This is what I have in mind:

1. We have a network of content servers (Peertube, Funkwhale, MediaGoblin instances...). Those servers are hosting and replicating the content (music, videos, whatever), making it available on the internet, *for free* (this is important)
2. Creators publish their content on those servers
3. Creators define needs/goals in a standardized way. Those are also made available publicly

19/

(3. Could be based on ActivityPub, but let's focus on the bigger picture here)

Sample needs could be:

- Receiving 500€ a week for my work on X
- Get help to organize a concert in town Y
- Get user feedback about my new project Z so I can fix the last issues
- Receive 1500€ to finance my next video project

20/

Now, imagine content servers get a little smarter.

Typically, your Funkwhale instance could use your listening history to suggest you a few creators you like that also happen to need help.

Hell, you could even define a monthly budget on Liberapay, connect it to your PeerTube instance, and let PeerTube dispatch your donations based on your views to creators that need it the most!

This is not a new idea: Flattr does that. But it's centralized.

21/

As a creator, you could share various channels to get your financial contributions: a Liberapay account, a Ğ1 or Bitcoin address, an IBAN, a PayPal account, a Patreon or Tipeee page, a Flattr address...

No need to force your audience to use a specific channel.

Most of this could be semi or fully automatized.

22/

Most of those channels are also pretty good in terms of transaction fees. Basically, you get more than 95% of the money that pours in.

23/

Is it better to receive tips than getting payed when the content is accessed? Yes.

Because now, you can get contributions at anytime. If someones listen to some music you published two years ago, they can support you the same.

Sure, you may get less tips, but it's a choice between a few cents every 1000s access, or almost 100% of all the tips you receive.

24/

Also, because everything you release is publicly accessible, nothing stands between you and your audience.

People can access your content the way they are the most comfortable with, and give back to you straight

Having all at the same place provides a way better user experience.

25/

Finally, and it's probably the most important thing to me, money is not required to access culture anymore (which is quite antisocial, when you think about it).

All the burden of managing DRM systems, access control, complex royalties scheme, all the piracy guilt and shame, all of the projects that died by lack of audience and could have work, all of this become irrelevant.

Because we chose to trust each other.

26/

From a technical standpoint, there are still things to figure to make this possible.

Especially, we need a way to reliably link creators to their content. If we figure that, the rest should be easier.

I can't see any other blocking points right now.

As a user, would you use this?

As a creator, would you accept to give free access to your content if you get a bigger audience and a proper infrastructure to receive donations in exchange?

27/27

That's it folks, thank you for reading, and sorry for the spam.

@eliotberriot Really great analysis and perspectives for retributing content.

I've thought of anther approach that could complement it, the model that BountySource is based on : https://github.com/bountysource/core/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions.

This is kind of a mirror to LiberaPay : the creator sets a goal for content creation, it works on it and/or publishes it when the target is reached.

It's a bit like crowdfunding without surrounding extras and revenues being a part of the platform's.

@eliotberriot Thank you, this is an excellent thread!

I'm following the development of Funkwhale as a publisher and writer, and I could see a similar system to stream/distribute audiobooks and ebooks to be pretty easy to develop. Alas, I'm in no way a developer myself, so I hope someone else could find it important to develop it.

In that context, the question of how to collect payments is very important, and the model you just outlined sounds...

@eliotberriot ... very interesting. I could see a case where we as a cooperative publisher run our own federated server to distribute our own books — and collect payments to our writers and other creative workers.

Thus at least I'm willing to explore this idea both as a writer and publisher, and as a reader (”consumer”).

Also, the licencing for translations, filmations etc. is important, but this in no way limits it, as something like CC-BY-ND-NC...

@eliotberriot ... could be the licence for distributing books to end users and some commercial licences could be used for derivative works and other (siloed) distribution networks.

@eliotberriot As a user I would use this.

@eliotberriot some great stuff in your thread. A lot to unpack. Here a couple critiques though.

1: It doesn’t have to be just high non transparent subscription or pay per view/download. You could mix a low monthly subscription with micro charges to cover overhead and provide access to a large amount of “quality” content while incentivizing breakout content.

@rbenjamin Thank you for the feedback!

The whole point of this thread is to explore something that is not payment-wall or subscription based (at least not subscription *required*).

While reducing the prices and tweaking the parameters would improve the situation, for me, it's not dealing with the fundamental flaw of hiding the content, making less vulnerable to taking down, censorhip, centralization...

@eliotberriot another approach if you are against platform level paywalls would be to slightly paywall an entire content ecosystem, tie creation and consumption to a blockchain and automatically distribute monthly proceeds pro rata to creators.

This would allow free and open consumption within the confines of that space but build in attribution and financial incentives.

@eliotberriot

2: Free, decentralized, and donation based doesn’t actually make building audience for indie/unknown any easier. On the contrary it favors existing brands that have the power to drive eyeballs and support.

@rbenjamin I partially agree with your point 2. It does not substitute to actual communication/audience building.

However, it makes the job easier, and enables other to communicate for you (curators, fans can share directly your work, which could be a big help)

We can reasonably say that it's easier to build an audience if the audience knows up front what you are doing.

@eliotberriot yeah curation/discovery is actually where a lot of the power accrues - Google built their empire on it - which is why is why it’s one of the areas creators must collectively own.

@eliotberriot

3: Creating quality content requires a lot of upfront resources, time, and planning which is very hard to do under a donation based system. Not predictable enough. Which is why most of the best content emanates from closed well financed distribution channels.

@rbenjamin Indeed, it needs a lot of ressources. But the amount of creators that can have proper deals to get stable income, it's quite low isn't it?

I tend to disagree with the second part of your toot: a lot of creators are producing quality content without stable income. In fact, I believe most of the popular creators start like that and obtain stable income *after* they gain popularity, which is a bit crazy when you think about it.

@eliotberriot you mean on YouTube - only if they produce the kind of ad driven content that they incentivize- and a lot the other popular content is repackaged branded content (gaming, comics).

It’s getting harder and harder for original new content to find audiences even when given away.

@rbenjamin I regularly watch quality video content that is financed using donations systems (Tipeee is especially popular in France, it's like Patreon).

Basically, creators give a link to their donation page, and remind people they need support there. And it works.

@eliotberriot please send a link - would love to see what people are creating.

@rbenjamin This is tipeee : https://www.tipeee.com/
Most of this is in french however)

I personally enjoy:

- https://www.tipeee.com/jihem-doe
- https://www.tipeee.com/danycaligula

@eliotberriot

4: Using donation based system to fund the creator/team and not just the content could mitigate this but would need a strong quality and accountability mechanism to maintain the integrity of that kind of system.

@rbenjamin It may not be obvious in my thread, but in the model I'm discribing, there is no correlation between donations and content, people are effectively donating to a team/creator, based on goals defined by those teams.

@eliotberriot so in advance kind of like Patreon but free of the platform?

@rbenjamin Yes, I imagine something similar. Cretors define goals (basically, I need this to produce my content in a sustainable way).

But instead of being locked down on a specific platform, it's forwarded on the whole Fediverse (thus, we get decentralisation), along with channels to contribute (A patreon page, a Bitcoin address, whatever).

Like that, you get something that is decentralized (no single payment processor or platform).

@eliotberriot

5: It seems like it might be too much to solve all problems at once i.e. free access to everything for everyone (even those offline) VS building value for Independent creators so they can subsist and thrive from the effort they put into their creations.

@rbenjamin the thing with 5. is you can't have real and effective decentralization if you have to manage access control based on payment for content.

Because if it's decentralized, you can't enforce the fact that the content should not be shared.

@eliotberriot

6: a lot of people view centralization as inherently bad. But it is also inherently more efficiently. Especially when it comes to competing for attention on the open market.

Why not just have the creators and audience own some of that centralization. That way together they can complete against the Disney’s, Googles, and Marvels of the world but also have a transparent and equitable system for distribution.

#platformcoop

@rbenjamin @eliotberriot There's already resonate.is doing centralized music hosting and streaming.

Of course it doesn't do all that eliotberriot outlined here (eg. no offline downloads, no tip jars), but it has a balanced system of capped pay-per-streaming and fairer distribution of income.

Thus it's no use in reinventing the wheel, and it could be a better idea to make a different system to complement it (not compete it out).

@Stoori @eliotberriot I believe they are stream to own no? If so at least that might addresses some offline use.

@rbenjamin @eliotberriot I don't know, at least downloading is not highlighted. But I haven't hit 9 listenings for any song yet, so I don't have my own experience of the download possibilities.

At least there is no way to buy a song right away without streaming it 9 times.

@rbenjamin @Stoori also, this contribution-based model is working to some extent in the free software world, and I don't understand why it could not work in the music or video industry.

@eliotberriot @rbenjamin @Stoori I'm about to set up a web store where the customers name their own price (including free). How is your idea different from this?

@Steve @Stoori @eliotberriot what will you be selling?

@rbenjamin @eliotberriot @Stoori Translated books.

I have a half-formed idea about how the network you describe could define itself and support itself (in part) through open licenses that expressly allow for commercial reuse of content, above and beyond being free (gratis).

@Steve @eliotberriot @rbenjamin I may be interested in this kind of system — but not only for translated books, but also for original works.

Anyway, as I said earlier, I'm not a developer in any sense, so at the moment I'm more like just watching and waiting what other people come up with and every now and then throw my thinkpiece at it. :)

@Steve @Stoori @rbenjamin In what I describe, there is no price. You get anything for free.

But you are suggested contributions on a regular basis based on:

1. What content you consume
2. What creators needs

@eliotberriot @rbenjamin @Stoori This pretty much sounds like Liberapay, or public radio here in the US, in that the content is distributed for free and people pay whatever feels right. The new aspect appears to be that consumers are funding specific goals. So, basically, it's many-to-many crowdfunding. Right?

@Steve @Stoori @rbenjamin

Many-to-many crowdfunding, I like that name!

Liberapay is a platform. But we lack some standard/protocol to connect the dots between the creator, the user and the payment platforms (e.g. Liberapay)

If we want to make this a real alternative, it should be as easy as possible for everyone. We cannot rely on too much manual steps for contributing/receiving/etc.

@Steve @Stoori @rbenjamin thus we need some kind of language for machines, and servers to make the contributions on behalf on the users.

It can be based on the content the consume (You listen to X and Y, your budget is split equally between those too), on things you want to support (I want to support 10 small artists in the Metal/Folk genre, your budget is split amongts creators matching this critaeria that need help reacing their goals)

@eliotberriot @rbenjamin @Stoori I like this idea, though I can't contribute anything at a technical level. I can see, however, that it would have to be very flexible. It would have to include all manner of media, genres, languages, currencies, and so on. It would almost amount to a trade network.

@Steve @Stoori @rbenjamin not necessarily if the network focuses on being a way for creators to express their needs and for users to forward their contributions to the proper place.

The network itself does not have to handle the transactions. Individual apps can integrate directly with various API/Payment providers for that, delagating this work to external services that will do it much better.

@Steve @rbenjamin @eliotberriot Federation could work very well for this purpose. Every publisher/outlet could have their own instance to propagate their own publications.

This could also neatly solve the question of curation (only edited content, or allow self-published content too): every instance could have their own curation rules (or none), and they could promote other instances with similar curation practices.

@eliotberriot @Stoori some argument to whether it’s sustainable but also maybe a different type of person enjoys contributing to a collective software project (tool building) to one who produces content in hopes of gaining audience and some day paying the bills with their endeavor.

A lot of FOSS folks also seem to have day jobs in the same vocation as their volunteer work content creators generally do not.

@rbenjamin for me, centralization is bad when it result in centralization of power, money and risks. Which is usually the case when a company is trusted to manage a huge library and can decide who's in and who's out.

In the schema I describe, creators could set up their own PeerTube/Funkwhale instance, or join existing collectives. Everything works, because there is no correlation between ocntent distribution and monetization.

@eliotberriot yeah the centralization of power can be mitigated by Cooperative ownership.

But I agree there is something to decentralized distribution now available through WebTorret type delivery.