1. OVERVIEW
1.1 Introduction
This project aims to create prototype/MVP gaming apps which implement the best practices and standards documented as part of the research project.
1.2 Scope
List project scope here
1.3 Timeline
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1.4 HL Rights Management for Contemporary and Future Assets. The Contemporary or Commercial Network.
In addition, MN will grow parallel to a more contemporary or commercial alternative, designed to help the work of living artists alive today from the same eleven time zones. The API or UI for this network (henceforth “CN”) will focus upon the following issues:
- Easier access to (and the improved exchange) of better metadata
- Compensation for the composers of audio works using ISCCs*
- Support for the micro-sale of sync licenses across social media. (How might an individual or company legitimately license and share the work of a major artist, say, on social media?)
- Support for the tokenization of audio with Hyperledger’s Fabcoin and/or NFTs**
- Support for healthier competition in the subscription market. (How might an individual launch a subscription service for my customers/audience and easily access proper licenses?)
- and a geo-sensitive/hyper-localized news service. News of cultural or political worth will be embedded in a map, showing (in cultural cases) the geographic origin of a file and (in journalistic cases) verifiably true statements about both local events and regional politics. As a result, CN will aid freedom of speech and freedom of expression in territories where both are rare. Evidence of background work is gathered here.
It is hoped that one API or app will suffice for both MN and CN, with either different interfaces and/or functionality to meet divergent needs. Those divergences might include the expression of rights (i.e., rights-expression languages or REL) and matters of post-transaction fulfillment (DRM, access control). Alternatively, those same functions—for example the presence or absence of payment details—could be embedded into the files themselves, thus largely eliminating the need to separate or isolate a museum collection from a contemporary or commercial equivalent. One app, two forms of access: archival or commercial. Non- or for-profit, filtered by the app’s search engine.
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2. HYPERLEDGER AND MUSIC
2.1 Background and Current Context
Hyperledger’s vision statement of 2018 highlighted multiple aspects of rights attribution. The in-house HLF project name-checked most often was Dot Blockchain Media (dotBC), a music content rights registry and transaction processor across a then-purported network of more than 63 million compositions. (doTB has since morphed into Verifi Media and Cardstack, where permissioned blockchains are now combined with the versioning tools of GitHub to create “gitchains.”)
Boston’s Open Music Initiative was also referenced in early Hyperledger materials. Housed in the Berkelee College of Music, the OMI continues today to leverage HLF as a non-profit network of “leading academic institutions, music and media industry organizations, creators, technologists, entrepreneurs and policy experts.” They, like dotBC, worked towards an open-source protocol for the uniform identification of music rights holders and creators.
These efforts were then celebrated by Irving Wladawsky-Berger. Here, simultaneous with HL’s 2018 mission statement, Berklee’s spinoff Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (ICE) was singled out for praise, along with MIT’s Media Lab, IDEO and Context Labs. At this time the ICE already boasted over 200 members including Sony, Universal, and Warner, together with Spotify, Pandora, Netflix, SiriusXM, YouTube, and Alibaba.
Quoting an article in Wired, Wladawsky-Berger hoped to use blockchains or decentralized databases to bridge the “serious information gap... or disconnect between the person who composed a song, the person who recorded it, and the subsequent plays... No-one owns the information, but everyone can access it... Keeping track of this metadata [will mean] artists and platforms can leverage it various ways without fear of violating rights.” Hence the OMI’s Minimum Viable Interoperability APIs (MVI 1.0), syncing data associated with recordings, musical works, creators and right holders.
And so, with most frequent reference to Sawtooth (made publicly available in early 2018), HL was looking to “replace monolithic central systems with an approach based on interoperability among existing databases and distributed transactions.” Parallels were drawn with the Ethereum blockchains of Canada’s CoreRights or Consensys’ Ujo Music, who worked on smart contracts with London singer/songwriter Imogen Heap and her blockchain advocacy group Mycelia.
In this same spirit of curatorial inclusion, value-creation, and proper attribution, it is therefore proposed that the ME-SIG embody the inclusive 2020 vision of Ashna Gupta. Her example of music is translatable to other digitized narratives, be they e-books, photojournalism, e-games, or movies.
Imagine this: a single platform where you can search for a song and uncover a record of every single player that has touched that song from inception to delivery. Every songwriter, producer, sound engineer, and everyone in between. Imagine a transparent revenue-sharing model that pays artists their fair share of royalties right away. Imagine a world of increased trust and accountability between artists and large media corporations
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