How Blockchain Can Fight Piracy

Digital content piracy is a continuous thorn in the side of entertainers, musicians, artists, and the entertainment industry as a whole. Piracy has removed hundreds of billions of dollars from the U.S. economy alone—globally, it is much more.

To be sure, media companies around the world have taken steps to protect their content from piracy, but their actions and solutions have not been enough to prevent it. Blockchain pundits speculate that the technology could play a role in reducing piracy and possibly offer more protection going forward.

Key Takeaways

• Digital piracy costs the U.S. economy billions each year.
• Blockchain technology might be one method to help slow digital piracy.
• In theory, the emerging Web3 concept (blockchain-based internet) could help deter piracy, allowing media sources to be tracked.
• Piracy will probably never disappear, but using blockchain to track piracy sources might help reduce it.

The Theory Behind Blockchain Fighting Piracy

While blockchain is unlikely to be able to address digital content piracy fully on its own, the technology could be put toward this cause as one component of a larger effort to reduce theft.

There are many potential reasons why piracy occurs, and experts have yet to arrive at a definitive explanation for the practice. Various factors, such as cultural norms, lack of access, unaffordability, and even a general view of media content as not having inherent value, can all contribute to piracy activities.

In theory, if the Internet were built on blockchain technology, it could become much easier for law enforcement to track those who are the source of leaks or who provide content access services to others using other people’s content. The idea of an Internet built on blockchain technology is commonly called Web3.

Media and other content could be assigned tokens, which would be required to access digital content using smart contracts or which could simply be used to trace illegally shared content back to its source. However, much work remains before this can happen.

Blockchain as a Piracy Deterant

Blockchain can be used to track digital watermarks for tracking pirated content. For example, South African company CustosTech used blockchain tech to build a proprietary digital watermarking technology that stores information on a blockchain.

This technology allows watermarks in media files to be embedded in such a way as to be imperceptible to the content receiver and impossible to remove. The watermark is tokenized on the blockchain, and anyone who receives a copy of the file could be associated with tokens. If a media file begins to circulate illegally, the watermark and tokens give away the sources of the leaked content.

A monetary reward can serve as an incentive for those outside of the media space to help find pirating sources. CustosTech tested a bounty-hunting to help track down pirated files and earn rewards. It is unclear how successful the bounty hunting endeavor was, as it doesn’t seem to have made it out of testing, but the idea has merit if someone can make it work and attract would-be hunters with monetary incentives.

How Can Blockchain Prevent Piracy?

It’s not likely that blockchain will be able to prevent piracy. It will likely be more useful as a deterrent and investigative tool as it is better at recording and storing data, which can be used to track down sources.

What Organization Fight Music Piracy?

The Recording Industry Association of America is one of the organizations most active in fighting music piracy.

How Do You Fight Digital Piracy?

Fighting digital piracy is very difficult because of the distribution channels used. The best methods are to create affordable alternatives for people to access digital content, identify and control sources as soon as possible, and incentivize anti-piracy practices.

The Bottom Line

Digital content piracy has been a costly problem for the entertainment industry for decades. Several projects have explored or are exploring blockchain’s ability to be used in anti-piracy activities to prevent, detect, or report piracy. However, pirates always find ways to circumvent anti-piracy practices, so piracy will likely never fully be contained, even using blockchain’s powerful security mechanics.