RE: The War on Open Science: Scientific Journals and the Research Racket
Thanks for your fantastic comments.
I didn't know that this was related to why Aaron died, and I'd switch places with him in a heartbeat.
There is no way to prove it but his family certainly think that the aggressive way in which he was pursued for a minor crime is a major contributor to his suicide. The fact that he could have effectively ended up in prison for all or most of his life is insane for this kind of "crime".
It is anti-science, anti-art, and anti-human to defend copyright.
I think the main objection is seeing others profiting from your own work but I think it can still benefit you if it is attributed. People will seek out the originator. They aren't stupid.
But isn't obscurity worse than being unpaid?
I agree with you. I would rather people saw my work whatever it was (as long as it was attributed). For me it is flattering if people use my work as long as they don't try to pass it off as their own. That is the insult.
Sure, they are going to try, but i wish them luck in trying to find a way. It's one of my goals to build software that even allows people to help propagate the new blocks without storing the whole chain.
That would be useful as the blockchain gets bigger. I think this is what ethereum is trying to achieve with sharding. It should help with scaling too in the future.
Yes, ethereum developers right in the whitepaper and in early articles discussed methods of allowing 'light nodes' to exist. It's very important, actually. A node can even store recent data, as well as propagate new blocks, without keeping the whole chain, and this boosts the resilience of the network.
In my opinion, in the future, people will look back at copyright and see it how I also see it: a scam. Attribution is the only value in a zero cost to copy system of media distribution.
It also heralds a switch from this broadcast, centralisation of media distribution towards various scales of performance becoming more socially important. It's already happening. Bands are starting to issue their own, often free recordings, as a way to pull more punters into their gigs.
Artists make the most from gigs, and the more they can organise them as well, the better. So the marketing being cheap works in their favour! Make the fans, the marketing department. It's not like they aren't already.
Sooner or later, people are going to realise that we don't need big brother to make our fans pay us. In fact, by doing this, we limit our fanbase.