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Bitcoin DRM Media Sci-Fi Television The Almighty Buck

'SingularDTV' Will Use Ethereum For DRM On A Sci-Fi TV Show (rocknerd.co.uk) 78

It's "an epic sci-fi adventure about the human race's journey into a theoretical technological Singularity." Or is it an "entertainment industry boondoggle...part DRM snake oil marketing, part pseudo-Bitcoin scam and part sincere Singularitarian weirdness?" Long-term Slashdot reader David Gerard writes: SingularDTV is an exciting new blockchain-based entertainment industry startup. Their plan is to adapt the DRM that made $121.54 for Imogen Heap, make their own completely pre-mined altcoin and use that to somehow sell two million views of a sci-fi TV show about the Singularity. Using CODE, which is explicitly modeled on The DAO ... which spectacularly imploded days after its launch. There's a white paper [PDF], but here's an analysis of why these schemes are a terrible idea for musicians.
'Singular' will be a one-hour adventure/drama "that explores the impact technology will have on the future of our planet and how it will shape the evolution of our human race," set in the years 2021 to 2045, "as an unprecedented technological revolution sweeps over the world..."
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'SingularDTV' Will Use Ethereum For DRM On A Sci-Fi TV Show

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21, 2016 @04:40PM (#52744343)

    Could not make any connection out of two readings of it.

    • it's just using blockchains for distributed DRM so they don't have to rely on the Record Industry's stores. Probably mostly so when the files show up on a torrent tracker they know who uploaded them. There's lots of stuff in there about eliminating parasitic record contracts but they kinda ignore the whole part where the record companies pay the bills while your tour ( albeit on credit and and horrendous interest rates, but try getting a loan from a bank to go tour with your band sometime ). Record companie
      • by Anonymous Coward

        Tech does work for getting into venues. It's called the "telephone" and there's a newer one called "email."

        As for getting on the radio, tech "solved" (this is half bullshit and half perfect truth) that problem by making radio less important. Lots of people now can initially hear your band in other ways (thanks to tech) than just radio.

  • Like , whatever...?

  • Investment scam? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21, 2016 @04:41PM (#52744353)

    This buzzword salad has to be some sort of investment scam. There's no way they can be delusional enough to think this is actually a revenue-maker.

  • by AuMatar ( 183847 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @04:43PM (#52744365)

    this really manages to fall below them. Was there anything in that summary that was supposed to make sense?

  • by jjeffries ( 17675 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @04:48PM (#52744375)

    Monotonectally facilitate efficient intellectual capital! Enthusiastically strategize strategic paradigms! Credibly productize leading-edge scenarios!

  • Hi!

    My first language is not english but i can't make sense of the post. Someone can explain?

    • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21, 2016 @05:10PM (#52744461)

      There's a company with something that's like Bitcoin, except that they mined a whole shitload of it first before releasing it to the public.

      This company plans now to make a television show.

      You can only watch this you purchase it, and you can only purchase it using their Bitcoin clone.

      They have their own proprietary DRM that they think will prevent anyone from pirating this show.

      This scheme (their DRM paired with their Bitcoin clone) has already been attempted by this company; it was previously used to sell a single from musician Imogen Heap. In that case, it made a whole $121.

      It appears as though this is some type of scam, but it's not exactly clear how it's supposed to pay off for them. I speculate that they're going to throw the whole idea at investors and try to nab someone stupid enough to be blinded by the buzzwords, but I don't know.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I went with +1 insightful, because there was no +1 god damn magical Turing like decoding power

      • It appears as though this is some type of scam, but it's not exactly clear how it's supposed to pay off for them.

        See, there's the problem...scams are supposed to be easily accessible and sound plausible to the end user, I mean, "mark".

      • Original article author here: you have summarized the whole thing better than I did.

      • "It appears as though this is some type of scam, but it's not exactly clear how it's supposed to pay off for them."

        The true mark is the one that thinks they are in on the con.

      • What I understood was you buy one piece of their digital currency. This serves as a DRM token. Whenever you want to watch the show you resubmit the record of owning the digital currency piece/DRM token and they will stream it to you. There may be the added process of creating a new record in the transaction database every time a token is resubmitted and a new number representing the new transaction returned to the user. That would make sense to me. Or maybe there is a rental model, and the currency is added
      • If you can only watch it by using their new coin, they probably want to build up a user-base. This will hopefully raise the price of the coin, making their pre-mined coins a lot more valuable.

    • My first language is not english but

      I would have thought that would be an advantage.

  • by Calydor ( 739835 )

    See title. 'Nuff said.

  • Until they release it on Betamax...

  • by a_nonamiss ( 743253 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @05:44PM (#52744591)
    I think I've arrived at a human translation: Some company wants to raise money to make a Sci-Fi show that can only be purchased via some BitCoin knockoff. However, this same distribution mechanism has failed spectacularly for musicians in the past.
    • by Calydor ( 739835 )

      To perform the same actions and expect different results is ... par for the course, I guess.

    • Some company wants to raise money to make a Sci-Fi show that can only be purchased via some BitCoin knockoff.

      What are we supposed to buy the bitcoin knockoffs with...ears of corn?

      If it's money, why not just use....money? Or would that not be buzz-wordy enough?

    • That was my take also.

      Unless they put out something like Axanar, they simply won't overcome the barriers to entry for the audience inherent in this approach for more than a negligible few.

  • "Their plan is to adapt the DRM that made $121.54 for Imogen Heap, make their own completely pre-mined altcoin and use that to somehow sell two million views of a sci-fi TV show about the Singularity."

    How about "no"? Does "no" work for you?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      OMG $121.54? That's an unheard-of amount of money. If the sci fi show makes even a fraction of that they'll be able to buy sandwiches for like ten people!

      • by Archfeld ( 6757 )

        You've obviously never worked in Craft services. That kind of money won't even buy the mustard to cut for 10 sandwiches :).

  • ...that they post reverse-get-rich-quick scams.

    It's like a bad hi-tech variant on those spam messages touting obscure stocks.

    "A fool and his money are soon parted" comes to mind.

  • "The DAO was a digital decentralized autonomous organization and a form of investor-directed venture capital fund.

    The DAO was crowdfunded via a token sale in May 2016. It set the record for the largest crowdfunding campaign in history.

    In June 2016, hackers exploited a vulnerability in the DAO code to enable them to siphon off one third of The DAO's funds to a subsidiary account."

    Wow, what an awesome track record of security, lol. Thanks, but I'll pass.

  • by BenJeremy ( 181303 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @06:16PM (#52744709)

    microdoses of LSD... it's supposed to be MICRODOSES help you focus and be more creative. Taking several regular doses might make the day go by easier, but it won't help you write comprehensible shopping lists, let alone article summaries.

  • I am not even sure that it is possible to determine what they actually want to do that is worthwhile under all the buzzword-camouflage. I am sure however that they will find enough idiots to give them money for it.

  • when it comes out on betamax
  • by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @08:07PM (#52745131) Homepage Journal
    Things make money due to marketing. That is the cruel truth. Popular music and TV and movies are popular because of marketing. Most popular movies are pure crap, including all the Marvel movies. But due to marketing people spend billions to see them. So any scheme that doesn't include marketing isn't going to work.
  • by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @09:16PM (#52745407) Homepage

    Pretty much by definition, anything post-Singularity will be incomprehensible to anyone pre-Singularity, so any story actually based post-Singularity will either be faking it or be incomprehensible.

    From the looks of that summary, they've got a pretty good start on the latter....

    • Exactly.

      How on earth can anyone produce a TV series about PS, when everything that ties us to our anthropomorphic, biocentric model of the world has been made redundant?

      No individuality, no collective, no mortality, no sense of time (as we understand it), totally incomprehensible ideas of value.

      Twits.

  • Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, suspendisse euismod tellus leo nec, mauris neque imperdiet tincidunt volutpat elementum tellus, diam in massa enim et lectus mattis, rhoncus luctus sed eu id lectus. A diam orci dolor odio risus mollit, cras vestibulum sed nulla velit ascetur condimentum, tristique nam ut magna

  • Blockchain-based entertainment industry startup SingularDTV plans to use distributed computation network Ethereum to sell access to a new Sci-Fi television show about the Singularity. The Ethereum Blockchain is known for it's 'Smart Contracts' or distributed programs that can handle transactions of arbitrary tokens between different cryptographically signed accounts. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum Tokens can be created in any quantity at will for any purpose without the need for computationally expensive mining o

  • "as an unprecedented technological revolution sweeps over the world..."

    I'm wagering ($0) it's something like this book.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Charles Stross writes a good book, for sure, but it's a little slow... too slow for how this amazing tech could/should be used, by the general populace) to make it more exciting.

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