I am calling it now: that blockchain royalty system on NFTs? It is only a matter of time before Hollywood makes NFTs interact with DRM. Your movie purchase will be an NFT with hardware-backed chain verification.
They could, but why would they? Right now, they can lock content behind a subscription, remove listed content, edit and re-release content, and pretty much do whatever they want. You don't buy a movie, you buy the limited right to watch what goes as the current iteration of a video file for a certain amount of time. You can't resell your purchase, so everyone has to pay full price to the sellers.
Using NFTs or other cryptographic DRM would be hugely beneficial to consumers, but what's the point of helping the consumers? It'll only cut into costs because NFTs require some kind of cryptocoin network to do a bunch of calculations, which is expensive to run and wastes enormous amounts of electricity.
A simple RSA signature could be used to license a file to your computer and some DRM comes pretty close to that. If the industry wanted to give you ownership, they already could've done it before the NFT speculators set up the current hype.
I... don't like where those ideas are going. At this point I long for pre-Internet days, where physical media (tapes, CDs, books) achieved the same goal while wasting much less resources than it takes to keep the blockchain that would support the NFTs.
I also think that anything that further solidifies IP enforcement is going to kill the future.
Consider that one of these days, we might progress enough to be able to build something approaching a replicator from Star Trek. The utopian society of the show is built on "too cheap to meter" energy that allows replicators to meet everyone's basic needs (and even fancy whims) for free. But even if we reach a similar level of scientific and technological advancement, we won't be able to realize the utopia part if designs for every replicable goods are owned by a small group of people/companies extracting rent, with technology and law preventing circumvention.
Digital art isn't scarce by its very nature - NFTs are an attempt to re-introduce scarcity, and it's fucking depressing. My childhood dream of improving the world by inventing things is a pipe dream; every bit of progress gets mopped up by the people who need it least.
Artists directly making money from their art without intermediaries taking huge cuts (and with resales giving them a percentage on top of it) is absolutely not going to kill the future, it's just going to incentivize better creation of art. Scarcity makes economic sense for various kinds of art and there are many fields that have been destroyed by the Internet (i.e. music). It's only natural for the solution to also come from it in this manner.
It would also allow the recreation of something like the original Netflix DVD service but purely digital.
No more having to manage a half dozen plus streaming subscriptions. One company could go out and start building a comprehensive library of NFTs for every film and series.
When you want to watch something you check out the NFT from the library. When you’re done you return it. For very hot items, there may be a waiting list, but you’ll get it eventually. No more being stuck in a content ghetto like with modern streaming services.
Mila Kunis has an NFT project where only token holders can view the associated episodes of a cartoon and upon NFT resale, a percent of the proceeds gets remitted back to the project creators [1].
I don’t disagree and there’s two things I find interesting:
1) Remittance is easily implemented in a smart contract.
2) This aligns long term interests between the project creator and the NFT holder (and one can imagine different incentive structures can be implemented for different projects).
I'd agree that it is "interesting", but as additional reasons to be opposed to cryptocurrencies.
1) Remittances for resale imply that ownership was not fully transferred. The item isn't mine, but is some weird mix of being mine, but still having some link back to the person who made it. This is already a problem with digital goods, where I cannot lend an ebook to a friend in the same way that I would lend a physical book.
2) The long-term interests are already aligned due to the existence of a second-hand market, and do not need additional technological protections. Somebody who buys cars new and sells them after 5 years still cares about the maintenance costs of a 15-year-old car, because those impact the sale price at 5 years.
2a) The siphoning of money from a re-sale discourages a second-hand market. If the original maker of an object absconds with 20% of the re-sale price, that gives me less of an incentive to sell it, rather than just throwing it away. This is both from an economic standpoint, because there's a decreased profit motive, and from an emotional standpoint, because somebody is laying claim to my efforts in securing a resale without having a valid reason to do so.
That’s a negative sum view of the situation (if the creator takes more, the buyer takes less).
Consider the positive sum view: the creator is encouraged to do activities (marketing? Community management?) to drive the price of the sold items higher and resold more frequently.
True, both outcomes are possible, but I think the negative sum outcome is more likely. We've already manufacturers reach for more and more control with ebooks (can't lend like a physical book), heavy machinery (John Deere won't let you repair your tractor), cell phones (need to "jailbreak" in order to install your own software), cars (Tesla revoking a software feature after deciding that it was only enabled by mistake), and we've seen attempts to do so with computers (Clipper chip, DRM in general).
Manufacturers are not to be trusted with a tool that can assert ownership over something that they have previously sold.
That would make way too much sense... I predict online streaming on poor services that will shut down in few years with no option for backup. With both monthly subscription and individual purchases, and user losing purchases if ending subscription...
That is pretty smart. How is this not already implemented for film distribution and avoid leakages and pirating? Honest question, i've been on all forms of streaming since 2000, back to torrenting lately to avoid cartelization
It wouldn't be effective. If a human can watch it a computer can copy it. They'll take it right off the output pins of the display driver chip if they have to.
NFTs won't work with DRM, because with DRM you need to encrypt the content and then decrypt it to view it. But you cannot put the decryption key in the NFT, because everything on the blockchain is public. If you put the decryption key with the NFT, everyone will have it.
So you will still need some kind of centralized system where you will issue the decryption keys to your viewers, and probably the easiest way to track subscriptions and keys is to use a database like MySQL.
Comments
I am calling it now: that blockchain royalty system on NFTs? It is only a matter of time before Hollywood makes NFTs interact with DRM. Your movie purchase will be an NFT with hardware-backed chain verification.
They could, but why would they? Right now, they can lock content behind a subscription, remove listed content, edit and re-release content, and pretty much do whatever they want. You don't buy a movie, you buy the limited right to watch what goes as the current iteration of a video file for a certain amount of time. You can't resell your purchase, so everyone has to pay full price to the sellers.
Using NFTs or other cryptographic DRM would be hugely beneficial to consumers, but what's the point of helping the consumers? It'll only cut into costs because NFTs require some kind of cryptocoin network to do a bunch of calculations, which is expensive to run and wastes enormous amounts of electricity.
A simple RSA signature could be used to license a file to your computer and some DRM comes pretty close to that. If the industry wanted to give you ownership, they already could've done it before the NFT speculators set up the current hype.
If the NFTs could be bought and sold, this would finally allow a decentralized secondary market for DRM media.
I... don't like where those ideas are going. At this point I long for pre-Internet days, where physical media (tapes, CDs, books) achieved the same goal while wasting much less resources than it takes to keep the blockchain that would support the NFTs.
I also think that anything that further solidifies IP enforcement is going to kill the future.
Consider that one of these days, we might progress enough to be able to build something approaching a replicator from Star Trek. The utopian society of the show is built on "too cheap to meter" energy that allows replicators to meet everyone's basic needs (and even fancy whims) for free. But even if we reach a similar level of scientific and technological advancement, we won't be able to realize the utopia part if designs for every replicable goods are owned by a small group of people/companies extracting rent, with technology and law preventing circumvention.
Digital art isn't scarce by its very nature - NFTs are an attempt to re-introduce scarcity, and it's fucking depressing. My childhood dream of improving the world by inventing things is a pipe dream; every bit of progress gets mopped up by the people who need it least.
Artists directly making money from their art without intermediaries taking huge cuts (and with resales giving them a percentage on top of it) is absolutely not going to kill the future, it's just going to incentivize better creation of art. Scarcity makes economic sense for various kinds of art and there are many fields that have been destroyed by the Internet (i.e. music). It's only natural for the solution to also come from it in this manner.
Music is flourishing - it's the music industry that has been destroyed by the Internet.
Compared to my industry (indie gaming), indie music is in an objectively way worse state.
But DRM media still requires the server to verify the product. So only part of the ecosystem is decentralized.
It would also allow the recreation of something like the original Netflix DVD service but purely digital.
No more having to manage a half dozen plus streaming subscriptions. One company could go out and start building a comprehensive library of NFTs for every film and series.
When you want to watch something you check out the NFT from the library. When you’re done you return it. For very hot items, there may be a waiting list, but you’ll get it eventually. No more being stuck in a content ghetto like with modern streaming services.
Mila Kunis has an NFT project where only token holders can view the associated episodes of a cartoon and upon NFT resale, a percent of the proceeds gets remitted back to the project creators [1].
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/k78kay/mila-kunis-stoner-cat...
I'd rather have more ways to restore the First Sale Doctrine for digital goods, rather than debasing it further.
I don’t disagree and there’s two things I find interesting:
1) Remittance is easily implemented in a smart contract.
2) This aligns long term interests between the project creator and the NFT holder (and one can imagine different incentive structures can be implemented for different projects).
I'd agree that it is "interesting", but as additional reasons to be opposed to cryptocurrencies.
1) Remittances for resale imply that ownership was not fully transferred. The item isn't mine, but is some weird mix of being mine, but still having some link back to the person who made it. This is already a problem with digital goods, where I cannot lend an ebook to a friend in the same way that I would lend a physical book.
2) The long-term interests are already aligned due to the existence of a second-hand market, and do not need additional technological protections. Somebody who buys cars new and sells them after 5 years still cares about the maintenance costs of a 15-year-old car, because those impact the sale price at 5 years.
2a) The siphoning of money from a re-sale discourages a second-hand market. If the original maker of an object absconds with 20% of the re-sale price, that gives me less of an incentive to sell it, rather than just throwing it away. This is both from an economic standpoint, because there's a decreased profit motive, and from an emotional standpoint, because somebody is laying claim to my efforts in securing a resale without having a valid reason to do so.
That’s a negative sum view of the situation (if the creator takes more, the buyer takes less).
Consider the positive sum view: the creator is encouraged to do activities (marketing? Community management?) to drive the price of the sold items higher and resold more frequently.
True, both outcomes are possible, but I think the negative sum outcome is more likely. We've already manufacturers reach for more and more control with ebooks (can't lend like a physical book), heavy machinery (John Deere won't let you repair your tractor), cell phones (need to "jailbreak" in order to install your own software), cars (Tesla revoking a software feature after deciding that it was only enabled by mistake), and we've seen attempts to do so with computers (Clipper chip, DRM in general).
Manufacturers are not to be trusted with a tool that can assert ownership over something that they have previously sold.
Hey sorry for the delay but wanted to say I appreciate your viewpoint and logical debate.
That would make way too much sense... I predict online streaming on poor services that will shut down in few years with no option for backup. With both monthly subscription and individual purchases, and user losing purchases if ending subscription...
That is pretty smart. How is this not already implemented for film distribution and avoid leakages and pirating? Honest question, i've been on all forms of streaming since 2000, back to torrenting lately to avoid cartelization
It wouldn't be effective. If a human can watch it a computer can copy it. They'll take it right off the output pins of the display driver chip if they have to.
Why use a Blockchain? MySQL will work just fine.
and who controls the database?
You're asking the wrong question...
NFTs won't work with DRM, because with DRM you need to encrypt the content and then decrypt it to view it. But you cannot put the decryption key in the NFT, because everything on the blockchain is public. If you put the decryption key with the NFT, everyone will have it.
So you will still need some kind of centralized system where you will issue the decryption keys to your viewers, and probably the easiest way to track subscriptions and keys is to use a database like MySQL.
(Btw, I do not like DRM at all)
It doesn't matter, as long as it's a legal entity and can therefore be sued for breach of contract.
Who controls the unencrypted video?
And who the fuck cares except for some crypto nerds?
What’s the purpose? You still need a centralised store for your unencrypted video. Why would this be preferable to having a database?
That will stop people from using bitorrent