the startup itself can’t remove songs

Audius is trying to avoid SoundCloud’s copyright issues by not hosting the user-uploaded content itself. Its open-source protocol, built on blockchain, means that the responsibility of hosting and making uploaded content available is spread out among people who register as node operators.

Blockchains make piracy more of a headache.

Early in the life of the Audius network, the AudiusDAO will control governance. During this bootstrap-ping phase, the Audius DAO will also have the abilityto intervene in catastrophic circumstances to x criticalissues in the Audius blockchain code, such as issues en-abling fraud or resulting in unintended loss of Audiusor Loud tokens.

There will be two groups created at the timeof main network launch: Audius DAO (DecentralizedAutonomous Organization) and Artist Advisory DAO.

To make governance more accessible to users, voting canbe delegated by anyone to other users or groups of users,such that if a user places no vote on a specic proposal,their designated delegate's vote will be used in place oftheir own.

These user classes are not mutually exclusive. There-fore, if a user has earnings and/or holdings that fall intomultiple classes, their vote can be counted in multipleclasses.

To submit a proposal, a user must bond a set num-ber of Audius tokens (denotedBGP) in the governancesystem, which remain bonded for the duration of theirproposal. Before a proposal's eective date, the origi-nal submitter can also choose to withdraw the proposalif they so choose, returning their bonded tokens. Thisbond is required as an anti-spam measure and to ensurethat proposers to have a sucient stake in the Audiusprotocol to make changes to it. At the proposal's res-olution (successful, failed, or withdrawn), the bond isreturned to proposal submitter.

Pro-posals also include a block count at which point they gointo eect; this eectiveness date must be at least 1 weekin the future at time of proposal submission to give usersample time to review and vote on the proposal.

Participation in governance creates value in Audius,and should be rewarded

copy of theseguidelines will be included in a contract on the network,and updates to these guidelines ow through the Audiusgovernance protocol. A full fee and bond schedule forarbitration will be published closer to the time of theAudius main network launch, and these fees and bondscan be modied in the Audius governance protocol.

We see a number of specic challenges faced by creatorsand listeners today:1. There is little to no transparency around the originsof creator payouts (e.g. number of plays, location,original gross payment before fees)2. Incomplete rights ownership data often preventscontent creators from getting paid; instead, earn-ings accumulate in digital service providers (DSPs)and rights societies3. There are layers of middlemen and signicant timedelay involved in payments to creators4. Publishing rights are complicated and opaque, withno incentives for the industry to make rights datapublic and accurate5. Remixes, covers, and other derivative content arelargely censored due to rights management issues6. Licensing issues prevent DSPs and content from be-ing accessible worldwide