Blockchain, as well as providing an effective means to track the publication history (i.e., licensing) of any given photograph, also provides a less obvious benefit to counter a more insidious problem faced by photographers: detecting when an original photograph has been modified by Photoshop and, only then, infringed. Blockchain can provide unimpeachable evidence of its provenance by its creator.

Nevertheless, despite what Kodak's CEO naively implied, infringement is NOT a photographer’s greatest problem. I can state that fact authoritatively, with decades of experience in the Commercial Photo marketplace, including behind the camera, with both empirical experience and having executed the most extensive customer development exercise ever seen in this industry.

Blockchain (in photography) is a FEATURE, not a business. But for the sake of argument, let’s say that it IS the major problem. In that case, if you are a photographer who has discovered your copyrighted photograph has been infringed (whether you found out via blockchain or another already-in-use technology), how do you expect to get paid, to be made whole? Do you suppose the process will be any easier, or different, just because of blockchain? Isn't that Kodak's rationale for its foray into blockchain?

An infringer, once discovered, will most likely ignore your payment demands, irrespective of whether or not you can prove copyright ownership. (Copyright ownership is implicit , anyway.) You have little or no legal recourse because it costs too much for most photographers to hire a lawyer to sue the infringer. The only way a lawyer will take your case on a contingency basis is if you have already filed a FEDERAL COPYRIGHT REGISTRATION. Registration is the key to the courtroom. It mandates a $150,000 statutory fee — i.e., backed by federal law — for each infringement of each individual use of a photograph. Now, that's a deterrent!

There is nothing in Kodak’s or anyone else’s blockchain business model to account for getting paid by copyright infringers. Moreover, no wannabe player in this game has put forth a business model that will attract PROFESSIONAL photographers to contribute their content to the stock photo pipeline in the first place.

How do I define "professional" you ask, and why is that important? Simple: any photographer who has already been trusted & hired by major brands & media companies to shoot commissioned jobs. That excludes about 99% of every contributor to the stock photo pipeline. But pros are the photographers from whom buyers want to license content because, right now, they complain that content sources are stale, bloated, and overused. (That's a whole 'nother topic.)

But there is a BIGGER reason why blockchain is a dead end — AS A BUSINESS, not a feature — specifically in photography. As it represents a “distributed” model, blockchain antithetical to the idea of a centralized source of curated content — the very kind of content Enterprise buyers demand. From the contributing photographer's pint of view, it gives them no individual market reach; no connection with customers. As for allowing photographers to set their own prices . . . HA! That IS their biggest problem. They have no idea how to do it. Blockchain may work in a consumer-retail marketplace, but not Enterprise. And Enterprise is the larger segment in Commercial Photo, albeit grossly underserved.

By "Enterprise" I specifically exclude the market currently served by Getty Images, Shutterstock, and Adobe Stock et al., which is comprised of shopkeepers, freelancers, and startups, all looking for cheap pictures to fill up their Web sites. But if your are one of that ilk of photo vendors, your business model is pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap. That means you have to sell the same picture over and over again at radically low prices to MANY DIFFERENT BUYERS to hit your revenue projections. But that's bad for buyers with a brand identity to protect. (There are a number of other, equally important reasons.)