Book - Securing Digital Rights for Communities | Chapter 20. Open Source Makes IP Valueless

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:11,200
So, open source makes IP valueless is the principle that if you're building everything

2
00:00:11,200 --> 00:00:15,240
open source and other people can then copy that open source work and iterate upon it

3
00:00:15,240 --> 00:00:18,760
to improve upon it in their own way and make multiple different forks and avenues of the

4
00:00:18,760 --> 00:00:22,600
IP, really your IP, you don't have IP value at that point.

5
00:00:22,600 --> 00:00:25,880
There's no intellectual property to fight over.

6
00:00:25,880 --> 00:00:28,680
But what you're really doing is the business model is that you're accumulating the base

7
00:00:28,680 --> 00:00:32,740
layer governance token of the ecosystem and that base layer governance token will increase

8
00:00:32,740 --> 00:00:35,660
over time based on network effect, based on the fact that people are constantly building

9
00:00:35,660 --> 00:00:41,820
on top of your open source software and iterating upon it to make it better for free, all open.

10
00:00:41,820 --> 00:00:46,740
So the whole model of intellectual property changes with these ecosystems because people

11
00:00:46,740 --> 00:00:51,380
are trying to accumulate the base layer governance token and the base layer stable token.

12
00:00:51,380 --> 00:00:57,300
And other people can't protect against their IP anyway because if it's on a censorship

13
00:00:57,300 --> 00:00:58,300
or it's a net...

14
00:00:58,300 --> 00:00:58,660
It's a resistant network.

15
00:00:58,680 --> 00:00:59,680
You can't sue the community.

16
00:00:59,680 --> 00:01:00,680
You can't sue a community.

17
00:01:00,680 --> 00:01:01,680
Maybe the community becomes bigger than the actual brand.

18
00:01:01,680 --> 00:01:02,680
And then there's nothing you can do about it.

19
00:01:02,680 --> 00:01:03,680
So instead of focusing so much on the brand, it's more focusing on the network effect,

20
00:01:03,680 --> 00:01:04,680
the community.

21
00:01:04,680 --> 00:01:05,680
Sure, the brand's still important, obviously, even when it can be, quote, unquote, stolen

22
00:01:05,680 --> 00:01:06,680
from you.

23
00:01:06,680 --> 00:01:07,680
If you're cool, you know how to piggyback off of that and be more community oriented

24
00:01:07,680 --> 00:01:08,680
and realize, well, these people are obviously doing something better.

25
00:01:08,680 --> 00:01:09,680
But yeah.

26
00:01:09,680 --> 00:01:10,680
I think that's it.

27
00:01:10,680 --> 00:01:11,680
Thank you.

28
00:01:11,680 --> 00:01:12,680
Thank you.

29
00:01:12,680 --> 00:01:13,680
Thank you.

30
00:01:13,680 --> 00:01:14,680
Thank you.

31
00:01:14,680 --> 00:01:15,680
Thank you.

32
00:01:15,680 --> 00:01:16,680
Thank you.

33
00:01:16,680 --> 00:01:17,680
Thank you.

34
00:01:17,680 --> 00:01:18,680
Thank you.

35
00:01:18,680 --> 00:01:19,680
Thank you.

36
00:01:19,680 --> 00:01:20,680
Thank you.

37
00:01:20,680 --> 00:01:21,680
Thank you.

38
00:01:21,680 --> 00:01:22,680
Thank you.

39
00:01:22,680 --> 00:01:23,680
Thank you.

40
00:01:23,680 --> 00:01:24,680
Thank you.

41
00:01:24,680 --> 00:01:25,680
Thank you.

42
00:01:25,680 --> 00:01:26,680
Thank you.

43
00:01:26,680 --> 00:01:27,680
Thank you.

44
00:01:27,680 --> 00:01:28,680
Thank you.

45
00:01:28,680 --> 00:01:29,680
Thank you.

46
00:01:29,680 --> 00:01:30,680
But yeah.

47
00:01:30,680 --> 00:01:36,060
And when it comes to tokenizing, open source software does not have to have a business

48
00:01:36,060 --> 00:01:37,060
model.

49
00:01:37,060 --> 00:01:38,540
It shouldn't have a business model.

50
00:01:38,540 --> 00:01:44,580
It's inherently valuable because of censorship resistance of the text layer, the ability

51
00:01:44,580 --> 00:01:51,380
to get parallel economy dollars, and the ability to have zero fees, instant confirmations on

52
00:01:51,380 --> 00:01:55,060
all transactions, is valuable.

53
00:01:55,060 --> 00:01:55,520
So you tokenize.

54
00:01:55,520 --> 00:01:57,520
tokenize that, distribute it right to one person.

55
00:01:57,520 --> 00:01:59,520
As long as it's autonomous.

56
00:01:59,520 --> 00:02:01,520
Yeah, it's coming from an autonomous protocol.

57
00:02:01,520 --> 00:02:05,520
So you're basically tokenizing a distributed database combined with a

58
00:02:05,520 --> 00:02:12,520
transaction layer to provide autonomous rewards for people who run

59
00:02:12,520 --> 00:02:14,520
infrastructure in the network.

60
00:02:14,520 --> 00:02:16,520
And it's a business model to the extent that it's a

61
00:02:16,520 --> 00:02:18,520
collectively owned business.

62
00:02:18,520 --> 00:02:21,520
So as people earn stake in the ecosystem, they earn more of that

63
00:02:21,520 --> 00:02:23,520
business model.

64
00:02:23,520 --> 00:02:25,520
It's owned by any one single individual.

65
00:02:25,520 --> 00:02:27,520
And there isn't any one single individual that has enough influence

66
00:02:27,520 --> 00:02:30,520
to make decisions on other people's behalf.

67
00:02:30,520 --> 00:02:34,520
So it still has to have a business model.

68
00:02:34,520 --> 00:02:37,520
So on Hive, for example, the business model is that you've got to keep

69
00:02:37,520 --> 00:02:40,520
accumulating a little bit of the token to stake a little bit of the

70
00:02:40,520 --> 00:02:43,520
token to keep getting access to free resources on the ecosystem.

71
00:02:43,520 --> 00:02:46,520
And that's either the individual user or the app.

72
00:02:46,520 --> 00:02:49,520
So there is an incentive for money to go into the ecosystem there to

73
00:02:49,520 --> 00:02:51,520
create a sustainable economy.

74
00:02:51,520 --> 00:02:53,520
But it doesn't need to be a business, a centralized business

75
00:02:53,520 --> 00:02:54,520
model.

76
00:02:54,520 --> 00:02:55,520
Yeah.

77
00:02:55,520 --> 00:02:57,520
When you hear business model, you think of like a for-profit

78
00:02:57,520 --> 00:03:01,520
corporation that has to sustain itself, whereas Hive is inherently

79
00:03:01,520 --> 00:03:02,520
useful.

80
00:03:02,520 --> 00:03:05,520
That's the inflation if given in a small amount, which actually is

81
00:03:05,520 --> 00:03:09,520
needed to make it more valuable because you can't put a cap on the

82
00:03:09,520 --> 00:03:11,520
distribution of the vote.

83
00:03:11,520 --> 00:03:16,520
So these things all work together in harmony where it becomes more

84
00:03:16,520 --> 00:03:18,520
valuable the more it's distributed.

85
00:03:18,520 --> 00:03:20,520
It's inherently valuable.

86
00:03:20,520 --> 00:03:23,520
It's like a fucking machine.

87
00:03:23,520 --> 00:03:25,520
It's just a resource.

88
00:03:25,520 --> 00:03:29,520
It's like it's valuable because it exists, because people have been

89
00:03:29,520 --> 00:03:31,520
running it all over the world.

90
00:03:31,520 --> 00:03:33,520
It's a chicken and an egg thing.

91
00:03:33,520 --> 00:03:36,520
It happens at the same time because in order to have a distributed

92
00:03:36,520 --> 00:03:38,520
database, you need the incentive.

93
00:03:38,520 --> 00:03:41,520
In order to have the incentive, you need to distribute a database

94
00:03:41,520 --> 00:03:43,520
because you need the value to be there first.

95
00:03:43,520 --> 00:03:47,520
So really lucky these things actually because when you really gain

96
00:03:47,520 --> 00:03:48,520
theory, it's not easy.

97
00:03:48,520 --> 00:03:51,520
It's fucking not easy to have these things naturally occur.

98
00:03:51,520 --> 00:03:52,520
Whereas, I mean, it's not easy.

99
00:03:52,520 --> 00:03:55,520
Whereas, and we're starting to see the spirit die out more.

100
00:03:55,520 --> 00:03:57,520
We're not seeing more decentralized protocols or anything.

101
00:03:57,520 --> 00:03:59,520
We're seeing more centralized protocols come out because people get

102
00:03:59,520 --> 00:04:04,520
exhausted and it seems like it's jaded by how much shit's out there

103
00:04:04,520 --> 00:04:07,520
and how much harder it is to actually get recognition for what you're

104
00:04:07,520 --> 00:04:09,520
doing.

105
00:04:09,520 --> 00:04:15,520
When you see something like Hive in general where it's just naturally

106
00:04:15,520 --> 00:04:20,520
useful, you see it's being used in places where we didn't have to have

107
00:04:20,520 --> 00:04:21,520
ads.

108
00:04:21,520 --> 00:04:23,520
We didn't have to pay some celebrity.

109
00:04:23,520 --> 00:04:24,520
People are just like, oh, this is cool.

110
00:04:24,520 --> 00:04:26,520
And it just kept growing naturally.

111
00:04:26,520 --> 00:04:28,520
You look for protocols like that.

112
00:04:28,520 --> 00:04:31,520
Then you understand that, hey, this thing has inherent value.

113
00:04:31,520 --> 00:04:36,520
Thus, with its inherent value, with the correct parameters, we can have

114
00:04:36,520 --> 00:04:40,520
a sustainable model where validators are getting paid.

115
00:04:40,520 --> 00:04:46,520
The distribution is there but not too much, not too little.

116
00:04:46,520 --> 00:04:49,520
And these are all things that we kind of got lucky with because I think

117
00:04:49,520 --> 00:04:50,520
that we have a sustainable model.

118
00:04:50,520 --> 00:04:57,520
And these numbers were just kind of there, maybe willy-nilly picked,

119
00:04:57,520 --> 00:05:00,520
and they seem to be working pretty well.

120
00:05:00,520 --> 00:05:01,520
Yeah.

121
00:05:01,520 --> 00:05:10,520
And the other thing here is that the IP, like, because it's all open source

122
00:05:10,520 --> 00:05:14,520
and FOSS and the base layer is owned in a distributed way, the IP, the way

123
00:05:14,520 --> 00:05:16,520
to look at the IP is completely different because what I can do is I can

124
00:05:16,520 --> 00:05:19,520
accumulate the base layer token either by earning it from the community

125
00:05:19,520 --> 00:05:22,520
because I do good things or by buying it on the open market.

126
00:05:22,520 --> 00:05:24,520
So that's my investment.

127
00:05:24,520 --> 00:05:26,520
Now I can go build on top of that investment.

128
00:05:26,520 --> 00:05:30,520
I can go build apps and systems on top of that investment that make the

129
00:05:30,520 --> 00:05:34,520
underlying tokenomics system even more useful than it currently is, thereby

130
00:05:34,520 --> 00:05:37,520
adding value to my investment over time.

131
00:05:37,520 --> 00:05:43,520
What that means is that the way many people now look at these ecosystems is,

132
00:05:43,520 --> 00:05:46,520
well, if I keep building open source as much as possible, then someone else

133
00:05:46,520 --> 00:05:48,520
could come along and take my open source work that I've done as a foundation

134
00:05:48,520 --> 00:05:52,520
and build on top of it to make it even more valuable and do it in their own

135
00:05:52,520 --> 00:05:56,520
way that I could never have envisaged, which inherently in itself is a valuable

136
00:05:56,520 --> 00:05:57,520
thing.

137
00:05:57,520 --> 00:06:00,520
And because you're always required to stake the base layer tokens, it's in

138
00:06:00,520 --> 00:06:03,520
your incentive to keep working for the community to keep buying more of those

139
00:06:03,520 --> 00:06:07,520
either buying or accumulating or earning more of those base layer tokens for

140
00:06:07,520 --> 00:06:09,520
the governance to have influence on the network.

141
00:06:09,520 --> 00:06:10,520
And that's where the real business model is.

142
00:06:10,520 --> 00:06:12,520
That's the real value.

143
00:06:12,520 --> 00:06:15,520
How much of the influence can you accumulate without accumulating so much

144
00:06:15,520 --> 00:06:17,520
you become a risk to the ecosystem, of course.

145
00:06:17,520 --> 00:06:24,520
Yeah, it's a completely different way of looking at IP, and it's a way whereby

146
00:06:24,520 --> 00:06:27,520
you don't really mind if your IP even gets taken.

147
00:06:27,520 --> 00:06:30,520
Because the other thing that's going to happen is communities will decide what

148
00:06:30,520 --> 00:06:31,520
the IP is.

149
00:06:31,520 --> 00:06:35,520
If there's two people competing for the same brand, whichever one is providing

150
00:06:35,520 --> 00:06:38,520
the most value to the community is the one that the community is going to go

151
00:06:38,520 --> 00:06:39,520
and choose to use.

152
00:06:39,520 --> 00:06:42,520
And that's the one that's going to get the brand recognition in the future.

153
00:06:42,520 --> 00:06:46,520
And both of those brands are ultimately going to be competing to be accumulating

154
00:06:46,520 --> 00:06:49,520
the base layer governance influence token.

155
00:06:49,520 --> 00:06:52,520
And that's where they're going to make their money on their payouts if they're

156
00:06:52,520 --> 00:06:53,520
building open source software.

157
00:06:53,520 --> 00:06:56,520
Because, of course, you can't really monetize open source software.

158
00:06:56,520 --> 00:06:58,520
So, yeah.

159
00:06:58,520 --> 00:06:59,520
Yeah.

160
00:06:59,520 --> 00:07:04,520
We're in a situation where people can take brands at will, communities can

161
00:07:04,520 --> 00:07:07,520
commandeer logos and all these things.

162
00:07:07,520 --> 00:07:11,520
There's not much you can do about it like you could back in the day where you

163
00:07:11,520 --> 00:07:14,520
just called Google and they take it down.

164
00:07:14,520 --> 00:07:16,520
So, obviously, you're going to see a lot of change.

165
00:07:16,520 --> 00:07:18,520
You're going to see a lot of trolling.

166
00:07:18,520 --> 00:07:21,520
A lot of people just don't get to do it.

167
00:07:21,520 --> 00:07:23,520
There's movements behind these trollings.

168
00:07:23,520 --> 00:07:28,520
Maybe there's a corporation that doesn't act right and some community just completely

169
00:07:28,520 --> 00:07:34,520
commandeers their logo and brand and gets more followers, more power.

170
00:07:34,520 --> 00:07:38,520
All of this is possible with Web3 and we'll see it more and more in the future.

171
00:07:38,520 --> 00:07:41,520
But it becomes down to network effect, community.

172
00:07:41,520 --> 00:07:45,520
If you look at it right, you can leverage it to your advantage.

173
00:07:45,520 --> 00:07:49,520
One of the key indicators of whether or not it's Web3, after all the things we've gone

174
00:07:49,520 --> 00:07:55,520
through in this book, it comes down to if a community were to steal the IP or the brand

175
00:07:55,520 --> 00:08:01,520
of a recognized brand that's well established and start using it against the interest of

176
00:08:01,520 --> 00:08:07,520
that brand, if that community truly is decentralized and operating on a truly decentralized economy,

177
00:08:07,520 --> 00:08:13,520
governance system, infrastructure model, it can't be shut down and you can't sue a community

178
00:08:13,520 --> 00:08:14,520
because you can't sue a class of community.

179
00:08:14,520 --> 00:08:19,520
You can't sue a class of community members unless you went after the individuals or unless

180
00:08:19,520 --> 00:08:23,520
those individuals did something stupid like register a company or operate under one individual

181
00:08:23,520 --> 00:08:28,520
or have a massive ICO in Premont that can be seized and moved around and influenced

182
00:08:28,520 --> 00:08:29,520
and affected.

183
00:08:29,520 --> 00:08:33,520
If they didn't do any of those things and they actually are decentralized, you'll see

184
00:08:33,520 --> 00:08:40,520
cases coming up in the future where IP is questioned by communities and it's exploited

185
00:08:40,520 --> 00:08:44,520
by communities and then the original brand can't sue that community because you can't

186
00:08:44,520 --> 00:08:46,520
sue a community of people, especially if they're operating all over the world and

187
00:08:46,520 --> 00:08:52,520
suing anonymous identities they've built over time online on genuinely distributed decentralized

188
00:08:52,520 --> 00:08:53,520
protocols.

189
00:08:53,520 --> 00:08:55,520
So that's going to be the key indicator.

190
00:08:55,520 --> 00:08:57,520
Can you sue that community or not?

191
00:08:57,520 --> 00:08:59,520
If you can't, then it's actually decentralized.

192
00:08:59,520 --> 00:09:05,520
It's sort of in a game of if you push too hard, you lose because the more you press,

193
00:09:05,520 --> 00:09:09,520
you say, oh, it's illegal, well, then the more valuable it becomes.

194
00:09:09,520 --> 00:09:13,520
Because fewer people might do it, but the people who do are being recognized and appreciated

195
00:09:13,520 --> 00:09:14,520
more.

196
00:09:14,520 --> 00:09:15,520
It's the same with anything.

197
00:09:15,520 --> 00:09:20,520
If you try to censor too hard, you create a class of people who don't want to be censored.

198
00:09:20,520 --> 00:09:22,520
So yeah, you're going to see that a lot.

199
00:09:22,520 --> 00:09:23,520
Yeah.

200
00:09:23,520 --> 00:09:27,520
The other thing as well is that companies will have to, in my opinion, accept in the

201
00:09:27,520 --> 00:09:32,520
future that their community is kind of a separate entity to the company itself.

202
00:09:32,520 --> 00:09:37,520
So the communities are going to be, they're going to have more autonomy and they're going

203
00:09:37,520 --> 00:09:41,520
to be able to dictate to the companies more of what they want compared to what has happened

204
00:09:41,520 --> 00:09:42,520
in the past.

205
00:09:42,520 --> 00:09:47,520
And the company is going to have to kind of figure out a way to harmoniously grow their

206
00:09:47,520 --> 00:09:52,520
community economies next to them so that they kind of distribute their IP back to the community.

207
00:09:52,520 --> 00:09:59,520
But yeah, not in the most, like you say, if they try and dictate it, they're just going

208
00:09:59,520 --> 00:10:01,520
to create more push away.

209
00:10:01,520 --> 00:10:04,520
So you're going to have to find this balance and communities will grow on the side.