By APB+ Media Maven
The efficiency of blockchain technology is once again thrust into the spotlight, as Bitcoin is now losing almost half of its value after hitting record highs last year. With more institutional support from payment and tech giants such as Visa and Twitter, blockchain technology is experiencing increasing adoption in other key sectors than before. For media and entertainment (M&E) corporations, blockchain can be the key to curb content piracy, transforming the way content is delivered — and paid.
Will blockchain technology make a greater impact this year, and how will the development of blockchain technology affect the M&E industry?
Content piracy continues to make waves in the M&E industry
Content piracy has evolved from the days of pirated DVDs and illegal streaming sites to the proliferation of illegal streaming devices (ISDs) around the world. By paying just a few dollars to purchase an ISD, end-users can stream thousands of movies, TV channels and even sporting events. However, ISD’s greatest appeal lies in its ability to aggregate content from various media houses, removing the content silos — and profiting from the streaming war.
According to a recent Akamai research, online piracy remained prevalent in 2021 — and has cost the US economy $29.2 billion in revenue each year. More alarmingly is the warning from James Mason, the CTO of MUSO, an anti-piracy and tech company, cautioning that piracy has grown by 16%, versus the last nine-month period studied in the research.
Indeed, content piracy continues to pose a serious threat to media houses and intellectual properties. For the media and entertainment sector, can blockchain technology be an industry-wide application to curb piracy?
Understanding the business application of blockchain technology
What is the business application of blockchain technology? IBM defined blockchain as a shared, immutable ledger that facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets in a business network.
However, how does blockchain differ from ledger accounts? With a decentralised database, data is tracked, audited and verified by all participants of the network, leading to operational efficiency and efficacy for businesses.
Blockchain technology automates royalty distribution
Applying that technology to the world of media, blockchain can secure the transfer of intellectual properties and ensure transparency in monetising the intellectual properties. For instance, blockchain can automate the transaction process between musician’s copyrighted assets and the end-user, ensuring that the asset is distributed and consumed as stated in its immutable ledger. Therefore, content creators will effectively remove the middleman (and content pirates), whilst securing the copyrighted assets — leading to an increase in revenue.
IBM states that approximately $250 million of royalty money was not distributed to its rightful content creators, due to the inefficiencies in media tracking. However, blockchain technology can help the M&E industry to build a new system with the consistent logging of metadata.
In fact, Spotify, the world’s most popular music streaming platform, has acquired Mediachain, a decentralised interface that houses and tamper-proofed the data of the musicians and their labels. With the added transparency, blockchain can then ensure that the media was legally consumed and allocate funds to the creator accordingly.
Blockchain deters content duplication, keeping content pirates at bay
The current anti-piracy system protects digital content via watermarking and CAP coding, a unique pattern of dots added in the post-production phase. However, the current system does not prevent illegal sharing of copyrighted content.
Hollywood has turned to blockchain to keep the content pirates at bay. In 2018, the producer of the blockbuster film No Postage Necessary distributed the movie via Vevue, a blockchain-based content sharing platform. Its debut was hailed “as the beginning of the end for content piracy” since blockchain could prevent duplication of data and verify payments.
The beginning of the end of content piracy? Not necessarily.
It must be noted that No Postage Necessary was produced by an independent film outfit. To effectively curb piracy via blockchain, it is very necessary — in fact, critical — that the major studios who control the existing content production and distribution systems agree to do so. However, they may not want to lose control of the current system and be dismissive of the idea of decentralisation of content distribution that blockchain offers.
Putting the blockchain trilemma into M&E context
As with every emerging technology, blockchain technology has its pros and cons. The blockchain trilemma states that developers face issues of creating a blockchain that addresses or balances scalability, decentralisation and security. To enhance the security of a network, blockchain nodes will take a longer time to process and deliver the assets, making live content delivery a challenge. As such, blockchain technology remains a fallacy for sporting events.
“It’s a myth that blockchain is inherently secure,” said Scott Carlson, a former director of systems security strategy at PayPal and CISO of blockchain-based financial system Sweetbridge. He is now responsible for spearheading Kudelski Security’s security efforts in the blockchain space, according to the company’s press release.
Expanding upon the company’s security services, the Kudelski Group has launched a blockchain security centre, which provides new offerings and a concrete roadmap to develop foundational technologies that can help integrate security into and around blockchain solutions for enterprises and within public/private sectors.
Carlson continued: “While transactions on a blockchain are protected by proven mathematics, security is quite often forgotten and not necessarily integrated into the associated applications, processes, systems and technology.
“This is where we come in. We help companies operating in the digital finance, communications and IoT space secure their products using tested methodologies and common sense approaches, to deliver better performance and greater trust to the end-user.
“We do not simply look at the code; we work with the entire set of components present within an ecosystem of manufacturers, end-users, enterprises, and code-creators.”
Till that end, how will blockchain technology evolve in the near future to better integrate into and boost the M&E industry?
Blockchain plus collective efforts will put an end to content piracy
Blockchain technology may have its disadvantages, but it is able to curb content piracy and boost the revenues of the content creators, whilst ensuring that the IPs licences are never infringed. Furthermore, the emerging technology has given rise to smart contracts that automatically release royalty payments based on the pre-conditions set, whilst securing the network; thus, propelling the M&E industry to a new high.
While content piracy will always evolve over time, collective efforts between associations, governments and technology providers can curb … and put an end to content piracy.
Question: What will it take to bring the major stakeholders together to embrace the advantages that blockchain offers in the fight against content piracy?
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