Royalties and Copyright: How DAOs Will Facilitate These in Web3So the reality of the NFT marketplace right now is that there is no way to technically enforce royalty payments for artists since it's up to the platform to decide to honor that or not. (Search the phrase online and you'll see that it's the talk of the industry right now - this includes the original artist for those monkey jpegs too, btw - she was left out of the equity deal and basically got nothing.) There might be a way to close this loophole at some point but for now, it's something both artists and collectors need to be mindful of if they really care about the ideals of Web3.
The blockchain can be a double-edged sword in this way - on one hand, everyone has more autonomy and freedom to do what they want, but it's probably unwise to assume everyone will be doing things in good faith. Some platforms are already advertising them ripping artists off as a 'discount". And there's nothing stopping them from undercutting other platforms who actually are honoring the royalties in good faith.
If mp3 pirating apps and other Web2 content sites are any indication, we know that the tech industry as a whole tends to be more sympathetic to the one doing the undercutting than the ones honoring the deals...because "disruption" or something. There's an inherent distrust of collective action as a whole in the ethos of Silicon Valley right now, though that's another issue altogether. Either way, a lot of the money made in Web2 were done on the backs of artists and creatives basically doing things for free. That is how the business model works, at the end of the day.
But this is also the reason why we have fake-news, false advertising, dystopian narratives everywhere, and why many techies don't get the status/prestige they think they deserve despite making so much money, working long hours, and screaming a lot on social media. There's 0 chance that you'll leave a positive legacy if you're constantly screwing over the folks who're writing the songs, after all.
The "Web3" movement is more fragile than a lot of people think, since once you start looking into the details you realize how easily this whole thing could just become another iteration of Web2 with crypto-buzzwords thrown on top. Bitcoin is already there, Ethereum also on its way (we'll see if the merge will help them act together), Dogecoin wants to do the right thing but doesn't know how. Aside from the good doggie Doge (🐕🥰), the recession taking these projects down a peg or two wouldn't be a bad thing, imo - it'll open up avenues for more serious projects in the altcoin category to emerge. (I do like Tezos in this regard, which I covered a few times here too.)
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When I was in the Bay Area a few years ago, I still remember a few of my friends taking "gigs" where the job was to follow some rich family around and create albums/pictures of them - for their "legacy". Beyond cringey 😬 and usually a mask for the deeper personal issues that was lurking underneath. Not to mention Silicon Valley's obsession with the Singularity, anti-aging products, and artificial-intelligence that is an implicit confession that because they will definitely not be remembered after one generation, everything must be done in order to keep their influence artificially alive. That's the sort of ethos that we're living in right now - and also why I felt like I had to leave that place, just in order to maintain my sanity. (That latter part is TBD but can't imagine how worse it'd be if I was still there, honestly.)
But it's the sort of race-to-the-bottom, screw-the-creator-at-all-costs types of "content" that are perfect candidates for ending up on the trash-pile of history - which will probably include most Web2 platforms and its affiliated leaders right now. If people wanted boredom, hopelessness and gaslighting, all they have to do is go to the status quo - Web3 was supposed to be arbiter to bring something different, not more of the same. Most of the smart ones in the large, powerful institutions saw the writing on the wall and left years ago - the ones still hanging on are probably the first to go when the recession hits and people's priorities start to change.
So what can be done? Well, the good news is that DAOs and blockchains allow us to organize and track things objectively, artists can collectively judge whether or not a platform is doing things in accordance to their interests and needs. In a few years, I think I can see these DAOs - neither a private company nor a traditional union - influencing the market by making recommendations to both artists and collectors out there about which platforms to use...and if the platforms want to actually survive long-term, they have to comply.
This is one very practical application of a DAO (which functions similar to industry associations, trade-unions, performance rights organizations, or standard-settings orgs like ICANN or W3C) and there are many more to come - though it will require the artist to take a more active role in defending their self-interests more than they have in recent history. I know that there's a lot of artists out there who have abandoned all hope at this point - but the time to give up isn't now. Some of history's biggest achievements were done through DAO-like orgs and the idea of it becoming a thing in the near future should be a good thing, over all.
The blockchain is there for us to organize ourselves, hold people and parties accountable, and most importantly GET ARTISTS PAID. That's the thing that will solve the world's "fake news" problem, and the overall malaise and hopelessness that we're experiencing now as a whole. Real art doesn't just parrot an agenda - it tells the truth, after all. The work is just beginning now, if anything.
typed.art
