The other day I was talking too @crypt0rhodes about the future uses of blockchain technology in the media industry. Specifically, we were talking about possibly using a blockchain to track employees. Or at least that's how it started. By the end of the conversation, I realized that crypto could possibly be used in the future for all sorts of thing in the multimedia industry. It could be used for tracking props and equipment, employees, distributing a share of revenue to actors and employees every time their shows are shown on TV or streamed, etc, etc. Using the blockchain, we could actually give an actor a percentage of the income from a movie for every single time it's streamed online, automatically.
That's pretty cool. Technically we wouldn't necessarily need to use the blockchain to do a lot of the things that we would want to do, but the blockchain would add a bit of security and openness to the whole matter. You couldn't have someone just lie about something later. It would be recorded on the blockchain. You couldn't rewrite the records afterwards, and say that you didn't check something out of storage, or simply not pay someone that you are supposed to pay. If you don't pay them, everyone would know.
That's all well and good, and pretty cool, but not actually what I'm here to talk about today. Or it's not really what I want to talk about that is. What I want to talk about is media ownership.
Since @crypt0rhodes' signature to her vlogs is "Where we're going, we don't need Rhodes." and the talk with her was part of the inspiration for this post, we'll use "Back to the Future" for our examples. Lets just hope I can find it on all of the sites, or at least a few of them.
Let's say that you wanted to buy "Back to the Future". And why wouldn't you? It's a cult fucking classic! Everyone really should have a copy. How many times have you seen it? How many times have I seen it? Fuck! A lot! I should probably own it. But I don't think I actually do. Lets go check some prices then, shall we?
First, let's check eBay. They're like the fucking kings of second-hand merchandise and auctions and shit.
It's a fucking screenshot of eBay, where the fuck do you think I got it?
There, right at the top, you got a 5-Disc set, brand fucking new, of the Back to the Future Trilogy. That's all 3 fucking movies for $16. Not bad if you don't care about quality. Got tons of behind the scenes bullshit I'm sure.
But standard-def sucks. So let's select the DVD & Blu-ray section, and see if we can't get ourselves a Blu-ray.
Screenshot of fucking eBay, obv.
There, right at the top, second search result, you got the trilogy, on Blu-ray, for $20. That's not a bad fucking deal, and that's not even with any real in-depth searching. New too! If we want a better deal, we can come back and look.
But this is the 21st-century man! There's more than just eBay!
Lets try Amazon.
Screenshot of Amazon.
There it is, Back to the Future, trilogy, $21, on DVD. Or you can get the original for $10. But, as we already established, standard def sucks. Blu-ray players are fucking cheap now, as are HDTV's. Hell, we got cheap as fuck 4k TV's now.
Screenshot of Amazon.
There it is! $23 for the trilogy on Blu-ray! Not as good as eBay, obv, but not bad. Well, at least not in America. Considering that many places charge that for a single movie, it's not bad. It's not really good either. I don't think I'd really wanna pay quite that much TBH. I'd probably wait for a sale or something. Though they claim it's already marked down.
But this is the 21st-century man! We got digital fucking content man!
Screenshot of Amazon.
Wait a second. This is digital content. You're telling me that I have to pay extra, and I don't get a physical disk, and all that extra stupid bullshit behind the scenes crap that I might want to watch maybe once? FFS! Well, apparently I can watch it for "Free" if I have HBO on Prime Video. For those that don't know, that's a double up on subscriptions. You have to be a prime member, then also have the HBO package on top. That also needs a fast fucking connection though.
Fast fucking internet connection: $50 a month, more or less.
Amazon Prime: $99 per year.
HBO on Prime: $14.99 per month.
FFS! Seriously. I thought internet streaming was supposed to be cheaper? That's $878.88 per fucking year, give or take. That's a fucking expensive ass "free" movie. Fucking bastards.
I googled, and apparently Back to the Future isn't on Netflix, if you wondered.
So lets check iTunes.
Screenshot of iTunes Store.
$15? FFS! Remember, they don't have to manufacture a fucking disc or anything for this. They just have to send it digitally over a wire to me. WHY is that more fucking expensive than a physical fucking disc?
Lets try Google Play.
Screenshot of Google Play Store.
$2.99? That seems like a much better price! That seems like the price that a digital copy of a movie should be! But wait, that's actually the fucking price of renting the fucking movie. That's right, they're the new fucking Blockbuster. Except they're not paying an employee to give you the movie, or printing you a laminated Blockbuster card, or checking you out from the store. All they fucking did was put it in a database, and offered it for sale on a web portal. Fucking greedy fucking bastards. At least the trilogy is about the same price, $22, if you did want a digital copy. That's not the price to rent; it is the actual price to buy it.
So, I wasted a lot of your time looking at all these fucking screenshots. What was the point? Other than the fact that these companies are greedy fucking bastards?
Well, I probably didn't really have to walk you through all of that. You see, competition is a good thing, but when it comes to digital content ownership, it may not actually be, because all of these companies are walled gardens. If I buy a copy of whatever movie on iTunes or Amazon, they probably aren't going to go out of business tomorrow...but they might. Think about how many companies have gone out of business in your lifetime that you thought would never go out of business. How many companies that you thought would be here forever are just gone, or rolled up into another company now? How many websites just closed up shop, and took all your data with them?
It's getting a bit better. Now you can download your data off Facebook and Twitter and a few other sites, but you can't just watch the movies you bought on Google or iTunes on Netflix. You have to launch the app of the site where the movie is. You have to subscribe to another service if one has a show that you can't live without. How many people got HBO just for Game of Thrones. They GoT you!
But you don't even fucking own any of this. You don't own any of the movies that you stream from any of the services that you pay for. You don't even really own the movies that you buy on Google Play or iTunes or wherever. You'd even technically be breaking the law if you simply ripped the movie that you paid for to your computer, so you can watch it on your phone. Seriously? Fuck them!
But maybe there's hope. If they choose to let us have it.
One thing that the blockchain is good at is tracking things, and showing ownership.
Imagine a future where you can buy a movie on eBay, or Amazon, or iTunes, and it gets written to the blockchain as belonging to you, or whoever is associated with that blockchain, and then you could download and watch it whenever you wanted, wherever, with maybe a nominal fee. You would actually own it. It wouldn't be licensed to you by a company.
Of course, they would have to figure out a way to scan the UPC or QR code or whatever, so you could get the movie transferred to you if you bought a physical copy, but I don't think that's actually impossible. I think if you tried to steal the digital version as well, it would be fairly easy to sort it out.
We don't actually own anything these days. It's all streamed or licensed. I think there's actually a chance for the blockchain to change that. There are actually quite a few efforts in this regard.
Excuse me for a second while I look them up for a bit.
Just last month, a new movie, "No Postage Necessary" got its theatrical debut and was also sold for cryptocurrency on the p2p networking app Vevue, which runs on the Qtum blockchain.
A blockchain is essentially a shared, encrypted "ledger" that cannot be manipulated, offering the promise of secure transactions that allow anyone to get an accurate accounting of money, property or other assets.
From Hollywood's first blockchain movie: an end to piracy?
There we have it right there! Right in an article about a movie being distributed on a blockchain, blockchains are by their nature pretty damn good at showing ownership, because they rely on a chain of encryption.
Apparently, even Comcast believes the blockchain has a future.
“We think that blockchain tech has a lot of potential.” - Gil Beyda, Comcast Ventures managing director
From Blockchain for Blockbusters: From Movies to VR Distribution Platforms, Media Is Embracing Decentralization By JANKO ROETTGERS
Searching for blockchain services for media development showed me that there are enough that any one of them might succeed, or all of them might fail. I don't want to just list them out though.
The bottom line is that right now, digital ownership sucks, and we don't own anything. I don't know if these big companies will ever adopt blockchain technology, but we end-users could really use it. Right now, it's better to just buy a Blu-ray, burn it, and back it up to a cloud service. That's just plain stupid.
All hail the blockchain. May it bring us the changes that we need.