Future of NFTs in the entertainment industry: no longer the “wild west” of intellectual property law?
Abstract
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) can be a good device to provide fair payment and distribution to artists in the music industry and/or film producers who license their products to service providers (streaming and sharing platforms) to be paid and distributed fairly. For this reason, intellectual property (IP) owners need to reconsider their IP protection and licensing strategies according to new technologies.
NFTs enable buying and selling ownership of unique digital items and monitoring the complete history of ownership records using blockchain technologies. However, this method is not just restricted to transfer and keeping track of the ownership but also supports preventing reproduction. An NFT can only have one owner, and smart contracts manage the ownership and transferability of NFTs using unique identifiers and metadata.
When streaming providers enter into licensing agreements with film producers using NFTs, customers who purchase a film can transfer ownership by retransferring the NFTs. Furthermore, it is also possible to see how many transfers of ownership have taken place so that the film company or/and the filmmakers can track their recurring royalties in a more transparent transfer ledger. Moreover, streaming companies can also eliminate one of their serious problems: the menace of the reproduction of their digital assets maliciously.
NFTs can help solve a core problem of digital ownership by answering the question of what ownership means when you cannot sell or trade digital assets. NFTs will shape the future of the entertainment industry by offering different perspectives on blockchain technology.
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