The major software developer Microsoft’s new plan to fight piracy relies on the transparency of blockchain technology.
Windows operating system and Office productivity suite have always been prime performers on any software piracy platforms. So, it’s no marvel that Microsoft, the developer of both products, works hard to establish anti-piracy measures.
In a new paper launched by Microsoft’s research department, with the participation of researchers from Alibaba and Carnegie Mellon University, the Redmond-based software giant studied a blockchain-based incentive system to bolster anti-piracy campaigns.
Because the title of the analysis, “Argus: A Fully Transparent Incentive System for Anti-Piracy Campaigns,” suggests, Microsoft’s new system relies on the transparency aspect of blockchain technology. Built on the Ethereum blockchain, Argus aims to provide a trustless incentive mechanism whereas protecting data collected from the open anonymous population of piracy reporters.
“We see this as a distributed system drawback,” the paper said, “Within the implementation, we overcome a set of unavoidable obstacles to ensure security regardless of full transparency.”
Argus enables backtracing of pirated content to the source with a corresponding watermark algorithm, which is detailed within the paper. Additionally named “proof of leakage,” every report of leaked content material entails an information-hiding process. In this manner, no one however the informer can report the identical watermarked copy without really owning it.
The system additionally has incentive-reducing safeguards to stop an informer from reporting the identical leaked content material again and again beneath totally different aliases. “With the safety and practicality of Argus, we hope real-world antipiracy campaigns might be really efficient by shifting to a totally clear incentive mechanism,” the report stated.
Detailing the issue of Ethereum network fees, the paper defined that the crew optimized a number of cryptographic operations “in order that the price for piracy reporting is decreased to an equal price of sending about 14 ETH-transfer transactions to run on the general public Ethereum network, which would otherwise correspond to thousands of transactions.”
Tech corporations worldwide have become more and more involved with defending mental property and preventing digital piracy. As previously reported, Tech Mahindra, the IT subsidiary of Indian conglomerate Mahindra Group, lately launched a new blockchain-based digital contracts and rights platform on IBM’s Hyperledger Fabric protocol for the media and entertainment industry.
