> Imagine being able to connect with the artist of a viral GIF you see in your feed, learn the history or origin of any image, or automatically reward a musician whenever you press play.
OK, I've gone and imagined it. I'm not entirely convinced that any appreciable number of people actually want to do these things though.
Is this a clever application of a trendy technology creating a solution that's searching for a problem? What are the real life business model use cases for such a tool?
Our goal is to make the monetization of media follow the content, instead of flowing from the platform like it does today.
Today, Mediachain can automatically link an image to who made it. That same channel can be used to transfer value directly through content in the future. We believe that this will create a huge opportunity for developers to build new media applications that reward creators directly through their content, no matter where it is.
Well, I made a GIF that went viral. It was posted on all of the major websites and attributed to someone's twitter who found it on someone else's twitter. I could see how it would be nice to have made a few dollars/cents from that image. Although, is it my content or CSPAN's (the original makers of the video?)
Hey Denis,
What differentiates your company from the hundreds of other "blockchain-based" identity companies that do almost the same thing?
I've seen a lot of companies throwing around these exact buzzwords and fancy landing pages for 5 years now and most just seem to be raking in VC funding while fading into obscurity a year later.
It's a great idea with a lot of utility, but my question is: How does dispute resolution work? I.e. How do you prevent bad actors from beating the original artist to the punch, and registering someone else's artwork as theirs on the blockchain?
The short answer is reputation. Consumers of the data should be able to filter by cryptographic signature to prioritize users that have more reputation over ones that don't. A timestamp is just one piece of metadata.
For example, on a platform like Soundcloud there are many Rhiannas but it is obvious which account the "real" Rihanna is because she has the most followers, likes, etc. Popularity can be another data point.
Projects like Blockstack already offer solutions that take a similar approach, allowing you to link your social media accounts so your identity is more trustable.
We also envision developers and trusted organizations like Creative Commons or DPLA creating indexes on top of Mediachain to help users filter the data.
What happens if someone crops and scrubs the metadata of the original image and then shares it? Can mediachain identify the original source of the new image?
Any metadata that is stored in EXIF or part of the file can be easily stripped out. This is why Mediachain uses perceptual recognition technology similar to Shazam or Google Image search to identify media based on how it looks or sounds, automatically resolving to metadata stored in Mediachain. Near duplicate image detection is quite far along and works very well even for images that are cropped, distorted, etc.
How does your perceptual recognition technology distinguish piracy from Fair Use? Given the impossibility of knowing with certainty which jurisdiction the end user is in, which Copyright scheme are you assuming? Can works be registered as Public Domain or as subject to a permissive license such as Creative Commons?
This sounds like you're making an Internet-scale DRM scheme. What precautions are taking to protect people from creators trying to take more than copyright provides?
The goal of Mediachain isn't to enforce scarcity of media online, but to help creators benefit from the scale of sharing. Today, an image can easily go viral without viewers knowing who the author was. Mediachain makes sure that the creator can be present wherever the content goes, automatically.
Our view is that bits are easily reproduced and there is no way to stop that, and until now there's been no easy way for creators to benefit from that. Mediachain allows creators to connect directly to their audiences through the content itself. This way, gratitude can be exchanged through attribution, and in the future, even a payment directly through the content.
It's a partial screenshot of the article in my browser. I intend to use it in a lecture as an example of the complications behind fair use. (irl I really do teach such a lecture). Who is it attributable to? The artist of the drawing, me, techcrunch or mediachain?
In short: I am suspicious of any service, and there have been a few, that claims to be able to identify the owner or creator of a work. It's a layering problem, with nearly every digital image being at some level the property of a great many people.
(fyi: if this was a law exam, the best answer is "me" in that I created the composition and am well-covered by fair use in my use of it here.)
Declaring ownership and provenance with complete certainty is very hard, which is why we don't profess to do it. Our approach is to nondestructively aggregate potentially conflicting claims and allow for more nuanced resolution at read time, as appropriate for a given situation. In your particular example, we would have a chain of derivative works.
Obviously, in certain cases (payment routing) a definitive answer is required, but this is already something that PROs and similar organizations deal with on a daily basis, and we can support their arbitration.
[+] [-] CPLX|9 years ago|reply
OK, I've gone and imagined it. I'm not entirely convinced that any appreciable number of people actually want to do these things though.
Is this a clever application of a trendy technology creating a solution that's searching for a problem? What are the real life business model use cases for such a tool?
[+] [-] denisnazarov|9 years ago|reply
Today, Mediachain can automatically link an image to who made it. That same channel can be used to transfer value directly through content in the future. We believe that this will create a huge opportunity for developers to build new media applications that reward creators directly through their content, no matter where it is.
[+] [-] JoblessWonder|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] denisnazarov|9 years ago|reply
This Co.Design article does a great job of explaining how Mediachain helps creators: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3060426/could-blockchains-solve-...
Here is our official fundraising announcement with more details: https://blog.mediachain.io/mediachain-labs-funded-by-union-s...
[+] [-] paavokoya|9 years ago|reply
I've seen a lot of companies throwing around these exact buzzwords and fancy landing pages for 5 years now and most just seem to be raking in VC funding while fading into obscurity a year later.
There's a list if you scroll down on this link: http://www.blockchaintechnologies.com/blockchain-companies
[+] [-] denisnazarov|9 years ago|reply
http://www.mediachainlabs.com/jobs/
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] duncancarroll|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] denisnazarov|9 years ago|reply
For example, on a platform like Soundcloud there are many Rhiannas but it is obvious which account the "real" Rihanna is because she has the most followers, likes, etc. Popularity can be another data point.
Projects like Blockstack already offer solutions that take a similar approach, allowing you to link your social media accounts so your identity is more trustable.
We also envision developers and trusted organizations like Creative Commons or DPLA creating indexes on top of Mediachain to help users filter the data.
[+] [-] luk3thomas|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] denisnazarov|9 years ago|reply
More on our approach in this post: https://blog.mediachain.io/perceptual-resolution-9c00ad5ca55...
Details on the implementation in this RFC: https://github.com/mediachain/mediachain/blob/master/rfc/med...
[+] [-] bmcusick|9 years ago|reply
This sounds like you're making an Internet-scale DRM scheme. What precautions are taking to protect people from creators trying to take more than copyright provides?
[+] [-] denisnazarov|9 years ago|reply
Our view is that bits are easily reproduced and there is no way to stop that, and until now there's been no easy way for creators to benefit from that. Mediachain allows creators to connect directly to their audiences through the content itself. This way, gratitude can be exchanged through attribution, and in the future, even a payment directly through the content.
[+] [-] sandworm101|9 years ago|reply
It's a partial screenshot of the article in my browser. I intend to use it in a lecture as an example of the complications behind fair use. (irl I really do teach such a lecture). Who is it attributable to? The artist of the drawing, me, techcrunch or mediachain?
In short: I am suspicious of any service, and there have been a few, that claims to be able to identify the owner or creator of a work. It's a layering problem, with nearly every digital image being at some level the property of a great many people.
(fyi: if this was a law exam, the best answer is "me" in that I created the composition and am well-covered by fair use in my use of it here.)
[+] [-] parkan|9 years ago|reply
Obviously, in certain cases (payment routing) a definitive answer is required, but this is already something that PROs and similar organizations deal with on a daily basis, and we can support their arbitration.
[+] [-] untilHellbanned|9 years ago|reply