Italian Copyright Collecting Agency SIAE Launches More Than 4 Million NFTs On Algorand Blockchain

SIAE, the Italian copyright collecting agency founded in 1882, and Algorand, a blockchain platform accelerating the convergence of decentralized and traditional finance, has announced the creation of a blockchain-based open platform that allows transparent and efficient management of authors’ rights.

For the first time, copyrights will be represented as digital assets. The 4 million NFTs on Algorand will digitally represent the rights of the more than 100,000 authors associated with SIAE, improving rights management and creating an open infrastructure that protects copyright globally. Thanks to the technical capacity, strength and stability of Algorand’s blockchain, the creation of these 4 million NFTS took just a few hours versus days on other blockchains. Using Algorand Standard Assets (ASA), a standardized, Layer-1 mechanism that allows the creation of any type of asset on the Algorand blockchain, these NFTs are incredibly fast, secure, and low cost (due to Algorand’s miniscule transaction fees).

Digitizing these rights on a decentralized and transparent public blockchain is the first requirement to build an open infrastructure able to protect author’s rights end-to-end, as envisioned by SIAE for the future of the industry.

“Ensuring the protection of creativity has been SIAE’s mission for 139 years, and this project demonstrates that our goal is to continue to guarantee it for the next 139 years,” said Gaetano Blandini, General Manager of SIAE. “We are not interested in building technological infrastructures to generate profit. Instead, our goal has been and always will be to create value addition for our members. This is why we can afford to talk about open infrastructures and make all our know-how available to the community. Blockchain technology is definitely an interesting strand to continue exploring because of its transparency and efficiency – by design – features, which are fundamental for those who, like us, manage the salary of other people’s hard work.”

The creation of these unique digital assets is the first step towards even more ambitious goals, allowing for more transparent and efficient management of the rights themselves, in their journey from those who use the right (those who listen to music, for example) and those who live with royalties (the music creator). In the future, the role of intermediaries in the ecosystem of content and rights management will change radically. According to SIAE, it can and will facilitate a transition to new blockchain-based platforms that will rapidly and profoundly change the business models for many other intermediaries across the management of rights and contents.

“SIAE has brought an ambitious project to life, where transparency and simplicity in data management are becoming a new reality for their industry,” said Silvio Micali, founder of Algorand. “SIAE is a forward thinking organization that will open up new opportunities as they build the foundations for new economic models. I am thrilled to have SIAE a part of the Algorand ecosystem as they embrace the scalability, efficiency and security of Algorand.”

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