Linius successfully tests world’s first anti-piracy blockchain prototype

Video tech company Linius successfully tests world’s first anti-piracy blockchain prototype

SOUTH YARRA, Australia — Linius Technologies’ (ASX: LNU) – the only cloud-based solution that transforms static video into hyper-personalized video experiences with its patented Video Virtualization Engine™ (VVE) – has successfully tested the world’s first video blockchain, opening new distribution, protection and monetization possibilities to the global video industry.

By applying its unique video virtualization technology, Linius successfully used smart contracts to control and transact video as a digital asset within blockchain – for the first time. Linius CEO, Chris Richardson, said the breakthrough had the ability to solve video piracy as we know it today.

“With virtual video embedded within each block of the blockchain, smart contracts can be used to control the transactions associated with video files,” said Richardson. “For the first time, content owners – such as movie studios – can have complete control and visibility over video distribution and access. Video assets and viewers can be validated prior to playing the video, eliminating improper play out of the video.

“This is particularly exciting, because it demonstrates that the protective power of blockchain can be applied directly to video – just as it is to cryptocurrency today – to effectively address the world’s multi-billion-dollar piracy problem.”

According to Digital TV Research’s latest Online TV Piracy Forecasts report, worldwide revenues lost to online television and movie piracy will reach US$52 billion by 2022 – almost twice that incurred in 2016.

Beyond anti-piracy: Driving new revenue models

In addition to secure content distribution, Richardson said that video blockchain would facilitate superior monetization of video content, enabling built-in payment gateways, automated royalty payments, and even peer-to-peer transactions.

“Linius feels this is the natural evolution of its anti-piracy strategy, and will use blockchain to protect, distribute as well as monetize the video itself,” said Richardson. “It’s now possible for all video stakeholders to have an auditable trail of how many times a video is played, and be instantly compensated at the time of play, based on digital contracts.

“With the ability for content owners and studios to distribute and monetize content with guaranteed tracking and royalty payments, including enabling paid consumer-to-consumer content sharing, the Linius Video Blockchain is set to transform the entire world of video production and distribution.”

Details of the successful video blockchain test

The details of the successful test are as follows:

1. Linius virtualized several videos of different sizes, stored in the cloud on Amazon S3
2. On a private instance of Ethereum (a world leading, blockchain based distributed computing platform), Linius generated a smart contract to control transactions against the virtual video
3. Linius then successfully uploaded the virtual video into the blockchain, executed the smart contract transaction (with associated mining), and successfully retrieved a copy of the virtual video based on the criteria of the contract
4. That retrieved virtual video was then validated with ISOviewer

The successful prototype test follows Linius’ December 2017 announcement of its intentions to deliver the world’s first video blockchain, coinciding with the publication of its video blockchain strategy.

The Linius Video Blockchain prototype will be launched within the first quarter of calendar year 2019, on Linius Video Services (LVS) – the company’s software-as-a-service platform.

How video virtualization makes video blockchain possible

Linius’ patented VVE makes video blockchain possible by breaking-down video into small blocks of data, creating virtual video files. A fraction of a percent of the original video file size, virtual video files can be easily transferred and managed by blockchain.

“With traditional video, a blockchain would be impossibly big,” said Richardson. “And, the Internet standard video format MP4 does not work in blockchain. Virtual videos, however, are ideally suited to digital assets, which can be recorded, transferred and managed by a blockchain.”