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To: rogermci® who wrote (56)	2/9/2018 4:47:53 PM
From: Glenn Petersen	Respond to of 475

If I had to hazard a guess, it would be that you are looking at DMRC as a blockchain play: New White Paper: Watermarking Technology and Blockchains in the Music Industry Thanks again to the good folks at Digimarc for their support. April 4, 2017 · by Bill Rosenblatt Copyright and Technology I have published a white paper that explores the combination of blockchain technology and digital audio watermarks for improving rights management and royalty processing in the music industry. Watermarking Technology and Blockchains in the Music Industry is available in the Whitepapers/Presentations section. This white paper was supported by the watermarking technology company Digimarc. I’ve been involved in the Open Music Initiative (OMI) and otherwise participating in the dialog around using blockchain technology to improve the reliability, scalability, and security of rights and royalty management processes — which a recent poll suggested are the most promising area for blockchains in music. In particular, the open, lightweight, secure, and distributed properties of blockchains can help succeed where previous projects involving huge monolithic databases have failed. I noticed a couple of things in my travels that led me to the ideas in this white paper. When used for music, blockchains seem destined — for the foreseeable future, anyway — to contain transaction data and metadata only, not the actual content. There are a number of reasons for this, not least of which is the practicality of retrofitting blockchain-based solutions on existing and highly popular music distribution channels. But then links need to exist between the transactions denoted on blockchains and those music files, links that are ideally as secure and trustworthy as blockchain data itself. It struck me that this aspect of blockchain-based solutions for music (and other types of digital content) was not being addressed very much. The question of how data in blockchain nodes can identify music files with sufficient precision and non-ambiguity for rights and royalty management purposes is an important one. Some people have suggested using traditional hash functions, like SHA-1 or MD5. These are excellent at unique identification, and hash values are inextricably “bound” to the content because the content itself is used to calculate them. But they are inadequate: two (or more) files may be identical for rights management purposes, yet even one flipped bit in the content results in different hash values, while conversely, you can’t use whatever identifier schemes you want; there’s only one possible identifier for each unique piece of content. Others have suggested acoustic fingerprints, which are fancy versions of hash values that assign the same value to all files that sound the same (regardless of codec, bit rate, etc.). Those solve the problem of multiple files that should be treated identically for rights and royalty purposes in certain cases. But sometimes they backfire: fingerprints are very good for telling which recordings embody a given composition, but they aren’t as good for identifying which specific recordings they are. For example, I’ve seen cases where fingerprints fail to differentiate between original recordings and remasters. Hash values and fingerprints may be more worthwhile for other types of content, such as digital visual artworks, which are typically limited to single ( or a very small number of) copies of each work. Header metadata, such as ID3 tags in MP3 files? They can support any identifier or metadata scheme desired; for example, they can be used to differentiate among identical sound recordings intended for different distribution channels (subscription streaming, ad-supported streaming, permanent download, tethered download, ringtone, etc.). But they have no security by themselves — they are trivially easy to alter or delete — and often don’t survive transfers or conversions such as transcoding. Header metadata can be made secure by imposing DRM-like encryption schemes on digital music files. While movie studios sometimes use this for sending content to post-production houses, it won’t fly in the music industry, and certainly not for files distributed to consumers. Watermarks — data embedded imperceptibly in digital audio files — turn out to be the best possible ways of linking those files with relevant blockchain transactions. Well-designed watermarks are robust to conversions and transformations (including digital-analog-digital conversion, sampling, downsampling, etc.); they can embody whatever identifiers are needed; they can’t be removed or altered without perceptibly marring the content itself; and they don’t impede or restrict any usages of the files. And like header metadata, multiple files that embody the same content can have different identifiers for different purposes. The white paper explains all this in more detail. It also includes a primer on the world of rights and royalties for music compositions and recordings, to put the industry issues in context. It mentions several of today’s interesting blockchain-related initiatives, such as the OMI, dotBlockchain Music Project, and various startups. The main intent of the white paper is to promote dialog within today’s very active and talented music/blockchain community. Watermarking and blockchains won’t solve every rights and royalties-related problem in the music industry. For example, they won’t fix the classic “garbage in/garbage out” data problem. But as the white paper shows, the combination of the two technologies should have a lot to offer. Thanks again to the good folks at Digimarc for their support. copyrightandtechnology.com

To: rogermci® who wrote (56)	2/9/2018 4:49:24 PM
From: Glenn Petersen	1 Recommendation Recommended By Savant Respond to of 475

Also: South African company to tackle ebook piracy with blockchain technology IT News Africa September 13, 2017 G-J van Rooyen, CEO of Custos. ____________________________________ Custos Media Technologies, a South African company that provides a globally effective solution to piracy by outsourcing the detection of pirated content using Bitcoin and its blockchain, announced on Wednesday 13 September 2017 that the company will be participating in a new blockchain-based anti-piracy solution for ebooks, following the recent news that content protection giant Digimarc and ebook publisher Erudition are joining forces. This new collaboration debuts the combination of Digimarc Barcode for digital documents and Custos’ infringement detection technology. This provides a more effective, reader-friendly way to combat ebook piracy. Erudition and Custos have worked closely together over the past year. The Stellenbosch-based media protection company provides technology that adds Bitcoin deposits to ebooks. These digital bounties enable Custos to rapidly detect piracy after the first copy of a file is shared. Globally, ebook piracy is a major challenge for publishers, and existing content protection solutions often suffer major drawbacks. For example, hard Digital Rights Management (DRM) can inconvenience honest readers by restricting access to their books, or even cause loss of ownership if a platform is discontinued. However, Digimarc Barcode provides a non-intrusive alternative by embedding invisible watermarks in each copy of an ebook. Custos complements this by quickly discovering leaked copies of watermarked ebooks, even while they are still being shared in the dark web that cannot be probed from the outside. The South African tech provider’s patented technology allows for the protection of any type of digital content, and relies on good watermarks for each particular type of media. For ebooks, Digimarc Barcode is the perfect solution. Combining Custos and Digimarc’s offerings gave Erudition an unrivalled edge for their ebook distribution platform. What makes Custos’ approach unique, are the small Bitcoin deposits hidden in each copy of an ebook. As long as an ebook is still within the intended recipient’s control, the deposit remains intact. However, the Bitcoin can be claimed as a bounty from anywhere in the world if the ebook happens to be shared within a piracy network. Once the bounty is claimed, the transaction is visible on the Bitcoin network within seconds, and the publisher is notified that an infringed copy has been found. Since each embedded Bitcoin bounty is unique, the identity of the infringing customer (the initial file sharer) is also revealed. “This scheme improves on existing methods of watermarking files and then crawling various places on the internet to detect those files,” said Bill Rosenblatt, DRM specialist and president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies. “Bounty hunters can find these files in places which those crawlers can’t access, such as password-protected cyberlocker accounts.” Custos’ approach effectively attacks the economy of piracy by targeting uploaders rather than downloaders. This turns pirates against one another and sows seeds of distrust within their communities. As a result, the bounty hunting network is able to penetrate hard-to-reach places like the dark web, peer-to-peer networks, email, and even offline file sharing. Recent tests of the Custos system across different types of media found that it takes an average of just 42 seconds for an individual to claim the Bitcoin bounty concealed in an ebook file once it has been uploaded to social networks. The average detection time for the dark web is less than five minutes. “This is the perfect play of technologies to protect authors and publishers against the worrisome growth in content theft” says G-J van Rooyen, CEO of Custos. “By combining Digimarc’s industry leading watermark with Custos for ebooks, Erudition has created an exceptionally attractive platform for ebook retail.” Devon Weston, Director of Market Development for Digimarc Guardian, concurs. “Together, this suite of products represents the next generation in technical measures against ebook piracy.” Custos provides content protection for video, audio, and documents. Content owners or distributors can visit custostech.com for more information. Edited By: Dean Workman Follow Dean Workman on Twitter Follow ITNewsAfrica.com on Twitter itnewsafrica.com

To: rogermci® who wrote (56)

2/10/2018 6:09:26 AM

From: Glenn Petersen

Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 475

I suspect that DMRC’s recent correction is attributable to the fact that Amazon did not use their technology in their new Amazon Go store, instead employing a combination of overhead cameras and pressure sensors on the shelves. The first stories on the new store were published around January 21, about the time that the stock price fell off the cliff (see below).

DMRC reports on the 21st. I suspect that they will get some blockchain questions on their conference call.

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