How Custos Media Technology Protects Online Content From Being Pirated
How Custos Media Technology Protects Online Content From Being Pirated. Before Custos if people wanted to use forensic watermarking to protect their media from piracy and copyright infringement, they had two choices: look for pirated content themselves, or pay a company that specialises in (centralised) pirated content detection to do it.
Using a decentralised leak detection model, Custos moves media monitoring to the crowd by decentralising the search for leaked content to human bounty hunters across the globe, so it can pick up things machines would miss, and its clients can enjoy 24/7 global, online and offline monitoring – even into the dark web, behind paywalled pirated content, private file sharing groups, and into campus networks.
To date, Custos’ content watermarking and distribution solutions have protected over 500,000 films, e-books, and confidential documents from copyright infringement, using blockchain-based media tracking ─ to reduce piracy by 99.97%, in markets across four continents.
In early 2016, Custos launched the first version of its product that is now called Screener Copy. Custos needed a way to demonstrate the blockchain tracking technology that it developed and patented. The first version of Screener Copy had very basic functionality: Users could upload their movies, Custos would watermark it with the Custos tracking technology, and then send out the copies to the intended recipients. Since then, Custos has developed a full stack of modular products that can be combined to meet the needs of a range of media customers in different markets and regions.
The underlying technology was invented by an experienced cross-disciplinary team specialising in signal processing, distribution systems, crypto currency, machine learning, and media and behavioural economics. Since then the team has grown to include various experts in the fields of watermarking technology, the economics of piracy, and the use of decentralised systems and the Bitcoin blockchain.
G-J van Rooyen is the company’s CEO, he holds a PhD in Electronic Engineering, specialised in signal processing. He also founded and directed the MIH Media Lab, a cross-disciplinary research lab focused on pre-commercial MediaTech applications. He has been involved in the crypto currency space since 2013 and advises businesses and government agencies on blockchain regulation and blockchain for media.
