Is Facebook a Timestamp for Original Content as an Asset?
(Not Only) Medium and the Missing… Annals of Breaking Facebook Through Commons Creative Law.
One persistent thought in recent weeks has been: I seriously dislike Facebook for a number of reasons, yet here I am, still using.
My conclusion is that… antiquated, distractifying scroll feed, hacking, fake news, and troll army issues aside, Facebook is extremely fragile. The company takes and shares content, sucking in eyeballs for hours, without paying money to the creatives–– those who post original content, belonging to them as per Commons Creative Law (CCL).*
Any Facebook post, whether on one’s public page, a group message, or managed marketing output, is marked by a timestamp. According to Socialinsider, it is a blockchain verifiable marker of original content being generated, disseminated, used, and transformed.
What does this mean in practical terms? If you are the author of a new song hummed in the shower, meme created, catchphrase invented, story written, movie envisioned, art (pro)created––it has been timestamped through the process of posting.**
Take one small example: an original image that is turned into thousands of memes shared by millions of Facebook users, featuring a “distracted boyfriend.” It goes through countless generations of use, some connected with monetized content.
If the piece of original content, whether meme or song***, is copied, referenced, or reused in ways related to revenue generation, this can be verified through blockchain-enabled deep learning/pattern recognition software, and identified as original or not. In cases of an important (culturally, politically, or by pure eyeball) piece having been appropriated, plagiarized, stolen, transformed or otherwise used, it is tracked and a real-time fluctuating value assigned to this use.
This monetization channel is far outside the current sell personal data paradigm that is intrusive of, and non-rewarding to, original content producers.
Ownership of content and remuneration requires a better designed, more curated system that emphasizes rewarding writers, artists, comedians, bloggers, vloggers, meme creators, and others who create original content. It also rewards the creators of physical items such as artworks that are shared.
How will this emerging system of providing significant revenue to original content creators be organized? It will be undertaken through a new platform (such as my proposed Fabric) in tandem with an emerging administrative body such as EQITII, a foundation that gives original content owners the ability to exchange and control the way their data is used and monetized.
Buzz words for this leap toward fair payment for those who own the IP associated with original content include blockchain-enabled marketplace, data rights as a capital asset, deep learning technologies, and secure and compensated global data exchange.
*In this respect my arguement is also valid for Medium, mitigated to a degree by the Medium Partner Program. Note that commons creative law (CCL)is an idea I just coined, the nearest antecedent being the nonprofit Creative Commons, which has quite a different purpose and aim.
**See Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
***There is a whole hierarchy of uses at work. Off the top of my head: original photo, original meme with different phrases incorporated, transformed meme, and most popular memes that arise.
Ghostwriter by day, Damon Arvid is a musician, composer, traveler, and cloud novel author by night. On the music front, he is currently arranging (and burying) the Fabric albums Summon These Days, Slowly Learning, Station to Station, Sunnyside, Namida, and Chasing Sun — WIP is Great Pacific Garbage Patch film soundtrack. All new tunes ledgered, graded, and verified as too legit to quit.
What follows is a key to the Damon Arvid ecosystem (Medium is designed to pull you out of one writer’s work and onto the next). Each hyperlink under Medium series takes you to a representative example from the series. The series-specific Contents drills down to navigate articles or episodes within a specific series. Think of what follows as a blog site key, organized within Medium through the hyperlinks below.
Medium series:
- Arisugawa Park (late-stage cloud novel)
- Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP — film synopsis)
- Fabric, the Platform
- Fabric, the Music Project
- EVEN (Environmental and Engineering Neutrality Pact — early-stage cloud novel)
- What I Learned on the Internet (WILOTI)
- Medium and the Missing…. (little rants against the machine)
The Weebly blog endurancewriter has been discontinued for the mome, but is still, still perusable. A new site with exclusive content is in the works.
Medium and the Missing…
(1) Author’s Header
(2) Rating System
(3) PC.IF.P
(4) Driver’s Manual
(5) Is Facebook a Timestamp for Original Content as an Asset?
*I was planning to reference and link some of these articles, but like ether they have dissipated into the far reaches of browser history.
**We are all this reader, at times.
Copyright © Damon Arvid 2018
Medium is simply a ledgered host for the material, my last month’s earnings were .02 cents — ultimately this material will be exported to a platform that values original content in a curated and rationally compensated way.
