Microsoft wants to use Ethereum blockchain bounty system to catch pirates

Microsoft’s research department, with the participation of researchers from Alibaba and Carnegie Mellon University, released a new paper, in which was studied a blockchain-based incentive system for anti-piracy campaigns.

The Redmond-based software giant plans to combat piracy rely on the transparency of Ethereum blockchain technology. In a new paper released by Microsoft, the major software developer studied a blockchain-based incentive system to tackle piracy with a blockchain-based bounty system titled “Argus.”

 The system allows volunteers to report piracy in exchange for a reward. It uses the Ethereum blockchain and is transparent, practical, and secure while limiting abusive reports and errors.

Microsoft is one of the world’s most prominent copyright holders with vast experience in fighting piracy.

The research, titled “Argus: A Fully Transparent Incentive System for Anti-Piracy Campaigns,” suggests Microsoft’s new system relies on the transparency aspect of blockchain technology. Built on the Ethereum blockchain, Argus aims to provide a trustless incentive mechanism while protecting data collected from the open anonymous population of piracy reporters.

“We see this as a distributed system problem,” claimed in the study, “In the implementation, we overcome a set of unavoidable obstacles to ensure security despite full transparency.”

Argus is a transparent system built on the Ethereum blockchain, which is allowing people to anonymously report piracy in exchange for a bounty.

Pirated content is traced back to the source through a unique watermark that corresponds with a secret code. When a pirated copy is reported, the status of the source (licensee) is changed to “accused.” The system provides an appeal option, but if that fails, the accused status changes to “guilty.”

Argus is an open system, but there are various safeguards to prevent abuse. For instance, reporting the same pirated work multiple times under different aliases is useless as that will only reduce the reward.

“Industrial alliances and companies are running anti-piracy incentive campaigns, but their effectiveness is publicly questioned due to the lack of transparency. We believe that full transparency of a campaign is necessary to truly incentivize people,” the paper reads.

Detailing the issue of Ethereum network fees, the paper explained that the team optimized several cryptographic operations “so that the cost for piracy reporting is reduced to an equivalent cost of sending about 14 ETH-transfer transactions to run on the public Ethereum network, which would otherwise correspond to thousands of transactions.”

Whether Microsoft has any plans to test the system in the real world is unknown. It theoretically works with various media types, including images, audio, and software. It’s also unclear how effective it will be. The researchers assume that the watermarking technology deployed is tamper-free, which isn’t always the case.

The paper and the Argus system will be presented at the upcoming 40th International Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, which will be held virtually in late September.

Big tech companies have become increasingly concerned with protecting intellectual property and fighting digital piracy around the world. Tech Mahindra, the IT subsidiary of Indian conglomerate Mahindra Group, recently launched a new blockchain-based digital contracts and rights platform on IBM’s Hyperledger Fabric protocol for the media and entertainment industry, as Cointelegraph reported earlier.