Will Blockchain Return Control of Content to Creators?

[Nowarezman]

Very interesting article in the NYTimes. Below is a link to the whole article - but I'm also fair-use quoting below the parts relevant to my thread title. The "currency" part of crypto is just one medium that blockchain technology can manage. Any digital content can be made unique, and verified as belonging to only certain owners, and bought, sold, archived, and above all protected from copying, via blockchain technology. Digital content can be locked to owners, and if it's somehow copied "offline" it can't be reintroduced into the blockchain. So ripped/bootleg/illegal copied stuff reverts to a physical medium which can't compete with digital by any stretch.

 

Anyhoo - here's the link which covers all sorts of stuff beyond the concern of the thread:

 

LINK

 

and the fair use quotes.....

 

.....The internet is, famously, good at making information nearly free. But for precisely that reason, it is terrible at making information expensive, which it sometimes needs to be. What the internet is missing, in particular, are ways to verify identity, ownership and authenticity â the exact things that make it possible for creators to get paid for their work.

 

....Spotify created a service in which artists could eke out payment from works that were otherwise just being pirated. The actual creators who make the internet worth visiting are forced to accept the exploitative, ever-changing terms of digital middlemen...

 

...This is the problem that the technology behind crypto solves, at least in theory: If the original internet let you easily copy information, the next internet will let you easily trade ownership of digital goods. Crypto lets you make digital goods scarce, which increases their value; it lets you prove ownership, which allows you to buy and sell them; and it makes digital identities verifiable, as that"s merely information you own. Together, they unlock the potential for a true economy for digital goods, where creators actually get rewarded for what they make.

 

Maybe....who knows? All of us creatives in the driver's seat?? I like to dream....

 

nat

[Anderton]

This is something I've been talking about in workshops and seminars for well over a year and a half. I think you might find this video interesting, it was a keynote address I gave to the Pro Audio and Radio summit last April. The section of blockchain starts about 11 minutes into it. The part where Taylor Swift starts a Swiftcoin currency, so she can sell tickets directly to fans, is a good example of how the technology could work.

 

Of course, people will always figure out a way to copy something if it's digital. But, think of it this way: If I have a signed copy of a book with a personal message from the author, with verified ownership, that's worth a lot more than just a copy of the book.

 

 

[video:youtube]

[Nowarezman]

Thx for the link, Craig. Great video - it's whetted my appetite to check out the newer options for collaboration, etc.

 

I follow blockchain developments as well as I can - I think if there's one thing the internet has taught us, it's that online anonymity is fine in small doses but poisonous when deployed at massive scales. Blockchain provides the ultimate transparency - which will also be fantastic in small doses and specialized applications but perhaps abusable if massively deployed in certain ways.

 

All things that happen in the blockchain are instantly known at all nodes of the chain. Geez, some tyrant would just love to have every citizen's location tracked in a blockchain. I predict we'll hear about the potential abuses as well as the terrific potential benefits of blockchain. It is going to change the world, again. And the bad guys will try to get there first, as usual.

 

nat

[Anderton]

In my last seminar I said it was similar to the internet - it seemed like a really great idea at the time, and it still is. But no one foresaw how social media was going to rip society apart, how the lack of security in the initial design would open the door to hackers, or how Amazon was going to spell the end of mom and pop shops...among other issues.

[Chip McDonald]

Any digital content can be made unique, and verified as belonging to only certain owners, and bought, sold, archived, and above all protected from copying, via blockchain technology.

 

For singular transactions. For multiple people buying *their own copy* of a digital item, it becomes harder.

 

Someone needs to incorporate steganography into the process, so that rights management to a *copy* can be sold. This would allow online concerts to be a thing that has sole unique value to the "concert goers", which would allow for very large, tiered promotion to occur ala Pay Per View, but with ownership rights.

 

An artist, like the Rolling Stones, could announce a series of performances over a week, and sell them in limited quantities. Without needing multiple venues, they could offer different performances in different locations that would be unique, owned by the ticket purchasers. But there would have to be a way of tracing copied video, and blockchain won't help with that.

 

Blockchain only kicks in when there is a "social stimulation push", there has to be a large number of people involved. People want it to be "build it and they will come" when it's "build it and they might come, if they think it's a big deal for some reason".

 

Unique signed video steganography would change everything for artists if someone would bother to do it.