A Possible Solution to the Problem of Our Shrinking Creative Commons

One thing that has been bothering quite a few members academia, is the well documented shrinking of our public domain of intellectual "property". 

What was once considered sharing and cooperative distribution is now considered to be theft. Of course, most individuals accustomed to modern day life and the nature of the Internet aren't too enthused with the current interpretation of Intellecutal Property. There's an interesting introduction to the idea here which isn't too long.

The Creative Commons movement was spurred out of this displeasure, and has gone to great lengths to encourage benevolent sharing. Wikipedia is one facet of CC, and fine example too. Even without financial compensation for contributors, the information is largely correct, and well cited. There are also numerous musicians and film makers who have also released their creative works into the "wild" of the Creative Commons, and gone on to earn critical acclaim as independent artists. 

However, Creative Commons does have its down falls. Some argue that "lack of rewards for content producers will dissuade artists from publishing their work", and of all the great things the Creative Commons does offer, this is once criticism I can completely understand. Perhaps it is the the key aspect that is holding us within the current legal framework regarding IP rights.

As of now, there is no embedded mechanism that allows for artists to be compensated, and there is no intrinsic reputation management system, and this is perhaps the only real reason we haven't universally adopted a system of creative commons. The money simply isn't there, yet. No one makes money off of sharing content for free, and for now, we're expected to believe that only through the explicit sale, or  more appropriately termed as lease, of explicitly owned intellectual property can our ever important producers and (more often than not) the distributors get their cut.

Now, believe it or not, I think the answer to these concerns of compensation can be tackled holistically and from the ground up. 

If a filter system was incorporated into the publishing and releasing of Creative Commons works,  we could greatly increase the efficiency and incentives for the creative talent, producers, and even distributors of content. 

These concerns were the founding thoughts of a company I frameworked with my long time friend, Nate Lottis. We call it A True Point. 

The concept for this filter is relatively simple: We would allow users to publish all of their content into the Creative Commons as they see fit. We would allow them to apply tags of their choice, so as to index their content and establish terms they would like to earn a reputation from. Each tag would be an interactive node. Think of it as a poll booth, as well as a donation box. Users can all gather to vote on the tag, after searching or viewing it. If its true, or relevant, it can be confirmed as such, which will increase the ranking, reputation, and verity of the content, as well as the user who created the tag itself, in an entirely quantifiable manner. 

If an avid fan or supporter decides she would like to donate a certain cash amount to the artist/producer/tag and content creator, then she could choose to pay when confirming the tag. This not only sends ~100% of the donation to the intended recipient, but will reward the donor with reputation alongside the producer for funding the content. This way, the fans who support their favorite contributors the most have the most opportunities to invest and earn reputation and recognition alongside their benefactors. 

We think that these two simple features could alter the way we think about information, sharing, and rights to compensation. If successful, it might just finally nullify the last valid arguments against universally implementing Creative Commons.

"Crowd funding" the actual indexing of public content, while honoring those who put in the most effort is a great way to go. It would allow individuals to share and interact fluidly by imbedding an explicitly marketable aspect to contributions we make every day online. As a nice side effect, it would also eradicate the need for invasive advertising-as-revenue models and could dramatically de-clutter the web.

Every 'like', hashtag, upvote, and retweet is worth it's weight in gold to market researchers, and advertisers.  It's time we realign our interests with the greater good and allow the people who do the best work at indexing and distributing to earn the most profit from sharing with the people. 

It's common knowledge that buskers often make hundreds of dollars a day. This is because it simply feels good to put your penny where you think it counts. Not only that, but Apple, EMI, and Universal aren't in the violin case waiting for a cut. These artists would stand the most to gain from sharing their content under such a system, but really, it extends to anyone with information that they think they can make relevant. 

A movement along the lines of what I've described could be what it takes to eradicate the notion that information must be "owned" to be beneficial to the creators, and lift us out of IP Feudalism.

Remember: In a sense, it's only illegal to share copyrighted information right now because we're doing the distributors job for free and disrupting an established monopoly. Bringing down monopolistic ventures has always been a formidable task, but if we simply make the monopoly irrelevant, we don't have to put up much of a fight in the first place.

By simply establishing a way for producers and consumers to establish peer-to-peer connects for distributing data, donations, and reputation, we eradicate the need to "own" data and rely on traditional distribution channels. Nate and I firmly believe that reputation as a parallel form of compensation is the key ingredient to A True Point, and indeed the two are literally one and the same.

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