StopTheFakes.io: The Doer’s Perspective
Fighting against infringements is a noble cause. Being noble, however, is not much of an incentive when a large number of doers have to be involved in it. Let’s look at various kinds of requests from the consumer’s perspective in an attempt to determine what will motivate them to send reports on the infringements. Please note that the doer’s activity is totally anonymous, and neither requestors nor offenders will be physically able to obtain the informer’s personal data.
What the doer sees upon entering the service’s web interface
The interface will display the following information:
1. Brief instructions and a link to the detailed user guide
2. A video tutorial providing a quick and simple explanation of how the service works
3. The rating of doers displaying the best results across time and the doer’s current ranking spot
4. Available requests
5. Technical support contacts
Our actively developing and widely publicized service aims to generate interest in the project and get potential doers involved in it.
Motivating doers
Material gain is the main incentive for doers to search for infractions, take pictures and send them to the service. From the requestor’s perspective, the amount of compensation is not sky-high. The doer will get $10 to $40, which is a fair amount of money for the common consumer, all the more so because this activity does not require effort and is time-efficient. Below is the full list of incentives:
1. Financial gain
2. Compensation in cryptocurrency
3. Element of competition
4. Gamification of work
5. Personal incentives
6. Noble intentions
Financial gain
Fulfilling one request in the browser takes just a few minutes. Locating and taking pictures of a counterfeit product offline may require more time, but this kind of work is considered easy and exciting. Of course, there will be few professional staff members, i.e. people, for whom StopTheFakes.io is the main source of income, compared to the total number of doers. This service, however, is a great source of extra revenue enabling users to earn money at home or when shopping.
Compensation in cryptocurrency
Today, there is a growing fashion for tokens. Millions of people all over the world are willing to become cryptocurrency owners, but they are reluctant to pay money for them. A possibility to get a few tokens that are freely traded at the stock markets will be a great incentive for them.
Element of competition
Rating systems, rewards for the best doers and a chance to show yourself work perfectly in a wide variety of economic sectors. People strive to show themselves and to find a niche where they would be able to become leaders. The ratings will be compiled in such a way that even fledgling doers may enter them. Accordingly, the largest possible number of doers will work better and will double their efforts to achieve better results.
Gamification of work
Browser and mobile games are another trend of the 21st century. Working with the service will have much in common with playing games, the only exception being the possibility to make real financial gains. Consumers adore competing with each other, reaching higher levels and collecting points. All in all, games bring joy and satisfaction. It makes people happy to be the first to have sent an alert in response to a request.
Personal incentives
Open or secret personal incentives are a major factor behind people’s actions. Their motivation varies; someone may want to get back at a website for having sold them fake, low-quality product, someone else may have moral objections to pirating other people’s content. In most cases, the consumer can in no way influence the seller, but the service will give him an opportunity to let out their negative emotions.
Most importantly, just one alert is sufficient to stop a piracy website or an outlet selling fake goods — one user can put a stop to their activity.
Noble intentions
We deliberately moved the users’ desire to contribute to the fight against offenders to the last position — not because we are misanthropists. We just want to convince the most distrustful readers. Even if doers wishing to restore justice are few, they can still knock the world flat. Once more: one alert about an infringement is sufficient for the right holder to take countermeasures.
Examples of doers’ work with various alerts
The alerts will be generated in such a way that the first incoming alerts are most suitable for a specific doer. As an example, filtering by geographical location will enable the user to see, first of all, the alerts concerning the city or town where he resides. Based on its analysis of big data, the service will find establish certain patterns in order to determine which alert the doer will fulfil better and quicker.
Two main scenarios are possible:
1. The doer selects the request, for which he already has a ready alert.
2. The doer selects the request, on which he has to work.
Ready alert
The doer has seen a website featuring pirated content or knows where fakes are sold. In this case, all he has to do is get familiar with the requirement of the request and generate an alert that would meet them as closely as possible. In case of content posted on the Internet, he will just have to take a few simple steps to accomplish the task. If offline work is involved, it will take the doer slightly more time to do his job.
As our service develops, the number of doers that have ready information in hand will steadily grow.
When to search for infringements
The doer takes on the task that he can accomplish owing to his geographical location or other factors. Of course, tasks involving search for infringements on the Internet will be more popular among doers, but these alerts require extremely quick responses. For example, film studios need to locate all pirated copies of movies during the premier week. The quicker the response the better, and our service guarantees this.
In case of requests implying that information will be gathered in offline mode, it will take users from one to several days to accomplish the task, unless they have located counterfeit sales in advance, of course. Frankly speaking, the law enforcement agencies do not respond quickly enough to such infringements, so the few days that doers will have spent searching for them will not have a significant impact on the process as a whole.
Sufficient motivation
Our service guarantees the most important factor: the complete anonymity of doers providing information on infringements. In this case, the user’s motivations are of no importance, be it financial gain, personal incentives or noble intentions. The main thing is they will have enough incentives to start searching for infringements and to inform right holders about them.
