Ragtag
This is some background on the Ragtag ecosystem project, now under way, which is a decentralized asset protocol powering a creator's rights engine, currently prototyping using leading edge decentralized web3 technologies such as Polygon, SurrealDB, ThirdWeb, Akash, Lit, and Covalence.
Here's a general Ragtag Ecosystem Overview:
The foundation of the Ragtag ecosystem is the Ragtag Decentralized Asset Protocol Whitepaper:
Within this protocol framework, ownership can best be thought of as a series of actions (verbs) that can be performed on various assets under certain conditions. For example, if you own a painting, unless specifically prevented, by legal convention and expectation you can exhibit it, store it, and sell it, but not to reproduce its image.
No one really owns music anymore, except for the catalogs and big labels, which has caused a degradation of rights and associated equitable compensation across the music industry. Furthermore, with NFTs expressing unique namespace ownership only, and no associated usage rights related to assets across certain mediums (such as do "synchronization" rights with music), Ragtag is thus a framework for expressing ownership and rights, upon which new decentralized incentive and business models can be built.
We are starting with music assets, modeling synchronization and sampling rights, with a whole new approach to sampling rights that includes all of the software and techniques used in production that become embedded in the Ragtag ID.
With generative AI based on LLM models proliferating, which do not facilitate the ability for artists to follow their works as they get reconstituted into new derivative works, there is urgent need to track the provenance of work as well as facilitate a proof of human artistic originality and equitable compensation.
Jem Aswad
Ethan Shanfeld