-- --
Facebook
Twitter
Google
Pinterest
SCREEN AFRICA EXCLUSIVE: The modern-day pirate has a new target - by stealing original digital content such as films, books and music, they rob hardworking creatives of their intellectual property and income. To address this problem, masterminds at Stellenbosch University in South Africa created a solution to redefine the bounty hunter as we know it, by luring pirates with bitcoin in order to find out the source of the contraband material.
The result is Custos Media Technologies, a start-up - founded by G-J van Rooyen, Fred Lutz and Herman Engelbrecht - which embeds imperceptible bitcoin private keys in digital files, with different keys for different advance copies of a movie or an eBook.
-- --
Media distribution is broken. Movies, ebooks, software - all are distributed using a paradigm from the 20th century: that the creator has, for the greater part, control over who receives the content, and that unlicensed duplication and distribution is difficult and rare enough to be managed. The cornerstone of this paradigm is intellectual property', because physical property has these properties of controlled distribution and costly duplication, comments Herman Lintvelt, chief technology officer at Custos. However, in the 21st century, this concept has become dangerously broken. Large and expensive digital assets are copied with impunity, and distributed globally. Media creators have little recourse once files are shared on the Internet, because the prolific sharing happens largely anonymously, and often outside jurisdictions where owners can enforce media rights.
Custos was developed at the MIH Media Lab at Stellenbosch University in 2014 as an answer to this problem. Right from the start, Custos has been underpinned by Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. The low-latency AWS platform allows Custos to scale easily to address the fluctuation in the demand for its services. Scaling refers to the ability to increase the capacity of existing hardware or software by adding resources, Lintvelt explains. As customers upload new media files, such as films at unpredicted times, Custos Media systems need to scale, on multiple regions at different times, from almost no activity to massive load, so that they can process hundreds and thousands of files for watermarking.
According to Lintvelt, the idea for the solution came about when van Rooyen and Engelbrecht were working as directors of the MIH Media Lab at Stellenbosch University - which focussed on cutting edge new media research. At the time, co-founder Fred Lutz was completing his Masters in Economics - focusing on the economics of piracy - at the university. The idea that was eventually patented was the culmination of years of industry and research experience in the watermarking industry, and an early interest in blockchain technology, he explains.
Custos' flagship product is its enterprise integration service for digital media protection. Clients who wish to protect video, audio, ebooks, or documents can integrate with Custos' API to register, assign, and monitor media items - with minimal impact on their existing workflow. The online screener distribution tool, Screener Copy, is easily adapted and re-branded for custom use cases. Screener Copy uses cutting-edge blockchain and forensic watermarking technology to help filmmakers and distributors distribute and secure their content. Whether you only want to send out a couple of screeners to reviewers, or are marketing thousands of copies daily, Screener Copy is the seamless video distribution software the creative industry's been waiting for, explains Lintvelt.
In early 2016, the first version of the product that is now called Screener Copy was launched. We needed a way to demonstrate the blockchain tracking technology that we developed and patented, says Lintvelt. The first version of Screener Copy had very basic functionality: Users could upload their movies, we would watermark it with the Custos tracking technology, and then send out the copies to the intended recipients. Since then we have built a full stack of modular products on AWS that we can combine to meet the needs of a range of media customers in different markets and regions.
Last month, about two years after sending the first screener, the company recorded 130 000 sent copies. As luck would have it, it was a local title that was the 100 000th copy. We are incredibly proud to have helped our customers all over the world protect their content. And protect them we have: Of the 130 000 copies that were sent, we have not had a single leak, says Lintvelt. How's that for effective? Depending on what market you are in, between 20 per cent and 60 per cent of screener copies are leaked. We have taken that down to zero in every market we have entered, all with the power of the blockchain!
Facebook
Twitter
Google
Pinterest
-- --
Most recent headlines
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Taking the Stage at Carnegie Hall-On a Global Scale Boston Conservatory Orchestra students reflect on their epic concert marking the 80th session of the UN Gene...
22/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Neerav Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
22/12/2025
Hitting the bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts ...
22/12/2025
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with...
22/12/2025
Gravity Media prepares for a flight of fancy with the PDC World Darts Championsh...
22/12/2025
One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the ...
22/12/2025
The Famous Group's Jon Slusser on Fascinating Fans Through Immersive Content...
22/12/2025
ESPN's Meg Aronowitz on Continuing High-Quality Broadcasts of Collegiate Spo...
22/12/2025
ESPN Takes Data-Driven Storytelling to New Heights with MNF Playbook with Next ...
22/12/2025
For a decade, popular German podcast Fest & Flauschig has hosted an annual Chris...
22/12/2025
Paramount Scores Largest Share Increase Among Distributors as Paramount and CBS...
22/12/2025
New multi-year deal integrates Roku's data to fuel Nielsen's measurement suite
Roku gains access to Nielsen's streaming ratings, showing The Roku C...
22/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
22/12/2025
Berklee Wrapped 2025: Our Top News and Stories A look back at a year highlighted by faculty milestones, major film and television projects, Bob Dylan's ho...
22/12/2025
The works of Plato state that when humans have an experience, some level of change occurs in their brain, which is powered by memory - specifically long-term me...
22/12/2025
Partnership integrates complementary satellite data and AI analytics to enhance security, infrastructure, and environmental monitoring solutions for global cust...
22/12/2025
Workflows allow you to create a sequence of planned events which may be added to your template(s) or inserted directly into your sequential or background playli...
22/12/2025
Monday 22 December 2025
Sky extends PGA TOUR partnership until 2029, as Sky Spo...
22/12/2025
Back to All News
Global Anime Hits and New Releases Take Center Stage at Jump Festa 2026
Entertainment
22 December 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied to clipboar...
22/12/2025
Siobh n McSweeney, Rory McIlroy, Elon Musk, Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin, Ivan Yates and Traitor Paudie Moloney lead new characters for Callan Kicks the Year 2...
22/12/2025
Winner announced in the picturesque surroundings of Wicklow's Avondale Tower and Treetop Walk
Andrew Trimble wins the show in his first series as coach
Th...
22/12/2025
The 2025 winners have been announced today, Sunday 21 December, for Ireland's largest choral competition Choirs for Christmas hosted by RT lyric fm.
Ove...
21/12/2025
Back to All News
Legoshi and Haru's Story Reaches Its Finale: BEASTARS Fin...
21/12/2025
John Shortt named Young Sportsperson of the Year Kerry are the Team of the Year
...
20/12/2025
Atomos announced the immediate availability of a new firmware update for its Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX monitor-recorders, unlocking ProRes RAW recording from the...
20/12/2025
CJP Broadcast has completed the digitisation of the European Gymnastics tape archive, converting 328 tapes containing more than forty years of recorded material...
20/12/2025
Bitmovin, the leading provider of video streaming solutions, today announced the launch of the Stream Lab MCP Server, to give AI agents and large language model...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Barack Obama Includes Laufey on His 2025 Favorite Music List The former presidents roundup of books, music, and movies includes a song from the Berklee alums ...
20/12/2025
Study reveals a key hormonal circuit in the kidneys Scripps Research scientists identify the protein that helps kidney cells regulate renin, providing foundatio...
19/12/2025
With Playout Release 2025.4, ToolsOnAir continues to push professional playout w...
19/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Diversified's Jared Timmins on AI for Broadcast Sports and Cre...
19/12/2025
2025 SVG Summit Audio Recap: Say What?The Audio Production and Distribution Workshop at the SVG Summit 20 took on issues including speech intelligibility, Next-...
19/12/2025
Gamified fun: Channel 5 on its NFL Big Game Night ambitions with Hungry Bear Med...
19/12/2025
College Football Playoff Preview: For ESPN, Round 1 is a Fantastic Yet Familia...
19/12/2025
AWS's Jason Dvorkin on Developing Partnerships With the NBA and PGA Tour, Em...
19/12/2025
Netflix Kicks Off Packed Sports Week with Paul-Joshua Fight Before Shifting to N...
19/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Nareev Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
19/12/2025
Mounted to the pylon of an AH-1Z Viper helicopter, a Red Wolf vehicle successful...
-- -- 
