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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

Bridging The Streaming Music ‘Value Gap’

music-onlineThe global music business offered up two cheers this week for the first signs of life in the recorded music business in nearly a decade. According to International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s (IFPI) latest global sales report, total recorded music revenue grew 3.2 percent in 2015, to $15.0 billion, the biggest jump since 1998 and the only growth since 2012, when sales ticked up 0.3 percent.

The overall growth came entirely from digital sources, particularly streaming revenue, which jumped 45 percent over 2014, to $2.9 billion, or 19 percent of total revenues. Physical sales continued their decade-long slide, falling another 4.5 percent, buoyed somewhat by the continued renaissance of vinyl.

The strong streaming numbers were evenly distributed, however.

Subscription streaming revenue accounted for $2 billion of the $2.9 billion total, as the total number of paying subscribers reached 68 million, while industry revenue from ad-supported streaming amounted to a mere $634 million, despite more than 900 million listeners worldwide.

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

Universal Music Group is ‘Out of Contract’ with YouTube – Sources

money-protest-power-fist-biz-2015-billboard-650Universal Music Group is locked in a chilly negotiation period with YouTube, as the major’s long-running licensing deal with Google’s platform switches to a rolling deal.

MBW understands that UMG’s licensing agreement with YouTube expired earlier this year, and currently seems a fair way off being re-signed. UMG has now been rolling on a month-to-month contract with YouTube for most of 2016, and is believed to have put together both an ‘on YouTube’ strategy and an ‘off YouTube’ strategy – the latter very much an ‘in case of emergency’ fallback. (And not a bad negotiating tool, of course.)

Both Sony and Warner’s deals with YouTube are also due to end in the coming months, MBW understands.

Source: Music Business Worldwide

A Turning Point For Digital Sports Rights

Twitter was not the highest bidder, and according to re/Code, paid less than $10M for the package, a minuscule amount compared to other rights deals.This last note is somewhat surprising news, considering the NFL’s history of ignoring all factors aside from money when making large-scale decisions (think: Thursday Night Football, European expansion). But in this deal, the NFL should be commended for choosing a partner that fits its long-term growth strategy better than its short-term pocketbook.

Here’s why:

In order for live-streaming on a digital platform to have any impact in the fragmented media landscape, it needs to create a totally unique viewer experience. If Amazon or Yahoo offer simple re-broadcasts of the games on their websites, what incentive do viewers have to tune into Amazon/Yahoo instead of CBS/NBC?

Source: The Cauldron

Will Paul McCartney Finally Get The Rights To His Own Songs Back?

He may be one of the most respected songwriters of all time, but believe it or not, Paul McCartney doesn’t actually own the rights to many of his most famous works. That’s a somewhat sad reality of the music industry, but it might soon change for the former Beatle.

Because of a stipulation in the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, McCartney has a chance to get back (that’s a Beatles joke for any fans reading) the rights to some, but not all, of the songs he wrote and made famous. According to the law, 56 years after songs that were written pre-1978 debuted, the original writer can petition to regain control over the publishing rights, no matter who owns them at the time. That limit is coming up soon for many of the tracks that McCartney wrote early on in his career, and he seems intent on collecting what is his.

Source: Forbes

New EU Regulations for Collection Societies and Pan-European Licensing to Take Effect This Weekend

More than two years after they were first passed by the European Union, new regulations governing European collection societies and multi-territory licensing come into force this Sunday (Apr. 10), with rights holders and digital services among the intended beneficiaries.

Devised and implemented by the European Commission as part of its “Digital Agenda for Europe” and “Europe 2020 Strategy,” the Collective Rights Management Directive is designed to help make sure royalty payments are timely and accurate while significantly improving the transparency and governance of European collective management organizations (CMOs), otherwise known as collection societies.

The two main collecting societies in the United Kingdom are PRS for Music, which looks after the rights of over 115,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers, and PPL, which works on behalf of record companies and performers.

Together, they have a combined turnover of over £1 billion ($1.4 billion) a year, according to the British government, and around 500,000 members.

Source: Billboard

WWE Hit With Class Action Over Streaming Royalties

As World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) transitions from a time when it earned a good chunk of its revenue from pay-per-view telecasts to one where streaming platforms dominate, one of its former professional wrestlers is now asking a federal court to interpret an old contract that spoke of “technology not yet created.”

On Wednesday, Rene Goguen (known in the ring as “Rene Dupree” as part of the group “La Resistance”) brought a putative class-action lawsuit alleging he and others haven’t seen money from the much-ballyhooed over-the-top channel, WWE Network, as well as videos put on Netflix.

According to the complaint filed in Connecticut federal court, Goguen signed a “booking contract” in 2003 where WWE took ownership over a wide swath of intellectual property including his nickname, personality, character, costumes, props, gimmicks, gestures, routines and themes.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

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