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226 points cloudfudge | 38 comments | | HN request time: 1.232s | source | bottom
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mmooss ◴[] No.41881857[source]
It's a great start. Co-ops and non-profits can also be subverted and taken over. I hope you look ahead and plan very carefully.

For example, according to an (unverified) story someone told me, a vendor to US east coast food cooperatives now controls many of them; they get their person in, pass bylaws empowering them and disempowering the board (the board usually lacking sophistication), and have deeper pockets for any legal struggle than any co-op member does.

Also, I remember in the news that a non-profit or limited-profit company in the IT industry, founded for the public good, is going to be turned into a for-profit. The board actually fired the person behind this plan, but that person came back and fired the board members.

replies(6): >>41882450 #>>41883179 #>>41883240 #>>41883384 #>>41883413 #>>41887617 #
1. __MatrixMan__ ◴[] No.41882450[source]
The FAQ has:

> Is this a crypto thing?

>> No.

I realize that crypto is a bad word for some people, but I think that the above answer has a corollary:

> Does it have a single point of control that will attract corruption if enough of us start using it?

>> Yes

Certainly plenty of poorly designed crypto things also have that point of control, but a well designed crypto thing at least has a shot at resilience.

replies(5): >>41882504 #>>41882792 #>>41883252 #>>41883259 #>>41883338 #
2. fwip ◴[] No.41882504[source]
I think the failure rate for crypto organizations is much higher than the average org.
replies(2): >>41882516 #>>41882653 #
3. sam0x17 ◴[] No.41882516[source]
centralization is easy
replies(1): >>41886194 #
4. __MatrixMan__ ◴[] No.41882653[source]
Certainly, but when the average org becomes corrupted, you just stop buying its project and let it die. This thing endeavors not to sell you a product, but to sell your product. If it's going to get buy-in from artists, I think it's going to need to make significant promises about not making them regret it. I'd love to see it succeed, but building enough social capital to back long term promises like that is a difficult thing.
5. theamk ◴[] No.41882792[source]
Smart contracts only affects on-chain stuff, and this deals with real-world things. No smart contract is going to help you if webmasters update website, or if a board decides to add a rule.

See also: NFT delisting.

replies(2): >>41884106 #>>41884129 #
6. PoignardAzur ◴[] No.41883252[source]
> Does it have a single point of control that will attract corruption if enough of us start using it?

By opposition to crypto, which attracts distributed corruption when enough people use the project?

I'm being glib, but complaining that a project not using crypto makes it inherently unsafe is pretty rich.

replies(1): >>41884002 #
7. zepton ◴[] No.41883259[source]
Musicians want to accept credit card payments (you lose a lot of potential sales if you only take crypto), which requires a central party to handle payment processing.
8. littlestymaar ◴[] No.41883338[source]
> Certainly plenty of poorly designed crypto things also have that point of control,

They all have. They just claim they can work against social dynamics with technology but that's a fool errand.

replies(1): >>41884121 #
9. __MatrixMan__ ◴[] No.41884002[source]
It's not really a complaint about the project itself. I'm actually considering paying the $100 to be a member because I think they're attempting to address an important problem and I want to see how it goes and it would probably be more fun to do so as an owner.

But you've got to admit that its a peculiar rhetorical choice to explain at the landing page that your strategy doesn't involve coupling ownership/control of the platform with the ability to control tokens on a blockchain somewhere, without using the same space to explain what it does do instead.

replies(2): >>41885293 #>>41886175 #
10. __MatrixMan__ ◴[] No.41884106[source]
When I imagine using crypto for this problem, the on-chain portion is a registry of hashes (for the songs) which maps them to addresses which I can send money to and then the contract multiplexes the money out to the appropriate people. So if it's one dude with a guitar and a microphone, 100% goes to him. But if it's a remix of a remix of a remix, then maybe that money gets split 50 ways.

I don't know if I need a website or a board for that. Of course I'm not the one building this, so my imagined design doesn't matter. But the question is: if not that, then what? I'm curious, I'm just gonna sleep on it before I decide that I'm $100 curious.

Edit: I see I can get the zine digitally first before deciding to be an owner. I guess I have some reading to do.

replies(3): >>41885184 #>>41885415 #>>41892379 #
11. __MatrixMan__ ◴[] No.41884121[source]
Several technologies have managed it. The printing press, the vaccine, the nuclear bomb. It's even crazier to not try.
replies(2): >>41885186 #>>41890222 #
12. Self-Perfection ◴[] No.41884129[source]
But it possible to host a website almost on blockchain (see TON Sites as example) and withdraw certain modification permissions once the contract in launched.

It seems to me that it is possible to implement fully decentralized bandcamp-like site.

replies(1): >>41885853 #
13. cyberax ◴[] No.41885184{3}[source]
What would happen if somebody forgets or loses the key?

Reality: there's nothing that blockchain does better than an Excel sheet.

replies(2): >>41885454 #>>41888264 #
14. cyberax ◴[] No.41885186{3}[source]
Wait, what? Are you comparing cryptocrap with vaccines?!?
15. lifeformed ◴[] No.41885293{3}[source]
It does the normal thing instead: using a legal system to define and enforce ownership and control.
replies(1): >>41886260 #
16. hatsix ◴[] No.41885415{3}[source]
That's not how music gets paid out. You have the label, publisher and PRO/CMO. The actual amounts depend on both where the purchaser is at the time of purchase and where the payouts go to.

There's a reason there are so few players, it's complicated once you go international. I would suggest going after the massive corpus of laws, but most are the to protect artists... they just do it in very different ways, and often pre-date the Internet.

17. kalaksi ◴[] No.41885454{4}[source]
Saying something is "reality" doesn't make it so.
replies(1): >>41885912 #
18. josephg ◴[] No.41885853{3}[source]
I’ve yet to see any useful product built on top of crypto. Can you name any?

(Not including things that just make early adopters rich or simply provide services to other crypto related projects).

replies(2): >>41886186 #>>41887413 #
19. cyberax ◴[] No.41885912{5}[source]
Care to name a few industries transformed by the blockchain?

And no, payments for ransomware don't count. Illicit payments for CSAM and drugs also are not an example I'm looking for. And no, international sanctions busting is not a good example either. The same goes for Ponzi schemes.

20. portaouflop ◴[] No.41886175{3}[source]
I for one would stay away 100 feet from any project that remotely alludes to being vaguely interested in crypto/blockchain. So not doing that is a huge green flag for me.

Haven’t yet seen and canola where this crypto distributed network actually had benefits and wasn’t just a giant grift - to be fair I did not look very hard though.

21. portaouflop ◴[] No.41886186{4}[source]
Any day now!
22. portaouflop ◴[] No.41886194{3}[source]
>the reason all crypto companies are scams and corrupt is just because the problem is so hard, not because of inherent flaws in the idea and the incompatibility of lofty goals with reality.

I’m all for decentralisation but blockchain ain’t it.

23. ZoomZoomZoom ◴[] No.41886260{4}[source]
There's no "legal system", there's a huge bunch of local legal systems, most of them slightly broken in various ways.
24. Self-Perfection ◴[] No.41887413{4}[source]
How about auctions for telegram usernames? It helps to distribute limited resource.
replies(1): >>41890639 #
25. __MatrixMan__ ◴[] No.41888264{4}[source]
They create a new address and from it they publish a revocation of the old address. Then they re-register their content and associate it with payment patterns that pay out to the new address. Then they propagate the new address in-person. When fans trust the new address, their client notices the conflict and they're prompted to prune the old one (since the trust-score on the new one is higher).

If the artist-fan-trust-relationship is multi-hop, it may take a little while for the switch to propagate from fan-to-fan rather than from artist-to-fan, but when it does they'd be notified to consider making the same change.

Meanwhile, a timer has been going since the last time the artist collected funds from the account with the lost key. Once it gets suitably high, the pending payments into it are reversed back to the fans, and the pattern is altered to exclude the abandoned address and notify payers that they might be a better pattern to use, prompting them to find and use the new pattern.

It's not the simplest way, but it's the best I can do without having anybody on payroll, which means maximizing the amount received by the artists.

Besides, art is supposed to be transformative, not status-quo preserving. Even though 99% of artists don't have to worry about being censored directly, I think they're more likely to be interested in protecting the 1% who do. That means having both groups using the same payment rails, and they must be rails that don't respect the kind of bullies that freeze accounts based on content.

Finally, you can lean on this web of trust for the distribution of things like concert tickets, making life more difficult for scalpers (and you can identify the scaplers who have infiltrated your fan network, and explicitly distrust them for next time).

replies(1): >>41888938 #
26. cyberax ◴[] No.41888938{5}[source]
> Once it gets suitably high, the pending payments into it are reversed back to the fans

So basically: you're screwed.

> Besides, art is supposed to be transformative, not status-quo preserving.

Blah-blah-blah. I would really love to belong to a collective that puts my music right next to CSAM. Fans would really appreciate it. So now you have to have an enforcement mechanism, like voting. What if somebody hacks enough keys to take over the voting? Have even more privileged members?

That's the thing: the real-world complexity has to deal with all kinds of edge cases. And we have a legal system for that, with several thousand years of legacy in it.

replies(1): >>41890171 #
27. __MatrixMan__ ◴[] No.41890171{6}[source]
What do you mean "next to"? You provide a file, the system gives you a way to pay the people who made it and a way to prove to others that you've done so. If you keep CSAM next to your music, that's on you.
replies(1): >>41890764 #
28. theamk ◴[] No.41890222{3}[source]
It's been 16 years, I think by that time we can be pretty sure cryptocurrency is not going to transform anything other than ransomware payments, law evasion and financial speculation.
replies(1): >>41890583 #
29. __MatrixMan__ ◴[] No.41890583{4}[source]
It took the steam engine 100 years, I think the jury is still out.
replies(1): >>41891776 #
30. theamk ◴[] No.41890639{5}[source]
Telegram usernames are fully centralized - you have to trust Telegram FZ LLC to ensure auction results are respected.

Which means there is no extra trust from blockchain, it's just a gimmick.

replies(1): >>41890958 #
31. cyberax ◴[] No.41890764{7}[source]
So each musician has to keep track of everyone's else tracks? Including key changes? Or is there an organization that manages it?

What if an actor disappears and the timeout makes all the tracks unavailable until they are re-uploaded with a new key?

I can go on indefinitely. There's a reason "smart contracts" are now just another way of saying "scam", and why blockchain is only seriously pushed by scammers and criminals.

replies(1): >>41897205 #
32. Self-Perfection ◴[] No.41890958{6}[source]
Yes, it is true that Telegram can technically ignore who owns an NFT with a username, just like any platform can strip a user of their username.

However:

1. If someone approaches you and wants to buy your username, you can sell it without the need for trust in the buyer or a third party.

2. Consider this scenario: someone writes anonymously in a public channel and then Telegram removes the channel, and bans its username. If the author has an NFT associated with their username, they have a way to prove to the public that the new platform where they continue to post is indeed managed by the same person and not an impostor.

Therefore, there is additional value in using blockchain in this case.

replies(1): >>41891719 #
33. theamk ◴[] No.41891719{7}[source]
Is there?

1. You buy a username. Old owner contacts support and claims their computer was hacked and they didn't want to sell. Will you lose your new username? No matter what the answer is, you will have to trust Telegram LLC to honor that.

2. Or that person can get a website and advertise on channel. Or a Twitter/Mastodon/whatever account. Or if you want obscure tech, they can publish a public key (directly, without blockchain).

You can certainly plug blockchain in many places. Hey, you could hook up blockchain to your light switch and use L2 transactions to turn the light on!

The real question is: given the specific real problem, is blockchain the best solution? So far the answer is usually "no" (unless the question relates to avoiding laws)

replies(1): >>41897105 #
34. theamk ◴[] No.41891776{5}[source]
The steam engine was almost immediately useful. It may not be used for cars or trains, but it was the best solution for pumping water from some mines.

In the more recent comparison, I remeber using the web in early 1990's, when it was less then 5 years old. (Fun fact: the images thing were still new, I remember each image had a "download" link in case yser's browser did not support them). It was already used, and had no analogies, and most importantly, the pages I were used were _not_ related to web or even CS, it was some physics thing.

It's time to accept reality: we've spent dozens of years and billions of dollars, and the most useful application is avoidance of financial controls. There is not going to be anything more.

35. theamk ◴[] No.41892379{3}[source]
That is so blockchain: a solution that does not work and users do not need.

Blockchain only sees hashes, so it has no way of knowing if that hash of a new song that was just uploaded is really a remix. But, if you solve this somehow (and I bet you can't in a way that can't be gamed), people can just distribute remixes outside of blockchain altogether. No blockchain is going to help you collect royalties from youtube stream.

Second, "money distribution for remixes without trusted parties" is not a very common problem. If contract participants want to cheat each other, they can do it easily by lying about number of listeners, they don't need to do something trivially detectable like messing with contract itself.

36. Self-Perfection ◴[] No.41897105{8}[source]
You seem to be arguing that it was possible to implement auctions without blockchain, and that such an implementation would be even better. I provided my example in response to josephg, who did not include "using blockchain is the best way to build such a product" in the list of constraints in his question. Therefore, I have not optimized my example for that.

So I'd rather stop argument here.

replies(1): >>41901461 #
37. __MatrixMan__ ◴[] No.41897205{8}[source]
How to move around the content isn't really a problem I'm trying to address. As far as I can tell it's a solved one, has been since Napster. Different users like to manage their media differently, I'm not going to tell them how to do that.

Same thing for managing user identity. Whether you want to build an organization around that problem or slap together a CLI and let the users fend for themselves, again not something I'm trying to weigh in on.

These are app-level decisions, not a protocol ones. And neither of them really lend themselves to on-chain solutions.

The unsolved problem I see here is that you've got a community of users, all with identical copies of a file, and they want to build consensus on how that file should "cite its sources". In the case of music, that's a bunch of fans wanting to pay the musicians, but it's structurally the same as if you're trying to give feedback to authors of a paper or claim that researcher X found vulnerability Y in code Z: you're building consensus on a directed graph between datasets and actors such that other actors have something to reference when they communicate (or send payments) to each other about those things.

That's the only part of the problem that's likely to come under attack by incumbents, so it's the only part you need a ruleset and computational verification for. Everything else can be handled "the normal way", by appealing to the good behavior of the incumbents.

People (e.g. Sony) are going to try to get paid for music they never played. People are going to take credit for research they didn't do (or did poorly). People are going to try to misrepresent the trustworthiness of things that they built and want to charge you for.

You can't put that on AWS because nothing on AWS is more trustworthy than its least trustworthy admin. You can't leave it to the courts because only the powerful can use the courts to their advantage, for the rest of us they only serve as a system for mutually assured destruction.

Which people get credit for which data is too contentious of a topic to trust to the hands of people who have pinky promised not to use it in their power games. If it weren't, there'd be no reason for Subvert to exist in the first place. I hope they can manage it by just being very careful about how they allocate trust among their owners, but history has given us centuries worth of reasons to be skeptical.

Meanwhile, other data that the powerful would prefer to tamper with remains intact in the various blockchains that protect it. The rules continue to be followed. There are a lot of problems with that space, especially at the interface between the rules-governed parts and the pinky-promise parts, but we've only been chipping away at those problems for decades. They feel a lot more tractable than anything involving the insufficiencies of the law.

38. josephg ◴[] No.41901461{9}[source]
That’s fair. I see “bidding on a username” as fundamentally the same as using bitcoin to buy a pizza. An auction is a bit more complicated, but it’s still just commerce. Bitcoin as over complicated money.

But I didn’t exclude commerce in my post above. Thanks for replying.