How Tiktok Took its Game to the Next Level by Committing to Blockchain Technology?
When a large fraction of the netizen community took to a nationwide debate
over the video YouTube vs. TikTok: The End, made by a leading youtuber
named Carry Minati, and whether it should have been taken down or not by YouTube,
bringing the TikTok application to limelight like never before, it was brought
to my notice as well. Although I felt the issue to be absolutely a waste of my
time to comment upon, I started reading on a bigger picture to the story to feed
the IP geek in me and understand how TikTok pivoted to blockchain technology in
order to tackle security issues including piracy and copyright infringement, and
reflect my opinions on why this is the next big thing for the media industry
among others.
A Glance of the Blockchain Tech World
Before understanding how TikTok incorporated this next-big thing to its
advantage, let me give you a brief on the mind-boggling concept of how
blockchain technology works. It is a time-stamped series of recorded data which
cannot be modified after its initialization and is managed by a cluster of
computers that do not have single ownership. Each of these blocks of recorded
data is secured and are bound to each other using cryptographic principles
commonly called a chain. After bringing a revolution in the financial industry,
healthcare, hospitality, agriculture, among others; now we will see how it is
transforming the social media industry as well; giving an edge to the real
content creators and owners.
How TikTok Leveraged this Tech to its Use
Douyin a Chinese video sharing platform, popularly known as TikTok in the
Western World owned by ByteDance, had been exploring to achieve Blockchain
Technology and Artificial Intelligence to its business model in a collaboration
with the Chinese State Media since the past year to make up for security
vulnerabilities which allow intruders to take control of accounts. Apart from
that it also wanted to implement these as a method for verifying the
authenticity of video contents, further aiming at authenticating its
users and offering deepfake capabilities. Reticently, with great deliberation
and stimulation from the ever-growing security concerns, it was finally able to
implement this weapon, making it a first for the industry.
This came into wide public knowledge when Huopai, a similar application owned by
Baidu stole a video originally uploaded in Douyin. Subsequently, Douyin took the
course of law and sued Huopai for compensation in account of copyright
infringement. This is when it surfaced and Douyin took to prove its ownership
with data stored on blockchain, so as have I discussed before cannot be changed
after initialization and can be utilized for proving infringement and copying;
thus, proving to be the technology that fights for transparency and fairness.
In this case, making history the Hangzhou Internet Court, established in 2017
accepted blockchain evidence and found Baidu guilty. This further paved the way
for blockchain in strengthening the Intellectual Property protection in the
present era.
Why Media Industry in India Must Come Around this Massive Breakthrough
The promise that blockchain offers to completely nullify falsifying data records
is one of its manifold pros for the media industry, it is pretty much cost
effective in the long run since there is absolutely no cost for the transaction
and it is completely automated. So, to give you a clearer picture, what is
happening in case of the media and content sharing platforms is that information
in any form is being passed from one point, say creator A.
Now A is the creator who initiates the process by creating a block, which is
then verified by thousands, or millions of computers distributed around the net.
The product of this as a verified block is added to a chain, which is now stored
across the internet, thus creating a unique record with a unique history; making
it impossible to falsify and poach even a single record, given the entire chain
contains the original information, content in this scenario; in million
instances.
It will be an interesting thread to follow on how blockchain is implemented and
its many perks can be utilized in India in the near future for creating the
Internet a safer space for original owners, artists and creators; making their
creations truly public and easily verifiable by this magical decentralized
system. The idea of a blockchain-based verification system that will be focused
on digital rights, of audio-visual content leads me to believe that it will in
the near future, if explored further and incorporated by the platforms concerned
in India, might see the end of the poachers and hackers of content.
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