back to article Not Bitcoin, but close: Red Hat and Microsoft bite into blockchain tech

Red Hat is offering upstart financial types the opportunity to play with blockchain tech on its OpenShift platform. The news comes a day after Microsoft struck a deal to investigate blockchain tech in partnership with major financial institutions. In a blog post, Redmond exec veep of business development, Peggy Johnson, wrote …

  1. h4rm0ny

    Assets

    This seems to be a generalized approach to tracking ownership of digital assets. Could it be used for tracking ownership of digital products such as movies, music, ebooks, etc? That would make it more viable to resell digital products which is an unsatisfactory area right now.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: tracking ownership of digital products

      But you don't "own" the digital product at all

      You have a non-transferrable right to use, for your own personal domestic purposes only.

      1. h4rm0ny

        Re: tracking ownership of digital products

        Nothing inherent to digital products requires that the right to use be non-transferrable. So yes, you can own digital products. Nor that they be "domestic personal use only". Just like you can own a paper book, you can own an ebook. In neither case does copyright allow you to distribute copies of it.

        So, to get back to my question...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: tracking ownership of digital products

          > yes, you can own digital products

          The way our society works, the "ownership" of the digital product is with the artist or their agent.

          As an end-user, at best what you have is ownership of a limited right-to-use.

          Yes, such rights could be transferrable. This doesn't require a blockchain: it just requires that the real owners are happy to have transferrable rights, and any way to record that.

          In practice, rights owners see they can make more money by selling rights to A and later selling the same rights to B, rather than selling rights to A which A can sell on to B - thus forming a secondary market in rights which they don't benefit from.

          Airlines could make airline tickets transferrable. They choose not to for the same reason.

          1. h4rm0ny

            Re: tracking ownership of digital products

            >>"The way our society works, the "ownership" of the digital product is with the artist or their agent. As an end-user, at best what you have is ownership of a limited right-to-use."

            You can own a product. You can own copyright on something. These are different things. If I own a car, I own it. Even though I don't own the patents that would allow me to manufacture copies. If I own a book, I own it. Even though I don't own the copyrights that would allow me to print copies. And I own a number of digital products. Even though I don't own the copyrights that would allow me to distribute copies. Again, there is nothing inherent to a product being digital that requires the model to be different. So hopefully my question can be answered rather than just have people pontificating on their views on copyright. Especially when even in your own post you concede that what I say is correct.

            >>"Airlines could make airline tickets transferrable. They choose not to for the same reason."

            Yes. And they did that when you had paper tickets as well. I own several products that I am free to sell on if I wish. So what I am interested in is whether this technology can be used to track ownership. It's a pretty simple question asked genuinely by someone interested in this technology for this purpose.

            >>"Yes, such rights could be transferrable. This doesn't require a blockchain: it just requires that the real owners are happy to have transferrable rights, and any way to record that."

            This is incorrect and why I am asking my question. With a digital product, reproduction is trivial. If we want to sell a digital product under the same model as a physical product, we need two further things to do that well. The first is to be able to prove legitimate ownership in a scenario where there could be two instances of the same thing (unlike physical goods where if B gains, A loses by an equal amount); and second is for a third party to be able to follow it in order to enforce copyright law. It seems to me that this technology could meet both of those needs very effectively, but I'm hoping that someone who knows about this will reply to me rather than a couple of soap-boxing freetards who conflate ownership of copyright (creation and distribution rights) with ownership of a product.

        2. This post has been deleted by its author

          1. h4rm0ny

            Re: tracking ownership of digital products

            >>"Have you ever read the EULA for a piece of digital software?"

            Silly question. No-one has. Have you ever read the "EULA" for a piece of digital music, say an mp3 purchased from Amazon? I have. I own that MP3. The file includes (usually) metadata from my purchase identifying me as the owner as well in case I distribute it. If you don't understand the difference between ownership of copyright and ownership of a product, then you must go through life very confused. For example, whenever someone says they bought a car and it blows your mind that they think of it that way even though they don't have ownership of the patents needed to produce it.

            >>"I suggest you learn more about digital copyrights and ownership, rather than down voting the people who tell you how it is in the real world."

            Yes, I have multiple accounts and all those downvotes are just me logging in and out of the Register just to downvote the response to me.

            Idiot.

  2. Tim Brown 1

    The problem with blockchain tech...

    is that there is no concept of archiving. So to properly verify the current entries you need the whole blockchain which just keeps growing and growing.

    Unless that is, you have some sort of central authority to sign and publish checkpoints in the chain periodically.

    1. Alistair

      Re: The problem with blockchain tech...

      "Unless that is, you have pay some sort of central authority to sign and publish checkpoints in the chain periodically.

      FTFY

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cutting out the middleman

    Banks and brokerages wouldn't be so interested in the tech if it would allow cutting out the middleman, since in many cases (credit cards, stock purchases) they are raking in countless billions by BEING the middleman.

    What they want is to 1) reduce their costs so being the middleman becomes even more profitable than it is now and 2) to use technological means to further secure and entrench their position as middleman.

  4. Phil Bennett

    Escrow / vetting services

    The banks will be interested in being trusted brokers (for a fee, naturally). After all, its all very well transferring money to an anonymous swiss bank, but even better if you can guarantee that the Swiss bank account belongs to a person of impeccable credentials (which we have recently determined means 'can afford a lawyer in Panama')

  5. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    Blockchain...

    Replacing a one femto-cent trusted and secure data field entry with $17 worth of CO2-emitting hash processing. Crypto - yeah, but you're doing it wrong.

    That what Quasars are. Somebody in a distant galaxy bought an actual blockchain, leading to an endlessly-recursive hash processing chain reaction.

    1. Chairo

      Re: Blockchain...

      Oh come on, as the electric car industry told us - electricity is clean, pollution free energy that just comes out of the wall socket. (/irony)

    2. Old Handle

      Re: Blockchain...

      Ah trusted, but Trust is hard to come by. It may be one of the scarcest commodities of all.

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