C ustos Media Technologies, a Stellenbosch, South Africa -based company that uses the blockchain to fight media piracy, has raised $265,000 USD in seed funding from Digital Currency Group (DCG) and a South African private investor, according to Ventureburn.com .
The company uses technology that watermarks bitcoin into a piece of media that it tracks in the blockchain to identify infringements. The system uses crowdsourcing to provide a bounty to downloaders who identify pirates. Content creators and distributors can embed an identifying code into each piece of content that they provide to a particular user, Custos noted in a press release [PDF] on its website . How It Works
The code embedded in each piece of content can be used to access a deposit in the form of cryptocurrency – a “finder’s fee.” If the content is leaked or shared and a third party gets ahold of the content, they can cash the code in for the finder’s fee.
The content producer can then be alerted through an analysis of the cryptocurrency transaction ledger that the original authorized user leaked or shared the file. The producer can then subject the user to legal or financial penalties, or to limited access to future content. Authorized users can thereby be discouraged from sharing or leaking files. At the same time, authorized users need not be inconvenienced by cumbersome security measures. A Strong Start
Custos landed one of South Africa’s largest film producers and distributors as well as one of the continent’s biggest broadcasters. The company won these accounts while still at the LaunchLab incubator at the University of the Western Cape.
CJ van Rooyen, Custos CEO, said the company will use the funding to increase its client base, particularly for companies that have lost tens of millions of dollars in production funds due […]
