The primary software developer’s new plan to combat piracy relies on the transparency of blockchain technology.
Software piracy or quite any form of piracy is troublesome and has been around for years now.
Windows operating system and Office productivity suite have been top accomplishers on any software piracy platforms.
So, it’s no wonder that Microsoft, the programmer of both products, works hard to establish antipiracy measures.
Microsoft now has a plan to converse the threats of software piracy. According to a report by TechRadar, Microsoft researchers need to use blockchain to struggle with piracy.
Microsoft desires to create a system known as Argus, constructed on the Ethereum blockchain and permit customers to report anonymously to deal with the issue.
Microsoft can pay a bounty in trade of writing piracy circumstances – some form of financial report.
Argus enables backtracing pirated content to the source corresponding with a secret code, a watermarking algorithm detailed in the paper.
Also named “proof of leakage,” each report of leaked content requires an information-hiding procedure.
When pirated content reports and denies enhancement, the status of the source (licensee) will be changed to “accused”, succeeding to “guilty”.
This way, no one but the informer can report the identical watermarked copy without literally possessing it.
The system also has incentive-reducing safeguards to avert an informer from reporting the same leaked content over and over under different aliases.
“With the security and utility of Argus, we hope real-world antipiracy campaigns will be truly effective by shifting to a fully transparent incentive mechanism,” the report stated.
Microsoft mentioned that the present methods aren’t confirmed to be efficient in the analysis paper: “Industrial alliances and companies are running antipiracy incentive campaigns, but a public cross-examine asking their effectiveness will be there due to the deficiency of transparency. We consider that full transparency of a campaign is required to incentivize people truly.”
There’s no crystal timeline on when Microsoft will roll out the system.