Knowing which IP rights are being used, when and by whom helps to establish their value and return.
That is the experience of two leading experts in music, technology and digital rights management, conveyed in the latest “Understanding IP Matters,” which dropped last week.
The field of digital rights management or DRM evolved from the need to track and protect how intangible property, particularly data and software, is accessed at scale.
Innovative companies like Intertrust Technologies today are using their proprietary technology to access, authenticate and establish digital value chains for copyrights, especially audio and video content such as Netflix, key components in AI data sets and output.
Enabler or Impediment?
To find out if AI enables digital rights or is an impediment to them, Bruce Berman, host of the “Understanding IP Matters” podcast (that’s me), spoke to two longtime experts in developing innovative solutions, making music and managing rights.
Talal Shamoon has been CEO of Intertrust Technologies since 2003, when Sony and Philips acquired the early pioneer of digital rights management. Last year alone, InterTrust issued over 20 billion DRM licenses. He is an inventor, Silicon Valley executive, computer scientist, entrepreneur, and author who holds a Ph.D., master’s, and bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering from Cornell University.
Albhy Galuten is a futurist, inventor, double Grammy award-winning record producer (he was nominated seven times), composer, musician, and technology executive. He worked with the Bee Gees on many hits, as well as with Aretha Franklin, Eric Clapton and many others, and is played a role in more than 100 million record sales.
Albhy invented and developed the Enhanced CD, which is used and distributed by all major music labels. He served as Senior VP of Advanced Technology at Universal Music Group, where he started and ran the music industry’s first technology division.
“What are our goals as humanity? Is it just to make everything more efficient? If you make it so that you’re hunter-gatherers and the food shows up automatically, you don’t have to buy anything, you don’t have to make anything — what’s your life worth?”
Albhy Galuten: “If you’re really inventive and original is is not about AI. No AI is going to replace Taylor Swift. I could talk about this for hours.
“For me, there are two overarching factors. One is that AI only learns from the past. It is never really creative. No AI in 1961 would have ever come up with The Beatles.
“So, though it’s an incredible tool, it’s like when they invented the typewriter or the word processor. It is amazing. It’ll be used by lots of musicians, but it will not break the barriers of creating new things.”
Talal Shamoon: “You can’t fight AI. This is the arrow of progress, and I think the net result is going to be positive. It will lift us up as a species. There will be a lot of sausage meat that needs to go into the casing and a lot of people will be unhappy. But fundamentally, these technologies will remove a lot of the drudgery from people’s day to day and really allow human beings to focus on much more creative endeavors….
Human Goals
Albhy Galuten: “What are our goals as humanity? Is it just to make everything more efficient? If you make it so that you’re hunter-gatherers and the food shows up automatically, you don’t have to buy anything, you don’t have to make anything, you don’t have to print anything — what’s your life worth?”
Albhy Galuten spoke at the IP Awareness Summit held on March 28th by the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding, McCormick School of Engineering and Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University. The video will be available on CIPU’s YouTube channel in a few weeks.
To read the written summary by Forbes contributor Madeleine Key and hear the episode, go to IPWatchdog.
Go here to listen on the streaming platform of your choice.
Image source: CIPU
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