Yesterday, I stopped by the Longview Public Library in Longview, Washington, (USA) and had a look at what was up for grabs at the book sale. They hold three book sales a year, I believe, and I try to make it to each one---even though I'm poor as HECK and only had about three bucks to spend. Still, I walked out of the building with eight books for $2.75!!! I bought hamburger buns at the grocery store, just before going to the library, and the buns cost $2.79, so I got all 8 of these books (which would have cost me anywhere from $40 to $60 on Amazon) for less than a pack of hamburger buns---although, to be fair, the buns DID have sesame seeds on them!
AND the money collected from the sale goes directly back to the library, which is pretty cool.
(Shift in thought:) One thing that I like about "smart contracts," as envisioned by groups like Dada.nyc or SuperRare, is that selling work on the secondary market (basically any sale AFTER the initial sale) will still benefit the original creator of the work. Right now, when a gallery sells a painting by an artist, the artist gets a cut---and when a record label sells a band's CD or vinyl LP or when an online store sells an mp3, the artist gets a percentage of that sale.
However, once a painting is sold, if the painting goes up in value, and then the person who bought it from the gallery sells it to someone else, the collector who sells the painting makes money, but the artist doesn't get anything from that second sale. The same is true for books, records, CDs, etc. If you sell a book at a garage sale, or a record store sells a used CD, the author or band who made the original gets bupkis!
With smart contracts, made possible by tokenization of an item on the blockchain, a stipulation can be added to the object (whether it's artwork or a movie or a song or whatever) that the original artist get a share of the resale price! That would be like H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Madeline L'Engle, Douglas Adams (I just realized that NONE of the authors whose books I bought are still alive....) would each get a percentage of the $2.75 I just spent. (And that might not seem like much, but even at a penny or a tenth of a penny, when you sell thousands upon thousands of books each year---can you comprehend how many bookstores, second hand shops, garage sales, estate sales, and online transactions there are in a year?---it would definitely add up.)
So I spent a couple bucks on books, got some new titles to review, helped the local library (a teeny, tiny bit,) and thought a bit more about how smart contracts and blockchain tech might help creators in the future...
Not too bad for a Thursday!
---Richard F. Yates
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