A. Publishers create giftfile certificates. They certify to the giftpool and the public that the work is nonproprietary: a public
good. Authors may be the original publishers, but once a nonproprietary work is published anyone can create a new certificate, personally I hope that Debian and Redhat pickup, compile, and republish my works, but so could that pesky evil Malory.
The giftfile system itself is a tool, one built to fill a huge gap in our community's infrastructure, but it is just a tool. It is up to the community to build systems of trust, mechanisms to reallocate upstream, and ultimately to police itself. Do you really want a centralized authority?
I'm a developer with the giftfile project. We'll try to answer some of
the questions/comments in another post or at the site, but let's take a step back.
The giftfile project is a only humble start, we want to accomplish two
things:
a common format for publishers to express the public's rights, and
a standard donation system to introduce economic feedback from consumers to producers.
Our community needs these things to get to the next level. Everyone
can see these problems. Somehow the community would like to believe
that there is some magic solution or that it is hopeless. Instead we need to pull together and try the simple, obvious solution.
The Simple Economics of Content:
The economics of content creation are in fact fairly simple. The two
critical questions are "Does the support come from the reader, or from
an advertiser, patron, or the creator?" and "Is the support mandatory
or voluntary? The internet adds no new possibilities. Instead, it
simply shifts both answers strongly to the right. --Clay Shirky
What are your answers?
choose: reader, advertiser, patron, or creator.
choose: mandatory or voluntary.
I say that in the best possible world the reader is the patron and the support is voluntary. If you agree, then let's give it a shot. Please consider helping out.
Slashdot Mirror
Q. Does some kind of authority verify authorship?
A. Publishers create giftfile certificates. They certify to the giftpool and the public that the work is nonproprietary: a public good. Authors may be the original publishers, but once a nonproprietary work is published anyone can create a new certificate, personally I hope that Debian and Redhat pickup, compile, and republish my works, but so could that pesky evil Malory.
The giftfile system itself is a tool, one built to fill a huge gap in our community's infrastructure, but it is just a tool. It is up to the community to build systems of trust, mechanisms to reallocate upstream, and ultimately to police itself. Do you really want a centralized authority?
I'm a developer with the giftfile project. We'll try to answer some of the questions/comments in another post or at the site, but let's take a step back. The giftfile project is a only humble start, we want to accomplish two things:
Our community needs these things to get to the next level. Everyone can see these problems. Somehow the community would like to believe that there is some magic solution or that it is hopeless. Instead we need to pull together and try the simple, obvious solution.
The Simple Economics of Content:
What are your answers?
I say that in the best possible world the reader is the patron and the support is voluntary. If you agree, then let's give it a shot. Please consider helping out.