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Archive of past Stacks Foundation grant applications. Historical record of ecosystem development.
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Smartists - Intellectual Property Rights Licenses #74

Closed SmartMirlo closed 2 years ago

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

What is Smartists? Online private studios for self-managed creators to license, make deals and capture 100% of the value they create.

Background What problems do you aim to solve? How does it serve the mission of a user owned internet?

The current internet is broken as we all know it. We, creators do not capture 100% of the value that we create.

Our first research showed that artists who live from their art in the physical world (professional artists) don’t see real business opportunities in the digital world and tend to use it only for promotion. A second surprising answer was their appreciation of Privacy, which they missed to have more meaningful relationships with their audiences.

In the following link, there is an accurate explanation on “How Much Do Music Streaming Services Pay Musicians in 2021” (as published on the music distribution platform DIttO), including a ‘Music Streaming Royalties Calculator.’ You can see for yourself how many views on Youtube or downloads on Spotify to make a living. To build such an audience, an artist needs to master online marketing tools professionally and become a sort of ‘influencer’ more than an artist.

In the “Music Industry Blog,” the article MusicIndustryBlog - Equitable remuneration, artist income and unintended consequences“January 28, 2021 These lines bring some light on the community we are addressing and how a huge majority of artists on Spotify must be yearning for other digital solutions “98% of Spotify’s 43K club earn a more modest $29,046 a year (after label deductions). This isn’t bad when you consider that Spotify is just one part of a much bigger streaming economy. Against that, though, those artists are just 0.76% of all artists globally – this is very nearly as good as it gets to be as an artist. Only 1,007 do better. The remaining 99% earn an average of just $26 a year, and that figure includes not just the around five million artists direct, but also independent artists and even major label artists. Also, just as within the superstar segment, distribution is not linear, but the point is hopeful.”

More data can be found in the ROYALTIES IN THE DIGITAL MUSIC - Report 2020 by OPUS , (Opus is an Ethereum Blockchain-based solution for musicians).

REGULATION PROBLEMS - Copyright Licensing

Intellectual property laws considered compensating artists for their works as a stimulus for creativity. Yet, Artists who have devoted their lives to training, many since childhood, are in shock and even considering giving up. On web 2.0, artworks have become the necessary fuel/raw material for platforms whose business models are based on publicity. What else could explain the terms and conditions platforms like Spotify or Instagram imposes to any musician use their services. Artists had little space for negotiation in the physical world, yet they are just given a chance to agree with the terms or leave the service with digital platforms. Artists agree to be exploited because they haven’t found a better alternative to bring their works to the Internet. Still, many have professional websites and try to control their ‘brand’ and promotions. The Internet has provided them ways to go ‘public,’ but not the means to do business.

A self-explanatory example, what about all those artists who are ready to accept private commissions or collaborate privately and remotely?

PRIVACY is a featured artist also need for their creative work, as an essential framework for on-demand commissions and business collaborations between artists and between artists and clients/customers/publishers/producers/brands/publishers…

Writers like journalists and their publishers may want privacy when distributing certain news, for example.

Project Overview What solution are you providing? Who will it serve?

Smartists provide creators their own private studios on the web 3.0 where they can take control of their work's intellectual property rights and decide how to make them available directly to their audience/clients directly while choosing their own licensing terms.

To make this possible, Smartists will provide every Artist with their own unique “secret key” so they can open their own online private studio (CONNECT), and keep their digital files in their own storage (GAIA). Once in their studios, they will showcase a few samples and projects in progress looking for collaborators. Communications will be agreed as confidential. This is what has already been deployed as MVP: https://smartists.io/

Please see the scope section for more information.

Scope What are the components or technical specs of the project? What will the final deliverable look like? How will you measure success?

Software_Development_Documentation.docx

The requested grant will be used to develop the smart contracts for 2 kinds of commercial licenses: Exclusive for Public Display/Perform (not reproduce, neither copy), and Exclusive for Public Display/Perform and copy

Using Smartists to license an artwork means that the artist will follow these steps:

  1. Accept some general usual terms by Law (attribution)
  2. Decide the rights to be granted with the NFT
  3. Mint the NFT
  4. Set the specifications of the license (time scope, price...).

On the artist's gallery, his/her wallet address will appear next to the information about the artwork for sale, including the rights granted by the license and other specifications. The buyer will get access to the licensed file when paying.

We consider other licenses like licenses for adapting/transforming and a license for on-demand artworks in our future roadmap. As these licenses address artists' problems from different fields, our success would be to have different kinds of artists validate our licenses: musicians, visual artists, writers, and digital editors... We are currently interviewing them on a one-on-one basis, and we hope that these early community of creators to test these contracts when the time comes to drive visibility to Smartists shortly.

Budget and Milestones What grant amount are you seeking? How long will the project take in hours? If more than 20, please break down the project into milestones, with a clear output (e.g., low-fi mockup, MVP with two features) and include the estimated work hours for each milestone.

Total Grant Request: $ 8000

For the past few months, we've been hard at work on our initial MVP after closing our first initial grant request. We also took the time to properly understand the creator landscape and how we can better position Smartists in the arena. Please see the MVP details below. This initial grant of Smartists will add Smart Contracts to our current MVP and will help showcase the true feature of Smartists to creators. This grant will ensure that the Smartists team meets every deliverable for the next quarter and meets its next “fundable” milestone.

Milestone 1 -Research for the best option to attach a license to an NFT We are considering the option of adding the license metadata to the NFT contract, as well as other possible options. Hours: Research (2-3 months) Payout: $2,000 Outcome: a doc with the research, analysis and results ./ sample test clarity contract.

Milestone 2 -Creation of NFT with license Licenses depending on the outcome of milestone 1 (exclusive). Including NFT transfer. Hours: 2-3 months Payout: $3,000 Outcome: A clarity contract for NFt creation with licenses attached.

Milestone 3 - UX -UI for these contracts Including testing and improvements. Hours: 1-2 months Payout: $3,000 Outcome: UI/UX for the contract.

**

Note that the hours here specified are estimated for development, but there is some on-going research that needs to be completed, and this explains the "guesstimated" dates to deliver every milestone.

Our next fundable milestone will take Smartists from a proof-of-concept to a full-blown startup as we will focus on operation, new branding, and marketing. For now, we want to have our full attention on the technical implementation while slowly building our creator community. **

Team Who is building this? What relevant experience do you bring to this project? Are there skills sets you are missing that you are seeking from the community? Please share links to previous work.

Isabel Yague Ballester, Legal Advisor, lawyer experienced in compliance and IT. LinkedIn Harini Rajan, Technical Advisor. Fhil Jhune Fernández, Developer (Stacks Clarity) Friedger Müffke, Technical Advisor. Georgina G.- Mauriño, author, consultant in digital transformation for artists. LinkedIn

Risks What dependencies or obstacles do you anticipate? What contingency plans do you have in place?

Obstacle 1 - Adoption Timeline longer than expected.

—> Contingency plan: investing time and resources in introducing to artists the self-management options on the web 3.0. I have started an informative podcast/ newsletter for artists-authors who want to get ready to embrace the Internet of Value. https://georginamaurino.substack.com/ this is just the beginning, in Spanish, and all episodes get translated and published in English on Sigle.

Obstacle 2 - Platforms 2.0 using Fiat currencies… what if accepting crypto (example: FASO, Saatchi Art, Artsy, Spotify, Ditto, Bandcamp)

—> Contingency plan: communicating the power of crypto with the benefits of P2P -no intermediaries, privacy, and their own licensing terms-. Being an app powered by Stacks and secured by Bitcoin will make Smartists the most reliable option for artists to self-manage all or part of their artworks.

Obstacle 3 - New Artists’ hubs in the real world with an online presence (example: Artists Hive Studios)

—> Contingency plan: Trying to make them allies instead of competent. Smartists could find opportunities for growth in the real world. Such hubs could become allies and become a source of users if we manage to become a reference for them.

Obstacle 4 - Regulations favouring copyrights management by organizations / Copyrights Management Organisations self-defence (example: in Spain SGAE and many others)

—> Contingency plan: bringing awareness about fundamental individual rights of authors. Introducing Smartists in several forums (I will try to get on media if they want me…). Presenting Smartists as a new option designed with self-managed artists in mind instead of a threat to traditional intermediaries (platforms and Management organizations)

Obstacle 5 - Other Blockchain-based solutions for artists - so far, Intelectual Property Registries and Marketplaces specializing in different fields of Art. (Examples: Mycelia, OPUS)

—> Contingency plan: I do not consider them as competitors, but just as services that can bring awareness and introduce blockchain to artists. I feel confident in our solution, because Smartists is an app powered by Stacks and secured by Bitcoin + Smartists brings 2 unique characteristics: Smartists is privacy-focused app, and it is open to any self-managed artists, which makes it the best place to capture the value they create even if they are from different fields.

As an author and illustrator myself, with many years working with musicians, I relate to our users’ problems and I can connect with colleagues and artists-users to define issues and look for solutions. I am leading a series of 1 on 1 interview and getting feedback for our first steps via surveys. In fact, I am trying to get started building a community.

Community and Supporting Materials Do you have previous projects, code commits, or experiences that are relevant to this application? What community feedback or input have you received? How do you plan to share your plan to the community over time and as the final deliverable?

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

These days I am getting relevant comments on the actual need of licenses for NFTs... I can enrich this application with recent articles and more information which proves this is a very interesting field which is just getting started. Stacks technology (ID + Storage + Clarity) can help us build the licensing solutions artists-authors need to take advantage of these NFTs in their own terms.

RaffiSapire commented 3 years ago

Hi @SmartMirlo ,

We talked about this today and wanted to see if you can join an open office hours this week or next and talk about the proposal. In the meantime, a couple questions / clarifications we'd like to hear your thoughts on are: How do you think about Piracy? Better understand the Relationship between having the NFT and having the license of the NFT

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

Thank you, Raffi. I am looking for a quiet moment to answer you properly. There is a lot of information I will need to produce. We are talking about licensing the rights attached to the digital file, as the NFT is just an authenticator-identifier for an art work. I will bring some examples about how this is approached by different NFT marketplaces (Opensea and Terra Virtua on Ethereum) as well as the legal point of view and the artists' point of view as there are already interesting projects in this field. If we could talk next week, it would be better for me.

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

A great article on the topic by founder and CEO of Terra Virtua (pioneer in the licensing field)... He talks about Intellectual Property (IP) and copyrights protection for NFTs as the elephant in the room, and point out the need for NFTs for mainstream adoption, and artists won't embrace NFTs massively unless their IP is protected. https://medium.com/terravirtua/nfts-and-copyright-protections-acf9111325cd

P.S. I don't know if this is the best place to share this. Should I take it to Discord... Stacks Grants Channel or other? This is a very serious topic for professional artists-authors and for the success of NFT's adoption by them, but I don't know if it can interest in the community.

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

My introduction to NFTs and copyrights for self-managed artists. Although it is a very simple text (addressing non technical artists-authors), It includes an explanation of the importance of developing these licenses... other blockchains are working in this, but we can provide a much better user experience thanks to Stacks tech. https://app.sigle.io/mirlo.id.blockstack/RwnjH89VfLWEAJ33PdBPb

friedger commented 3 years ago

From your description, it is not clear why you need a smart contract. The flow describes some kind of certificate as a payment proof/license holding proof.

However, in your last post, you talk about NFTs. Is this a shift? My understanding is that NFTs and certificates only differ in the way how the previously bought license can be transferred: NFTs can be transferred without involvement of the creator, while certificates require the creator to resign the license. Is that the true? Which use case do you want to support?

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

Thank you, Friedger, for your comment. As far as I understand your question, I can clarify that we are not talking about certifying transactions, but about creating an NFT with a copyright license.

Smartists is not an open marketplace. Nevertheless, we want artists to be able to sell privately their art works - identified and authenticated (like NFTs) - to clients who access their private studios. Actually, this was my vision from the beginning.

In NFTs martketplaces, such as OpenSea and Terra Virtua, they are aware of this need for licensing, although they bypass it in their terms of service, where they disclaim any responsibility about Intellectual Property copyrights. These remain on the NFT's creator side (although in their terms creators need to agree to grant the platform a license to use the content for certain purposes...). It would be a great improvement in those NFT's marketplaces, if at the time of tokenizing, Intellectual Property copyrights could be managed by the seller. I think this feature would make such a great difference for an NFTs marketplace!

I don't know if this is clarifying enough. In case you need a more technical answer, Harini may be able to provide a better explanation.

Otherwise, I may need to improve the description in my application... Any suggestion is welcome!

friedger commented 3 years ago

It is still not clear to me. The question is whether smart contracts are needed or. Whether NFTs make sense for IP licenses or not?

The advantage (or disadavantage) of NFTs is that owners can freely transfer or re-sell without any consent from the creator.

Technically, it might be possible to express an IP license e.g. with a signed json token where no blockchain is involved (only for the identity part, not for the IP part). Something like the Verifiable Credentials working group is doing (https://www.w3.org/2017/vc/WG/) or like Blockstack Legends (https://members.friedger.de) where you can take your membership (or license) and proof to other website, users, etc. that you have the appropriate permissions.

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

The fact is that legally the buyer of an NFT cannot do everything he wants with it if the token includes Intellectual Property. Unfortunately, buyers are not usually aware, and this is the dangerous part for NFTs adoption... a self-managed artist may admit to be abused (we are used to that on the Web 2.0), but Disney, Paramount, etc. won't. The NBA defined the use-licenses for their NFTs, for example. Dapper labs (cryptokitties) also created an NFT license (find it here: https://www.nftlicense.org). Below I leave an article that can bring some light. It's all about what buyers can do with their NFTs, how they can use them. Collecting is not a problem, displaying neither (legally, displaying is not considered publishing), but you can get in trouble if you copy, distribute or adapt without the proper license.

https://georgeruiz.medium.com/buyer-beware-nfts-and-intellectual-property-rights-9f45b3812e28

friedger commented 3 years ago

After discussion with Mirlo and Harini, I understand that this proposal is about NFTs that have associated art work and therefore need a license associated to it as well.

We want this! This proposal will bring awareness of IP and licenses to NFT creators and holders.

RaffiSapire commented 3 years ago

Hi @SmartMirlo , please reach out to @marvin on Discord and find time to chat with him, he'd like to help you scope this further.

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

Thank you for the reminder, Raffi. We have a meeting scheduled for tomorrow , also with Harini. We hope to be able to improve our application after talking with him.

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

After our meeting with Marvin we rephrased our proposal of Milestones. We are also very happy and grateful to have Friedger in our team as a Technical advisor to research and find the best option to attach licenses to NFTs.

RaffiSapire commented 3 years ago

Hi there, thanks. We're excited to see this built! Please email raffi@stacks.org and I'll get you set up with a contract.

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

Thank you so much! I am as happy as honored to be able to work in these Licenses for the user owned Internet. Looking forward to your news, Raffi!

RaffiSapire commented 3 years ago

Hi there, I don't see an email from you in my inbox, please send/resend? thanks!

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

Hi Raffi. Did you received my email? Anyway, I just wondered to thank you for the opportunity to bring these copyrights licenses for NFTs to the Stacks ecosystem. As explained in the application, thank to the grants we are progressing towards becoming a full-blown startup, therefore I am starting to use my new email: @.*** I hope this works... (I wonder if there is something wrong with the address I copied from the first message). Thank you very much,

Mirlo "Cultivate your inner garden" Voltaire

Sent from ProtonMail Mobile

On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 20:20, Raffi Sapire @.***> wrote:

Hi there, I don't see an email from you in my inbox, please send/resend? thanks!

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.

stx-grant-bot[bot] commented 3 years ago

M1 has been funded! When you are finished with this milestone, please comment on this issue with !m1_complete

stx-grant-bot[bot] commented 3 years ago

M1 has been funded! When you are finished with this milestone, please comment on this issue with !m1_complete

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

Thank you! Working in M1 ...

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

Everything is going well. We are progressing as expected. Thank you.

stx-grant-bot[bot] commented 3 years ago

M2 has been funded! When you are finished with this milestone, please comment on this issue with !m2_complete

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

M1_complete

jennymith commented 3 years ago

M1_complete

Hi @SmartMirlo, can you share the doc with research, analysis, and results here so that other community members can check it out? Thank you!

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

Hi @jennymith , sorry for the delay. Here is the document: Smartists_M1_Development.pdf

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

Also sharing: https://github.com/FhilF/smartists-smart-contract-dev/releases/tag/M1-v1

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

M2_complete https://github.com/FhilF/smartists-smart-contract-dev/tree/M2-v3

jennymith commented 3 years ago

Hi @SmartMirlo I believe you have to comment !m2_complete (with the exclamation mark at the beginning).

stx-grant-bot[bot] commented 3 years ago

Sorry. Only author can changes status to Complete.

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

!M2_complete

stx-grant-bot[bot] commented 3 years ago

The agreement has not signed yet

ImTheCodeFarmer commented 3 years ago

Hi @SmartMirlo can you please comment that again? Thanks!

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

Hi @jhammond2012 ! What do you want me to comment exactely? M1 and M2 are complete and were already funded. I shared M1 and M2 links to the repositories, apart from research document for M1. M3 is pending from both sides. Do you want me to repeat the 'M2_complete!' or something else? Sorry for my inexperience.

ImTheCodeFarmer commented 3 years ago

Yeah, the m2_complete with ! infront.

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

!m2_complete

stx-grant-bot[bot] commented 3 years ago

Thank you for completing M2. The grant committee will review and confirm completion or send feedback within a week

MarvinJanssen commented 3 years ago

Hi folks, nice work. I'm commenting on the technical implementation on behalf of the grant committee.

Nice approach but there are a few areas where you could do minor optimisations:

And a bigger one:

jennymith commented 3 years ago

Hi @SmartMirlo, in addition to the technical considerations that Marvin has listed above, there are some improvements on the research document that we'd like to request before you move on to M3. At the moment, the current version reads more like a smart contract description than a comprehensive research document. Your research document should resemble a whitepaper that is exploring a specific problem and its possible solutions.

Here are some sections/topics/questions that we suggest you include and address in the revised version:

Once you revise the research document for M1 to include the above points, we can work on getting you approved for M3 :). Thanks for all your work here and let us know if you need any further support, Mirlo!

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

Hi folks, nice work. I'm commenting on the technical implementation on behalf of the grant committee.

Nice approach but there are a few areas where you could do minor optimisations:

  • The map tuple keys only have one member, you can save some execution cost by just using the type inside the tuple. The map keys {artwork-id: uint}, {genuine-id: uint}, and so on, can become just uint.

  • Embedded lets can be simplified to just one let. Variable definitions in a let are evaluated in order which means that the later expressions can use the variables defined earlier.

  • Side-question, get-metadata and get-genuine-license never return an err response but might panic. Is that by design? Is it possible for an NFT with a given genuine-id to exist without metadata and/or license? Is the idea not that they should always have a license? (Otherwise why use a genuine-nft in the first place?)

  • Nested if expressions can be simplified to a series of asserts!, makes it easier to follow the logical flow.

  • Is remapping the error codes necessary? (The identify-nft-transfer-error function.)

  • It is probably worth it to make these NFTs compatible with SIP009 explicitly.

And a bigger one:

For your 'side question' (third one) I agree that on Smartists users will definitely need to attach a license to any "genuine" in order to sell and NFT. Anyway a 'genuine' has a specific and special value as an NFT because the genuine-NFT creator is always the copyrights holder of the underlying art file, and by minting the 'genuine' you agree to the general Terms of the license which are included in the terms of service of the Smartists.

For your last point. We want the Smartists NFTs to be compatible with the standard SIP-009, as far as we can introduce some specific metadata for our 'genuine' that might not be necessary for other NFTs. Fhil has been working closely with Friedger , and they can better answer you here.

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

Hi @SmartMirlo, in addition to the technical considerations that Marvin has listed above, there are some improvements on the research document that we'd like to request before you move on to M3. At the moment, the current version reads more like a smart contract description than a comprehensive research document. Your research document should resemble a whitepaper that is exploring a specific problem and its possible solutions.

Here are some sections/topics/questions that we suggest you include and address in the revised version:

  • Explain how you arrived at the current design of your NFT license.

  • Through your research, what did you learn about digital licenses in general?

  • What work has already been done on NFT licenses?

  • Are NFT licenses even possible?

  • What are the possibilities and limitations of NFT licenses?

  • What are some of the challenges of implementing NFT licenses?

  • If implemented successfully, what are the potential use cases for NFT licenses?

Once you revise the research document for M1 to include the above points, we can work on getting you approved for M3 :). Thanks for all your work here and let us know if you need any further support, Mirlo!

Hi @jennymith !

Thank you for this comment, as your points open the door for me to provide a deeper explanation of NFTs copyrights licensing from a wider perspective, beyond the technological approach.

What we provided here was a document written by our developer, Fhil, from the strictly technical point of view. But, there is a context for this, and a lot of legal research in the background, which was actually our starting point. This is what I, myself, brought to the table during our research and smart contract development, after a few years of reading and learning about Intellectual Property licensing and blockchain, in addition to my personal experience as an author/digital content creator, copyrights holder and licensor.

To answer to each of your points I am very happy to write a paper which will include the previous tech document too. But this -even if I try to keep it simple- might take a few days (no less than a week or 10 days).

If the committee wants this information faster, I am available to answer these and any other questions about copyrights licensing and NFTs in a meeting at your convenience.

I am actually very happy for the opportunity to finally share all this. So, thank you again, Jenny.

RaffiSapire commented 3 years ago

Hi @SmartMirlo please take your time and add this to the research as an output so that the community can also benefit? If we could say share back by next wednesday?

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

Thank you, @RaffiSapire ... I have been working on that today. I think I will be able to share my document this week.

jennymith commented 3 years ago

Agree with Raffi that you should feel free to take your time on adding to the document @SmartMirlo. It sounds like you put a lot of effort into the legal research and we wouldn't want you to dilute any of that for the sake of speed :). Looking forward to your update next Wednesday!

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

Thank you, Jenny and Raffi! After reading your questions I hereby attach a document for the committee to review. I was considering writing a more academic long 'white paper', but I realized to do it properly it could take quite a lot of time, and I think this condensed (5 page) document can be more useful for the community. Anyway, we are available for any further questions from the committee or the community, and we can always extend the document.
Actually, all this information can be better explained bringing examples of real cases which can help understand the legal part in an easier way. For that, a meeting for an AMA might be a good idea. Copyrights for NFTs are a very hot topic right now, and many projects (small and big) are addressing it… It’s like this research is never over. I believe that at this point it might be good for NFTs projects in the ecosystem to have some references and updates. I’ll be looking forward to your feedback.

M1 - Stacks Grants -Research Doc.pdf

SmartMirlo commented 3 years ago

M2 Smart Contract was updated a few days ago. In case you did not see it: https://github.com/FhilF/smartists-smart-contract-dev/releases/tag/M2-v4

will-corcoran commented 2 years ago

Hello and thank you for participating in the Stacks Foundation Grants Program!

We are in the process of migrating from GitHub to the new Grants Dashboard. In order to complete your grant, you will need to submit any remaining Progress Review and/or Final Review requests through the Dashboard in order to receive your remaining payments.

Lastly, please note we are marking this grant 'closed' on GitHub for organizational purposes, but it is still 'open' on the Grants Dashboard.

Thanks and we hope to continue to support your efforts with additional grants!

Best, Will