Have you ever noticed how the blockchain champions who advocate societal change somehow tend not to pay for the content? Could it be that copyright protection is not meant to be in our bright future? Well, there's good news and bad news for you: The bad news is copyright violation affects mostly соnsumers and small-scale copyright holders; The good news is that blockchain ensures almost 100 % copyright protection. Content Piracy: Who Takes the Blow?



In short, the big names reduce their art to kitsch while the emerging bands, artists and film studios are left with empty pockets.

Hoi polloi vs. die-hard aficionados

Has it ever dawned on you that the last two parts of Alien series were inexplicably lame, to say the least? Of course, one could easily blame it on Ridley Scott's respectable age. But other sci-fi franchises are not exactly in a good place either. Terminator has long since become a low-grade cockamamy trash on blockbuster budget. Marvel and DC universe movies slowly but surely go downhill. Transformers аre holding up only due to excessive use of special effects.

Despite strong criticism all over social media from cinematic universe fans as well as other people spotting plot holes here and there, film studios are never out of pocket. They still roll in money. Just look at these numbers:

Prometheus earned $403 million at the box office, against production budget of $130 million, amounting to $273 million profit;

Alien: Covenant pulled in $233 million, against a production cost of $97 million, thus, earning $136 million;

Terminator Genisys grossed a worldwide total of $440 box office returns, against $155 million production budget, making a profit of $285 million;

To put this into perspective, the original movies Alien and The Terminator brought in only $93 million and $72 million respectively.

As you can see, low-grade sequels that make the fans want to rip their face off and write strongly-worded comments often outstrip the iconic original films at the box office. As is often the case with fans, you might have studied the Alien universe in every single detail, read countless times rare comics and best fanfics. But the proprietary studio that carries the brand name may simply have little or no regard for the franchise history, its established rules and, at times, even pure logic.

So what lies at the root of this problem? It all comes down to fighting copyright infringement.

Film studios target not true art-lovers but those willing to pay for the ticket. So what if they care about popcorn and coke more than about actual movie? He who pays the piper calls the tune!

What does it matter to a filmmaker what fans have got to say? As long as the ticket sales are up you're fine. What about а solid plot? The hell with it! Let us give you some brain candy nicely wrapped in 5D special effects! You could go out at any time and be back in 20 minutes and you still wouldn't miss much. Going to the movies has become somewhat of an evening pastime for a lay audience. What's on the big screen? Some Alien, space opera, horror, thriller... Alrighty then, let's go!

The same goes for game industry, music and fiction. The public is not too demanding. Mr. Average has always been for flashy and gaudy stuff. Indeed, who would bother about plot, performance and style nowadays?

The thing is, true fans rarely pay for the content while lowbrows just eat it up like a bag of candy and are always ready to throw some money your way.

To All Those with a Gift — Go Find Yourself a Real Job!

Back at the dawn of digital era, when information became easily distributable, almost every author had a chance to get famous and rich. But times have changed. Think about all those vbloggers working on Youtube and only chosen few making decent money. It's videohost management that decides who stays in the big game and who gets out. Why don't they find some other ways to communicate with the audience then? One of the reasons being that Youtube guarantees IPR protection. Granted, you can post an original video content on some other hosting site. But if it's a high-quality video, it is bound to wind up on Youtube in a matter of hours. And the pirate who stole from you will most likely receive more views.

And what to say of the music industry! It's all in the hands of top brands, TV channels, and tender organizers. The only way to get your place in the sun is to turn to iTunes service and the like. Why so? Because they protect the copyright.

The same holds true for a new cultural niche of game production. Тhe Big Four rule the day while all others share the crumbs from their table. To get the idea, look at the number of independent developers who made it to the top relying on kickstarter and similar platforms. ICO Partners reports a significant decrease in the number of game projects over the past years. As of the current year, an average of only 30 games per month get funded. But what's more important is that the independent teams no longer pour their hopes into selling digital copіes. They now prefer users to prepay for the games. They know it won't be long before their content would spread for free. Even Star Citizen, a large-scale crowdfunded project, makes more money selling additional content than copies.

Blockchain almighty

Much as copyright and related rights infringement are a source of some major friction nowadays, the issue can be resolved. Namely, by using Blockchain, the purpose of the technology being to secure transactions and store them with no access restrictions.

How to make it a reality

When talking about content consumers we mean all the users who download, watch or listen to certain content. A transaction is a primary publication, download or content display. Аt first glance, it might seem that with all the views added to the distributed data base, its size would skyrocket. But our user count is meant to surpass that of Bitcoin's. Though some predicted its demise since the very introduction of the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is pretty much alive and thriving, thank you very much.

The next step is to introduce cryptocurrency which would subsequently be used to pay for the transactions. It's no big deal, people already use all kinds of digital currency all over the place. Тhere is even sexcoin which is used to pay for adult services. The most extraordinary projects can already raise sufficient money at ICO.

Getting people to pay you

I think in this day and age you can't get people to pay you other than voluntarily. Other approaches lead to a dead end. We need to fuse bitcoin and kickstarter technologies together. Thus, creating a free-will donation system with almost free-fee money transfer. All the money paid by users are going straight to the author. No need for control, the process of verification and transaction entry is similar to that of Bitcoin. Format and signiture-checked data is then stored in another information block.

And now we proudly introduce to you our StopTheFakes.io system. It won't only be popular with indie developers, amateur filmmakers and up-and-coming rock bands, but with big-name companies as well. With direct over-the-counter transactions and transparent accountability, this system is one of unquestioned excellence!