Why do we need a black box? If we expect accountability and accuracy and we want to make sure that money is going to the right people, we need to eliminate that box and introduce a level of transparency
Recorded at RightsTech Summit, New York City
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Email | Download
The business dictionary defines a “black box” as, a device, process or system whose inputs and outputs and the relationships between them are known but whose internal structure or working is a.) not well or at all understood; b.) not necessary to be understood for the job or purpose at hand; or c.) not supposed to be known because of its confidential nature.
In many rights-based industries, the notorious black box lives in the accounting department. Indeed, the music and film businesses both have reputations for black box business practices when it comes to calculation and payment of royalties. Creators and licensers can at least agree that they lack proper tools to track money effectively as it makes its way from the market to the distributor to the artist.
At the recent RightsTech Summit, technlogists and artists’ representatives discussed how they are leveraging the inherent transparency of blockchain to improve the system of accounting and payments. Technology, in this view, is no longer the artist’s foe but a friend instead.
“The question is, … ‘Why do we need a black box?’ If we expect accountability and accuracy and want to make sure that money is going to the right people, we need to eliminate that box and introduce a level of transparency so people can go in and check that work and make sure that they are accurate,” said Danny Anders, founder and CEO of ClearTracks, a rights management platform for directly clearing and monetizing rights for commercial uses and user generated content such as DJ mixes, remixes, gaming and Web video.
“Increasingly, you have a lot of independent artists, even a lot of producers working out of their bedroom creating content, who don’t necessarily have the support of the industry or the infrastructure – the labels and the publishers – to help them with that process,” he tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “How do we make sure that those guys are able to participate without requiring an understanding of an extremely complex system?”
Joining Anders were Cédric Cobban, founder of PeerTracks and designer of the SounDAC blockchain and its ecosystem that is the foundation of PeerTracks and that serves as a global database for copyrights; Eugene Mopsik, CEO of the American Society for Collective Rights Licensing (ASCRL) which collects foreign royalties for reuses of visual works that are licensed under foreign law and distributes payments to its members; and Razi Rais, a published author, speaker and subject matter expert on blockchain and identity at Microsoft who assists enterprise customers in building and running blockchain solutions, with a strong focus on maintaining data privacy among smart contracts.
