European Commission Unveils Details on Digital Single Market

The European Commission (EC) has proposed over €50 billion ($56 billion) in investments as part of its strategy to create a Digital Single Market.

Included among the cross-industry initiatives are plans to coordinate national and regional strategies on digitising industry across the European Union’s 28 member countries. The EC will also set out to speed up the development of 5G communication networks and cybersecurity throughout the continent, as well as invest €500 million ($570 million) in a pan-European network of digital innovation hubs, supporting business technology needs.

Source: Billboard

As Authentication, Currency, and Inspiration, Bitcoin Finds a Growing Share in the Art Market

It took a crisis to spark off the next revolution in technology. In 2009, a year after Lehman Brothers’ disastrous crash and its subsequent domino effect on the rest of the financial sector, the Bitcoin was launched.

The concept of cryptocurrency, cashless and operating in a peer-to-peer network, had been around for some ten years but until the dawn of the New Great Depression no one had felt the need to explore it in depth. Its stability—the conversion rate has been hovering around $382 per Bitcoin for years now—is seen as a big plus in a world rife with speculation and wildly fluctuating share prices. During the first couple of years over one billion dollars were spent on Bitcoin and the technology supporting it.

Its anonymity fits the needs of criminals buying and selling illegal goods on Darknet sites such as Silk Road, but many progressive organizations now accept the alternative currency as payment. Bitcoin has also penetrated the art world and is rapidly becoming a platform for artistic creativity in its own right.

Source: ArtSlant

Alibaba Releases Planet, a First-Of-Its-Kind, All-In-One Music App

Alibaba, the Chinese digital commerce giant with a market capitalization of $198.76 billion as of this writing (putting it just behind Visa and just ahead of Chevron, worldwide), has announced the launch of Alibaba Planet, a new music-focused platform the company says will facilitate fan-to-artist relations — and vice-versa.

The first “tier” of the new platform allows fans to buy merchandise, watch live streams of performances and stream music; things previously made possible on competing platforms like Spotify through its deal with Bandpage — at least, before its recent acquisition by YouTube. The company says it has licensing agreements with BMG and Universal Music Group. It makes no mention of either Warner Music Group or Sony Music.

Source: Billboard

RightsTech Summit set for New York City on July 26

rightstechlogo2On July 26 Digital Media Wire and Concurrent Media Strategies will hold the inaugural RightsTech Summit at the Japan Society in New York City, a 1-day executive leadership conference that brings together cross-industry leaders focused on furthering technology innovation around rights management and licensing across multiple media verticals.

One of the goals of the event is the establishment of industry best practices for the rapidly evolving RightsTech ecosystem.

Issues and discussion groups at the inaugural RightsTech Summit include:

  • Machine Readable Rights
  • Smart Contracts
  • Shared Responsibilities
  • Blockchain and Big Data
  • RightsTech in the Enterprise
  • RightsTech and Direct-to-Consumer Distribution
  • RightsTech and Piracy
  • Attribution and Provenance

For registration information and complete details please visit RightsTechSummit.com.

Email us at [email protected]

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RightsTech Summit

July 26, 2016

Japan Society

333 East 47th Street

New York, NY 10017

SoundCloud and Sony/ATV Announce Licensing Deal in Europe

SoundCloud, the user-driven streaming platform which recently announced a paid tier of its service, and Sony/ATV, the world’s largest music publishing company by market share, have announced a “multi-territory agreement for Europe” around the publisher’s vast catalog.

The deal will allow Sony/ATV’s catalog to generate money for its songwriters via SoundCloud’s bleeding-edge identification technology.

“These deals for the US and Europe create the best opportunity for Sony/ATV and its songwriters to maximize the creative and revenue benefits of SoundCloud’s multi-territory business,” wrote Sony/ATV CEO Martin Bandier in a statement on the news.

Source: Billboard

How Close Are Smart Contracts to Impacting Real-World Law?

Over the last year, the concept of a “smart contract” has received renewed attention in legal and business circles.

Advancements in blockchain technology have led some to believe that smart contracts could soon offer alternatives to traditional commercial and financial agreements, with dire results for the legal and financial sectors.

While this enthusiasm may be premature, the legal profession nonetheless remains mostly unaware of this important emerging technology and the long-term implications for their profession.In this context, “smart contract” refers specifically to the use of computer code to articulate, verify and execute an agreement between parties. Whereas a typical contract is drafted using natural language, the terms of smart contracts are expressed in code, similar to a programming language like javascript or HTML.

Source: CoinDesk

Barclays’ Smart Contract Templates heralds first ever public demo of R3’s Corda platform

The Smart Contract Templates application developed by Barclays has heralded the first ever public demonstration of the R3 Corda “fabric” for shared banking ledgers, which took place before an audience of over 800 people at The O2 in London.

The event was the public demo day of the Barclays Accelerator, powered by Techstars, where 11 teams presented, including 10 startups and a Barclays internal team. The team behind the prototype smart contracts application was the internal one headed up by Dr Lee Braine from Barclays Investment Bank’s CTO Office.

Source: IBT

The Future of Protected IP and 3D Printing: Is Source3 and Their Licensed 3D Printed Album Covers a Model for New Media Distribution?

While the internet has changed the world in more ways than one could easily list, that doesn’t mean that all of those changes have been good for everyone.

One of the areas where digital technology and the internet haven’t paired well has been with intellectual property.

There has always been a thriving black market, or secondary market, for products that have been made without the consent of the copyright or trademark holder’s permission. However before the internet they rarely had any significant impact on businesses based simply on reach and scale. But with the relative anonymity and global access of the internet, the unauthorized use, reproduction or distribution of media like music, television, movies and artwork has made it easy to illegally trade and sell.

Source: 3DPrint.com

The Blockchain Wars: How Startups And Enterprises Are Competing To Create The Web 2.0

There is a war of innovation going on behind the scenes.

While everyday users are shopping on Amazon or watching auctions on Ebay, software developers from one man startups to industry giants are rushing to stake their claim in what many believe to be the most revolutionary technology since the internet.

The first cause of this burst of activity was started when Satoshi Nakamoto developed a new kind of money and called it Bitcoin.Bitcoin itself is based on the concept of a blockchain, which is a public register that is maintained by all parties involved audited transactions and then coming to a consensus about the data that has been stored. Think of the blockchain as a spool of kevlar tape kept in the middle of the town square, and consensus about a block is the equivalent to writing on the tape with indelible ink. Instead of one trusted central entity, like the Federal Reserve, the federation of blockchain users are the distributed trusted authority.

Source: Forbes

Bitcoin Technology Organizations Launch Global Blockchain Forum To Address International Policy

As digital currencies and the technology behind them become more widely adopted by incumbents and startups with a global presence, the need for consistent laws and regulations governing them is ever more apparent.

The Washington, D.C.-based Chamber of Digital Commerce, along with three other of the world’s leading digital asset/blockchain trade organizations (with “blockchain” being the shorthand to describe the technology), Tuesday announces the launch of the Global Blockchain Forum, an international body whose mission is to help shape international blockchain policy.

“The Global Blockchain Forum is a platform for international collaboration,” says Perianne Boring, founder and president of the Chamber. “We’re bringing together the leading trade associations representing the digital assets/blockchain industry around the world. As we engage with these various governments, it’s important that the associations and stakeholders working with these public policymakers have some type of coordination to their efforts.”

Source: Forbes

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