IMHO.

The following topics are presented and discussed remainder of the post.

• What Happened After My Post Yesterday
• My Opinion on Publishing Copyright Material
• Am I the Stupid One?
• The GRAND Questions
• What Do You Think?

What Happened After My Post Yesterday

Yesterday my post on topic of the potential harm to Steem and Steemit by uploading Hollywood Blockbuster to DTube and publishing these in form of posts to the Steem blockchain, got some traction. It resulted in some Steemians starting flagging the movie uploads at the chainflix account, including the support of some high power and high REP Steemians. My post got a lot of support from Steemians believing uploading copyright material, especially those from Hollywood, should not be done.

Since the flagging rounds of the chainflix posts yesterday, I've noticed the initial whale voting for all the content, upped his votes by increasing his vote percentage, bringing the posts back to visibility - and give it some rewards I suppose. I also noticed that at least one of our respected whales who generally help in a good way to try and keep Steemit clean of all sort of abuse, is also upvoting the chainflix posts, probably to counter the downvotes, but the exact reason is not know to me. Other Steemians are also upvoting the content, not a single post but 10 to even more in a row. That suggest they are countering the downvotes that is also continuing. I'm not saying the countering of the downvotes is a bad thing, since when downvotes are casted for wrong reasons, it is actually a good thing. In addition I know from another Steemian his effort to contact Steemit INC CEO @ned last Saturday, and subsequently they had some communication, but no further results from Steemit INC side other than the request to present more information and evidence (as far as I understood the feedback correctly). Yesterday, I also DM-ed @ned, so far without any feedback.

I also chatted with the owner/creator of DTube. His argument is; we provide a general service and can help boost the popularity of Steem enabled services, like Steemit. We cannot enforce people to not upload copyright material. I do respect the fact it is probably extremely difficult to prevent copyright material to be uploaded using technology. Of course some content verification could be done with the original content, maybe in an automated way, but then the to-be-uploaded-content needs to be verified somehow with a DB with all the original content. In the music industry these systems are used at events to auto recognise what music is played to allow to compensate those artists. In the Netherlands this is done with (some) success at the bigger music events and festivals. The event/festival promoters are required to pay up to 5% of their ticket revenues to the authorities, who will then distribute this to those artists who's productions are played and are registered with the authorities.

My Opinion on Publishing Copyright Material

My take is that Hollywood is powerful and fierce, and therefore we shall be careful not to get into war with them, since that may result in discontinuation of Steem and Steemit... I say "may", since nothing is guaranteed. In the past some distributed/de-centralised networks were taken down, by authorities, but for sure not all. Also, a lot of copyright material is flowing through the internet and in essence it is not a problem for anybody, since either the content owner is ok with it, or the content owner is not going after it. For instance the music industry abandoned copyright protection already years ago and essentially not caring anymore about what happens with music online, more or less. In the Netherlands we pay taxes on empty CDs and DVDs to pay the artists, since downloading copyright content (music/movies) was allowed under the Dutch law until recently.

However, the movie industry is different, and especially the production powerhouses in Hollywood. They are trying to fight piracy more and more, and also more and more with successes.

Many of us are including copyright material in our posts, I know, I do too. I use images from Internet and not always check if they have copyright or not; But I do provide links to the image at the bottom of my posts. I use emoticons in a subset of my comments, those emoticons I take from the internet without checking if copyrights are stuck to it. Most of them have no copyright, since once I checked a bunch of them and could conclude that for those I checked. But some may have. I also posted links to music on YouTube and Soundcloud. Since I mostly shared music in the electronic dance segment, I feel 100% ok sharing such music since most of the artists in that industry segment create and sell their productions to stay visible in the market and provide promoters the right tools to continue booking them. In addition when promoting music to others may result in (some of) the others to actually purchase the music from an online service, or maybe even a CD or some other physical carrier for which deals are in place how the content creator and/or artists are compensated. Therefore, I'm of the opinion that sharing the music I share is pure extra and free marketing for the original creator and/or owner of the content. I must admit, I don't use the 'no-payout' option, so I get rewards on these posts. But since the rewards are so minimal, my argument is that the rewards I get is for the work I put in to creating the posts to provide the extra free marketing to the original creator and/or owner of the content.

Am I the Stupid One?

Last week(end) I was trying to mobilise countering the uploading, but more importantly the publishing of the Hollywood owned copyright material because I thought this may be harmful for the future of Steem blockchain and Steemit User Interface (and other user interfaces connected to the Steem blockchain), basically harmful for the future of the total eco-system that we are trying to build here.

Today, I do not question my opinion and/or changed my opinion, but I start to question the fact - since not so many powerful Steemians seem to be against what chainflix and cartoontv are doing - why I should not take my DVD collection, rip them and start posting to DTube or other decentralised video platforms and publish them on the Steem blockchain? When the majority of powerful Steemians is ok with such practise and Steemit Inc seem to be ok with it as well since they keep quite, why should I spend up to 4 hours creating posts that gets limited rewards, and not turn to spending just 10 to 15 minutes of my time to share a movie with you that for sure will get more rewards then I get on my other posts?

The GRAND Questions

The question is this: Is uploading and publishing copyright material a bad thing? The law in many countries says yes. But the law is the law and one can argue the law is not good.

The next question is: Is publishing copyright materials on the Steem blockchain a bad thing?

What Do You Think?

I'm very much looking forward to your views. I like to know from you if this post may also give you a different perspective on publishing copyright materials knowing the facts I shared with you on what happened last 24 hours. We can be saints, but in a pool of non-saints, why try to be the saint?

What is your take on all of this?

Do you think we should just wait and see what will happen? If and when the authorities wake up and start doing something? And in the mean time ignore the law, assuming the law can change, or even assuming the movie industry will stop fighting whatever they are fighting until now? Are we ready to try and change the law?

Would you consider to start uploading content with copyright material and share this with the community to get to some easy rewards? When so, what type of content would you upload?

What are your thoughts about how artists and content owners shall be protected from their work to be treated as open source, the artist and/or content owner is not getting revenues, resulting in the fact the artists / content owners are not able to pay their bills to live? Essentially the question, how shall artists earn their money with digital content, content that is very easy to copy/paste whether there is a deal with parties or not.

NJOY

follow me @edje