The 130-year old photography company Kodak has missed the Digital revolution by staying back with its film-based cameras. But it doesn’t want to miss the cryptocurrency and blockchain technology revolution.
That’s why Kodak is launching KODAKOne image rights management platform and KODAKCoin, a photo-centric cryptocurrency to empower photographers and agencies to take greater control in image rights management.
Kodak is teaming up with WENN Digital to do this. According to the BBC, Kodak’s shares increased 120 percent shortly after the announcement for the launch of KODAKCoin and KODAKOne.
Utilizing blockchain technology, the KODAKOne platform will create an encrypted, digital ledger of rights ownership for photographers to register both new and archive work that they can then license within the platform.
With KODAKCoin, participating photographers are invited to take part in a new economy for photography, receive payment for licensing their work immediately upon sale, and for both professional and amateur photographers, sell their work confidently on a secure blockchain platform. KODAKOne platform provides continual web crawling in order to monitor and protect the IP of the images registered in the KODAKOne system.
Where unlicensed usage of images is detected, the KODAKOne platform can efficiently manage the post-licensing process in order to reward photographers.
Kodak CEO Jeff Clarke is saying that “For many in the tech industry, ‘blockchain’ and ‘cryptocurrency’ are hot buzzwords, but for photographers who’ve long struggled to assert control over their work and how it’s used, these buzzwords are the keys to solving what felt like an unsolvable problem,”
The initial coin offering will open on January 31, 2018 and is open to accredited investors from the U.S., UK, Canada and other select countries.
News Source: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180109006183/en/KODAK-WENN-Digital-Partner-Launch-Major-Blockchain