If you are looking for Korean version of this posting, right here
https://steemit.com/kr/@alex.the.one/6-kr-3-4
Music Industry, Blockchain and Protection of Copyright (3/4)
It seems one very closed system of how the conventional copyright market has controlled the music/art industries in general. Many authors in the field of music/art, generally speaking, had not had the system for fine art work to be paid in royalties from those resales, and some of blockchain associated-systems that are very focused on protection of author's copyright as well as their distributed profits in a fair manner.
Let's Begin with The Story, More Specifically in Music Industry for Now.
For last few decades, since the music industry began to stream their music throughout streaming service platform, artists and content creators (composers, lyric writers, etc) have never been paid fair enough amount of money due to the structural bias of music industry. After there was a huge legal dispute regarding the 'Napster(in US)' and 'Soribada(in Korea)' happenings in early 2000, streaming services such as iTunes and Spotify has become the major music provider as a standard.
Figure 1. Early File Sharing Programs 1)
Here is the annual report in Korean from BMCOOP 2) , as an example of Korea, regarding the financial distribution structure from the end-user to the originial author/creator. If you are using the streaming service for a single song/music, "6 KRW (1 KRW = apprx 0.9 cent in USD) " is paid from a streaming service and transferred to KOMCA (Korea Music Copyright Association) to distribute the author 1.2 KRW, band members who played the music having 0.72 KRW. The distribution is not supposed to be in this weird payoff structure. Because there are so many intermediates between the listener to the author.
It Looks Something Wrong
Authors barely have less than a single cent with lots of shares and portions of many intermediates took over. The original reason of this somehow wrong situation is all about "the structure" as other industry structures does. Not only this music industry, most of them, generally, have "biiiiig interdemidate" that provide service to the customers and take over a certain amount of cost(or commission) for its being as their existence. We, customers, have been surrounded by so many intermediates that do not allow the direct connection between original creators/suppliers and customers. Therefore, it is usually said that the author's rights (copyright) is not protected enough since the author had been severely depend on the intermediates such as giant music labels and streaming services, until the blockchain system arises recently.
Eariler Movements to Organize Decentralized System on the Internet
Already 15 years ago, the internet community tried to remove intermediates industry (middlemen) and to have decentralized system through the distributed direct connections in segments, for examples, Napster(US) and Soribada(KR) as discussed earlier. However, this revolutionized system have gradually gone to failure. I found the reason why those systems have gone to breakdown from the exclusion of the original author. Even though those segmented file sharing system kept saying "Free" downloadable contents, still the very foundation right is owned by the original authors. Therefore, authors have nothing but only one choice to have symbiotic relationship with monstrous intermediate industries although they had disaster level of payment from the middlemen.
And there was superhero finally showed up. The Blockchain.
Figure 2. Segmented File Sharing System from Wikipedia3)
End of an Era for The Intermediates
(To my knowledge regarding the most of steemian have big interested in blockchain system, the fundamental explanation of blockchain will be described briefly.)
The blockchain system can replace the modern intermediary industries (conventionally centralized) with a decentralized ledger of chained records in continuous blockchains. When it comes to the copyright issue of the authors, this blockchain can be the most positive alternative system that protects the copyright of the authors in a legal way of protection as well as profitable financial manner. Then, without the trusted existing intermediates, how we proceed the contents to give an appropriate payment to the one who may it concerns of, mostly original author/creator.
Figure 3. Process happening between a customer and an author, Image from Blog from https://hackernoon.com 4)
Rising Stars on Blockchain for Novel Approaches
There are already some of rising corporations based on the blockchain network specialized in many fields. Here are some of the significant corporations and organizations to revolutionize the existing contents industry, generally.
- Mediachain: Multimedia Platform for Registration of Copyright on Blockchains
- Ujo Music, Songspace, Songtrust, Revelator
- Digimarc : Music Industry Blockchain System (Watermarking Technology and Blockchains in the Music Industry)
- Binded(Blockai): Blockchain Copyright System for Images and Photos
- Ascribe (Artlery) : Copyright System on Blockchain for Any Artistic Work.
- InsureX : Alternative Marketplace for An Insurance on The Trusted Network on the Blockchain
- Steemit : Yay. Blogs and Posts (Just like Magazine) on Blockchain Network of Trusted Copyright for Any Writings and Contents Created in The Steemit Platform.
Figure 4. Rising Stars in Various Industrialized Fields
Not only the music industry, there are many arising start-up companies and organizations to work things out. However, you need to be aware of that there are still many obstacles for them to be major industrialized company in the market such as trusted content registration for comparison to check whether the contents/copyrights were already registered, more faster process systems (not like an hour of waiting for proceed, currently BTC transaction), and predicatively speaking, huge backlashes from mostly existing intermediate companies.
The blockchain network was conventionally considered as only monetary purpose since 2009 when the Bitcoin was appeared very first time. However, this revolutionized trusted blockchain system spreaded from financial sectors towards the everything that we can think of, literally.
Figure 5. Image from https://coincenter.org 5)
REFERENCES
- Image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/krazykory/429019967
- Bareun Music Cooperation, BMCOOP, http://bmcoop.org/index.asp
- BitTorrent, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent
- Hakkernoon Blog, https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-for-non-techies-2-how-they-work-2f94d313c7e5
- Coin Center, https://coincenter.org/link/the-world-s-regulators-are-racing-to-develop-blockchain-policy
Previous postings on [Blockchain, Copyright, and Steemit]
#4. [Blockchain, Copyright, and Steemit] What on Earth am I Related in Copyright in Steemit? (1/4)
#5. [Blockchain, Copyright, and Steemit] Copyright and Creative Commons Licence (2/4)
#6. [Blockchain, Copyright, and Steemit] Blockchain and Protection of Copyright (3/4)
To be continue... (4/4) Hope soon
※ All images (unless there is any mention about original source or citation) are edited and recreated under CCL from free imaging pool websites such as Pixabay.com.
