The technology behind Bitcoins could be used to drive the next generation of transactional video streaming, to ensure viewers pay directly to content holders and get content at a better price than ever before.
As reported by Bitcoinist.com, a new project called White Rabbit aims to reduce overhead and simplify how users purchase content and, specifically, how content creators get paid.
Their breakthrough idea involves using Blockchain technology, the P2P based technology that drives Bitcoins. To put it very simply, Blockchain is essentially a distributed, peer-to-peer database that ensures all transactions are easily verifiable, and completely transparent. This forgoes the need for centralised servers to keep user account, payment data, and thus makes fraud and hacking less likely. It's this central, or rather, decentralised idea that the team behind White Rabbit wishes to apply to the arena of buying movies and TV shows (or buying any content, really) online.
So instead of having gatekeepers like Apple controlling not only the distribution of content, but also payment from users and royalties to content holders, White Rabbit allows users to pay content holders directly without any middlemen. Distribution will be handled by any number of open streaming providers, who remain largely content agnostic (and whose only purpose is to serve content, not to negotiate pricing or handle financial transactions).
This, the people behind White Rabbit says, will allow for more transparency, cut down the number of intermediaries needed to handle the transaction, and allow content creators to get paid instantly. For the end user, this will mean lower costs and greater flexibility in choosing how they purchase and watch their content. For the content creators, it may mean more revenue and more control over how their content is being sold.
A group of film producers, distributors, blockchain experts, and software developers have teamed up to work on the project, with a contribution campaign to start in November.
[via Bitcoinist]
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