> Custos embeds imperceptible bitcoin private keys in the digital files, with different keys for different advance copies of a movie or ebook. (...)
> At the same time, Custos makes a piece of free software that screens movie files for these private keys and markets the screener to content pirates. Pirates now have an incentive to check pirated movie files in case they contain a key. If a key is detected, the pirate can claim the bitcoin bounty—usually between $5 and $10—and is free to keep it. But once a bounty is claimed, Custos is alerted, and can begin the process of figuring out the origin of the leak.
This is really clever! A very interesting social experiment with some game theory dynamics on the way.
Seems pretty self-defeating. I'd just strip the keys and not claim the bounty. This whole system depends on pirates wanting $5 more than they want to pirate the thing, which from my 10 years around release and fxp groups in my younger days, I can say is barely ever the case.
Ah! I read the references to pirates as referring to the person sharing the file online from an original source. But someone just torrenting it or something makes a lot more sense as the target here.
Yes, but watermarks don't leave evidence in a public ledger when the movie is pirated, you have to go out and find the pirated copy and compare watermarks.
Using Bitcoin private keys, as long as some pirate prefers money now to the health of an illegal distributional chain in the future, creates an incentive to get someone else to provide that information to you via the blockchain.
> At the same time, Custos makes a piece of free software that screens movie files for these private keys and markets the screener to content pirates. Pirates now have an incentive to check pirated movie files in case they contain a key. If a key is detected, the pirate can claim the bitcoin bounty—usually between $5 and $10—and is free to keep it. But once a bounty is claimed, Custos is alerted, and can begin the process of figuring out the origin of the leak.
This is really clever! A very interesting social experiment with some game theory dynamics on the way.