Alliance promotes blockchain in entertainment industry
December 20, 2018
By Colin Mann
A growing consortium of Hollywood and International entertainment companies have formed the Blockchain Global Entertainment Alliance (BGEA) with the goal to promote blockchain technology adoption for the entertainment industry and develop common standards and best practices in the entertainment blockchain movement.
The BGEA is a non-profit alliance designed to educate all forms of entertainment companies about the benefits that blockchain technology can provide the entertainment industry, as well as promote and support the technology’s use for funding, rights management, transparency, payments, contract enforcement, royalty distribution, micropayments for content, ticketing, aggregation and creator/end-user relationships.
“While blockchain technology has the potential to fundamentally change the way our business is conducted in addition to helping us solve the piracy problem, understanding how the technology works and why it’s important is still very limited,” said Rouslan Ovtcharoff from Millennium Media, a founding board member of BGEA. “The learning curve to anyone unfamiliar with this general-purpose technology is steep. We are creating the Blockchain Global Entertainment Alliance to promote blockchain technology while educating those who are not familiar with blockchain technology and its many uses in the constantly evolving entertainment industry.”
“Despite virtually all content being distributed on digital devices, the recording, management, transfer, licensing and collection of revenues remains a primarily slow and analogue process” said Wayne Marc Godfrey of Purely.Capital who has joined the BGEA as a founding member. “The opportunity to deliver a frictionless secure and trusted backbone to the entertainment industry via blockchain that can record and manage entertainment assets in a trusted, transparent and immutable way – reducing time and physical costs is incredibly exciting and having the BGEA to bring together those of us already working in the space and help provide resources to educate anyone else that is interested is an essential component to increase adoption.”
Benefits to members of the Blockchain Global Entertainment Alliance include access to educational materials and research reports about blockchain technology, access to webinars, regular member meetings, events and newsletters on the state of blockchain technology within the entertainment industry.
Industry participants in the Blockchain Global Entertainment Alliance include Millennium Media (US), Capstone Group (US), Nu Boyana Studios (Bulgaria), FilmTrack (US), Purely.Capital (UK), Home Box Office Singapore (Pan Asia), RightsTrade(US), CineMundo (Portugal), Scanbox Entertainment (Scandinavia), Take One (Scandinavia), Berkley Media Group (UK), PlayArte Pictures (Latin America), Havoc TV (US), Cinezen (Sweden), Cinemarket (Germany), among others.
“We are very excited about the formation of the Blockchain Global Entertainment Alliance. It is critically important that participants in the industry have an understanding of the technology and its effects on their business models. FilmTrack is always looking for ways to better serve our clients and believe blockchain will have a consequential impact in the areas we serve. Specifically contracts, rights management, royalties and other financial flows related to intellectual property’ said Stephen Kassin, President of FilmTrack.
“We continuously face the question of how to retain audience attention and are always looking at the latest technologies to stay relevant. Blockchain technology brings benefits to a global ecosystem – from content creator to consumer – and will redefine how entertainment content will be created. The technology holds great promise, and we are proud to be joining the Blockchain Global Entertainment Alliance as a founding member“ said Yariv Lerner, CEO of Nu Boyana Studios.
Blockchain is a ledger, a digital database that is distributed across a large network of computers. New entries to the database cannot be added unless each computer agrees to make that change, and previous entries are extremely difficult to tamper with once they are recorded. This opens up many use cases for accounting, finance and transfer of value.
It means you have an immutable record of entries, with new entries being virtually immune to fraud. Data can represent anything from rights management, ownership or financial transactions. It could house file storage, digital content and even permissions when someone is able to watch content. Virtually anything of value can be tracked and traded on a blockchain network, reducing risk and the cost of verification for all involved.