Frequently Asked Questions
THE PROBLEM & OPPORTUNITY of TALENT IDENTITY
Unique IDs Move Markets
Global industries that have scaled successfully have at least one thing in common: A standard, persistent, unique identifier to automate their supply-chains.
This is true for CPG, Pharma, Book Publishing, Recorded Music, and in the last decade +, Film & Television titles: verifiable ID resolution. However, Hollywood has talked for years about creating a unique Talent Identifier for the notable people who appear in movies & TV, yet has failed to do so.
While at the same time..
…some companies claim to have “Non-Proprietary Identifiers” in the media supply-chain – when, in reality, they are neither global Standards-based – nor follow FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles.
ENTER HAND
What is HAND?
- A DOI (DOI.org) Registration Agency (RA) for Talent Identification in the Real, Virtual and Fictional worlds
- A business intelligence platform
Who is HAND?
- HAND (Human & Digital) is a deep-tech infrastructure venture – developed in collaboration with Technical Emmy-award winning data scientists, and built for the M&E (media & entertainment) industry – by veterans from the areas of content metadata, production workflows for Film & TV, CGI/VFX leaders, taxonomists / ontologists, data architects, experts in knowledge graphs, AI, machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and media metadata standards.
Where is HAND?
- Global / International – the DOI is an International Standards Organization (ISO) standard: ISO 26324:2012 – Information and documentation — Digital Object Identifier system
Who is the DOI?
- The DOI Foundation (founded in 1997) supports 12 DOI Registration Agencies – with unique, persistent identifiers used in the areas of scientific research, documentation, cited papers, building materials, and soon – billions of digital biological specimen identifiers to tag the biodiversity of life on Earth.
Why HAND? Why Now?
- Because Talent identity (in Real, Virtual and Fictional Worlds) – in the decades to come – need a registry to act as a trusted 3rd party, with deep verification, credible authenticity and resolvable persistent IDs – developed and curated by trusted experts in digital identity. As a DOI RA – HAND follows the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles established by Force 11 in 2014, and published in Scientific Data, part of the journal Nature in 2016.
How Robust is the DOI?
- Performance testing has shown the DOI’s Handle system is capable today of creating a maximum of 11,532 handles per second (with an average latency of 70 ms when that maximum throughput was observed). For a day – this would be a maximum 86,400 x 11,532, equalling about 1 billion handles per day.
When did HAND start?
- Funding and Development initiated in 2022
What awards has HAND won?
- Knowledge Graph Conference 2022 – NYC -🏆 Winner: Startup Pitch Competition
Who are HANDs Initial API & Beta Partners? (as of 12 Sept. 2024)
- Sony Pictures Entertainment, AFI (American Film Institute), EIDR, Fabric (Xytech), Opus Data / The Numbers, The Scan Truck, Wild Capture, MetaRex Media, BB Media, SimplyTV
Who are HANDs Industry Partners / Affiliates / Memberships?
- DOI Foundation, EIDR, C2PA, CAI, IPTC, DPP, AWS, Semarchy, CDSA
Who are HANDs Potential Customers / TAM?
- Talent Agencies, Talent Guilds, Payment Processors, Ad Agencies, DSPs, Sports Leagues / Federations, Film Studios, TV Networks, News Organizations, Music Labels, Video Gaming companies, Fashion agencies, Publishing houses, and more
What are HANDs benefits to the industry?
- Interoperable, composable, orchestrated, curated Talent identity – unified under a Canonical ID
- True DOI standard resolvable, persistent ID – extensively tested, with high availability and security
Why do Talent (both real & virtual) and fictional characters need unique IDs?
- When you can’t automate data transactions, you cause friction in supply-chains. Imagine a world where all notable talent from cultural industries – both real and virtual personas – plus fictional characters – (from the worlds of sports, movies, television, music, news, fashion, podcasts, radio, streaming, online, etc.) have the benefit of a global unique ID – automating and streamlining millions of business transactions.
What valuable role does HAND provide?
- Governance, Leadership, Access Control, ID registration, resolution, API access (to partners and customers)
- RAND (Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory) licensing
CITATION-BACKED NOTABILITY™
Only HAND has it!
What is CITATION-BACKED NOTABILITY™ ?
Andy Warhol said that one day everyone in the world would be “famous for 15 minutes.” Warhol’s comment about the eventual broad distribution of brief fame and notoriety now seems prescient in our hyper-connected world – where previously unknown private individuals can become either famous or infamous public figures in a blink of a viral video’s eye. However, fame can be fleeting, and may differ from true notability – being worthy of note – and this presents a pragmatic problem: what criteria should be used to assess if celebrity or notoriety is meaningful in any legal, business, or marketable sense?
Why Citation-Backed Notability™ ?
HAND (Human & Digital) is a B2B Talent ID registry and service that knows that while fame and fans may be fickle, citations are not, and Citation Backed Notability™ (CBN) provides a practical mechanism for identifying notable people – and quantifying the level of their enduring relevance and significance.
As a rigorous, reputational methodology of quantifiably notable public figures in the world, the CBN model of establishing a threshold of Talent ID eligibility provides a system for validating the criteria for what makes talent verifiably notable and a sensible basis for business decisions. CBN is both a threshold for notability and a process that leads to the creation of a machine-readable HAND ID – a unique DOI (Digital Object Identifier) that is assigned to three key areas of a persona: Legal Entity Humans, their connected Digital Replicas, and Fictional Characters. This approach addresses the realities of a technological ecosystem where digital replicas / avatars of real people are becoming more prevalent, a trend that we expect will only continue to expand.
And in a world of increasing generative AI and deepfake technology use and abuse, the cumulative weight / gravitas of an individual’s professional citations lend credence (or backing) to the attestation of their genuine authenticity – with legitimately conferred and legally-protected NILV (name, image, likeness, voice) rights – ideally conveyed in authorized / licensed business workflows and transactions.
In developing a ISO-level, public talent identifier – informed by a system & method of distributed reputation management, HAND’s goal remains to create resilience, by means of a Composable Identity – enabled by multi-factor authentication, and made more valuable due to multi-vector attestations of reputation, designed to be inherently durable and detectable throughout their life-cycle – due to the following attributes for optimal Talent ID creation and curation:
No single-point of failure- No single arbiter of authenticity – but rather,
- A multiplicity of verifiable citations and credentials from
- A community of reputable, well-curated public and private sector enterprises
- With one ID to connect them all
Citation-Backed Notability™ – only HAND has it!