Elastos Unveils the First Digital Rights Management Tool for Web3, Set to Revolutionize Direct Video Content Ownership

Elacity’s DRM video tool establishes a new Access Economy Protocol (AEP), for video content creators to manage rights and access directly with their audiences

Elastos Announces the Launch of Elacity’s First Digital Rights Management Tool for Web3, Elacity DRM, focused on video content. Web3 promises to transform the realm of Digital Rights Management (DRM) and the broader scope of digital asset ownership and trading.

Elacity’s Access Economy Protocol (AEP) combines NFT technology with decentralized DRM, enabling user-owned content to be shared, monetized, and resold with defined scarcity. This approach offers immediate worldwide payments and access to a global audience, thereby eliminating geographical barriers and intermediary fees. Elacity DRM fosters collaborative and interactive Web3 content markets while protecting user data and intellectual property from unauthorized access and misuse. Based on the Elastos Smart Chain (ESC), the Elacity DRM product is EVM compatible and will be commercially available to creators on the Elastos SmartWeb via its marketplace starting January 2024, following a trial phase that began in late December 2023.

“We are empowering creators by reinstating their rightful ownership… it’s about restoring fairness and fuelling creativity in the digital realm with a completely new framework.”

— Sasha Mitchell, CEO of Elacity

The Elacity DRM tool leverages the inherent benefits of decentralized technology to create encrypted digital capsules linked to the creator’s digital identity. These capsules become blockchain-logged assets owned by the individual, shareable within their social and digital networks. The digital capsules are decrypted with access token rights defined and purchased directly from the creators’ smart contracts, alongside using an innovative runtime player—an execution environment that operates on consumers’ devices for playback. The runtime directly checks the blockchain for decryption rights and interacts with the capsule’s decentralized storage location for secure playback.

These developments will enable creators to market, promote and monetize their content direct to their audiences, completely eliminating any reliance on intermediaries; in effect, bringing artists much closer to their audiences and finally removing third party terms, conditions and ‘retentions’ which have traditionally limited creators’ ability to control and earn from their work. Future developments aim to integrate this mechanism with Elastos’ BeL2 Bitcoin Layer 2, thereby facilitating not only smarter but also more user-friendly Bitcoin and inscription transactions for a new Layer 2 access economy.

Initially, the product will focus on video content, catering to a wide array of applications including independent filmmaking, educational materials, documentaries, and podcast content. It will soon expand to support audio-only formats, especially music and audiobooks, with plans to extend to documents, gaming, and software capsules in 2024. This approach enables digital users to truly benefit from their creative or business outputs, retaining over 95 percent of the revenue for themselves and their network. This contrasts sharply with existing Web2 models, where platforms often retain between 30 and 55 percent of content revenue, claim ownership of the content and any associated digital assets, and reserve the right to de-monetise this content at any time.

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Sasha Mitchell, CEO of Elacity, stated: “In the Web2 world, centralized DRM has orchestrated a creative heist, stripping creators of their rightful control and revenues. This has led to a landscape where the true value of digital assets is diminished, and the connection between creators and their audiences is hindered by layers of intermediaries. Elacity’s mission is to revolutionize this creative brain drain. Web3 is centered on creating user-owned markets, enabling the direct sale of digital assets to a global audience. We are empowering creators by reinstating their rightful ownership and control over their digital assets. By leveraging blockchain and decentralized technologies, we are ensuring that digital assets are not only secure but also hold their true value in the Web3 era. This is not just about technology; it’s about restoring fairness and fueling creativity in the digital realm with a completely new framework.”

To ensure interoperability across the web, the tool utilizes Elacity’s Access Economy Protocol (AEP). This protocol manages three types of NFT tokens – access tokens, royalty tokens, and distribution tokens – placing the content creator and their network in control of their content, including its commercialisation and distribution. Unique economic models are facilitated by the generation of anywhere from one to billions of access tokens, which are traded globally to decrypt content. Revenue from these transactions is immediately split and paid out to royalty token holders, where 100% represents 1,000 tokens. These tokens are stored in decentralized wallets, thereby creating a platform for not just content markets but also royalty markets.

Behind this DRM tool and Access Economy Protocol lies detailed work with standard bodies such as MPEG, ensuring the full benefits of Web3 interoperability for both creative owners and content consumers. This includes MPEG standards on contract expression language and smart contracts for media. Such integration enables standards like MPEG’s to be smoothly translated into smart contracts with associated rights, bridging Web3 and traditional Web2 contractual agreements.

Dr. Xin Wang, Senior DRM Advisor said, “The utilization of Elacity’s Access Economy Protocol (AEP) with the MPEG international standards provides tools for generating digital contracts and issuing DRM licenses directly, without the intervention of any intermediaries. It ensures their interoperability with existing smart contracts and license enforcement when integrating with prevalent DLT and DRM systems. Its embrace of content creation, distribution, and consumption in emerging Web3 environments makes it unique and innovative, supporting novel business models for content creators and owners, and bringing new challenges in transitioning existing DLT and DRM into future iterations.”

Jonathan Hargreaves, Global Head of Business Development & ESG, Elastos, described the partnership as the perfect example of the creative and economic potential that can be released in the future.

“By creating a Web3 system for creativity, this opens the path to integrate with Elastos’ BeL2 approach to a Layer 2 solution. In doing so, a new ecosystem is created, enabling Bitcoin to power a new peer-to-peer economy of sharing, more equitable payments, and empowered users. This new Access Economy has the potential to revolutionize not just the video streaming industry but also music and online gaming sectors in the first half of 2024, marking the deployment of a true SmartWeb.”

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