• Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    i for one would have liked a media licensing system that operates agnostic of any centralized authority

    for instance, irrefutable and independently verifiable proof that you own a valid software, music, or visual art license and are therefore immune to prosecution for piracy.

    A registry of licenses like this could shield creators from copyright claims on social media applications such as youtube. Could also automate revenue sharing and royalties for artists whose works are used in derivative media so the people who actually perform the work get paid. Would be nice to cut the publisher middleman out. And there is absolutely no reason there has to be anything like a “proof of work” system burning down entire fucking rainforests’ worth of energy to verify every single gods damned transaction because this sort of system isn’t for trading shit, it’s strictly for proving a valid chain of custody between producers and consumers and you don’t need megawatt-hours to just fucking LOOK SOMETHING UP.

    imagine if, for instance, fucking warner brothers couldn’t “takes backsies” content that they SOLD to end users through a distribution network; the license is yours, and anyone can look up the fact that the license was sold to the user id you happen to control.

    imagine if, for instance, you buy a video game through a digital distributor like steam but then the store goes out of business and no longer exists to serve you a copy or recognize the sale, but on this massively distributed and decentralized database you can prove that you did indeed compensate the developers of that software and thereby legally acquire entitlement to access it in accordance with the end user license agreement.

    imagine if ownership of stuff you bought fair and square can never be taken away from you

    THAT’S what we could have had

    instead of this fucking bullshit.

    • Æsc@lemmy.sdf.org
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      8 months ago

      Well, if those licenses are entries on the blockchain, they could be transferred on the blockchain. You could sell your game used when you’re bored of playing it. You can’t play it after you sell it but someone else can. Publishers hate resale markets though, when people buy used games they don’t make any money. So they’ll probably never go for this.

      • jdeath@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        yeah on top of that, if your computer breaks or something now you lost all of your keys.

        say goodbye to whatever you own on the blockchain when the keys are gone. poof!

        this is the biggest problem with any scheme tying private keys (digital) to anything in the real world.

        • Æsc@lemmy.sdf.org
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          8 months ago

          As people said, you can backup your private keys to a flash drive. You can put them in a safe deposit box. You can give them to your lawyer or other fiduciary with a legal responsibility to act in your best interests (who also knows how to protect digital property if they keep digital copy). You could write it with lemon juice onto the back of the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives. You could have a laser thingie that displays it on a wall surgically implanted into your arm. Pretty much all the ways people protect gold or cash in the real world you can do with a piece of paper with your private key.