hand-id.org · Nonprofit Trade Association · 501(c)(6) Application Pending

Who You Are.
What You’ve Done.
And Who Says So.

HAND is the first persistent, globally resolvable identifier for athletes, actors, creators, and every notable public figure in the Cultural Industries. One ID. Forever. Follows the person — not the team, not the studio, not the platform. Built on the DOI® Foundation — an ISO standard. Governed by a nonprofit. Structured so that no platform, studio, or league controls it.

🏆 Sports? Your NIL & CBA infrastructure problem — solved. ↓ 🎬 Entertainment? The talent identity gap Hollywood never solved — solved. ↓
Join HAND → Find a HAND ID The Standard →
HAND Identity — Human, Licensed Human Likeness, Fictional Character
DOI Foundation
One of only 12 DOI Registration Agencies in the world
The same ISO standard (ISO 26324:2025) behind academic publishing, scientific research, and global content identification — now, for the first time, for human talent.
Wikidata
An official Wikidata property: HAND ID (P14750) ↗
Approved by the Wikidata community in 2026 — HAND IDs now link into the world’s largest open knowledge graph, alongside identifiers like ISNI, VIAF, and IMDb.
HAND Identity — Human, Licensed Human Likeness, Fictional Character
The Clock Is Running
500K+ NCAA Athletes NIL-Eligible — No Portable ID Infrastructure
SAG-AFTRA 2026 Contract Ratified — AI Terms Through 2030
MLB / MLBPA Labor Talks Underway
EU AI Act Art. 50 in Force — Marking Grace Period Ends Dec. 2
CA: No Stripping Provenance Data — Jan. 1, 2027
CA AB 1836 & AB 2602 Now Law
NO FAKES Act Cleared Senate Judiciary
AI-Generated Likenesses: Board-Level Risk, Today
2.7M+
HAND IDs registered in the DOI registry
Live count
10M+
Citation-backed candidate records
Verifiable sources · not self-reported
3.5B+
DOI resolutions per month, across the global DOI system
All Registration Agencies combined · HAND is one of 12
12
DOI Registration Agencies worldwide
HAND is one of them
ISO
26324:2025 aligned identifier standard
DOI · C2PA · CAI · CAWG · IPTC · EIDR
Why Now

The window is open.
It won’t stay open.

More than half a million NCAA athletes are now eligible to run businesses — endorsements, licensing deals, NIL contracts — with no portable, verifiable identity infrastructure underneath them. SAG-AFTRA’s 2026 contract has already written stronger AI terms into Hollywood through 2030, and player associations are bargaining the next round in sports. Legislators have already moved. The organizations that have neutral, machine-readable talent identification in their workflows before the next contract cycles close will be structurally ahead of those that don’t. This isn’t a prediction. It’s already happening.

FORCE 01 — Sports
The NIL Era Has No Infrastructure
The NCAA’s NIL era created 500,000+ new individual rights-holders overnight. Every college athlete is now a potential small business. Every compliance department is drowning. Transfer portal, endorsement deals, multi-platform licensing, AI likeness protections — all of it requires verifiable, portable identity that doesn’t live in a spreadsheet and doesn’t expire when a player changes schools or turns pro. HAND is the answer that doesn’t take sides — neutral infrastructure every stakeholder can use.
500K+ NCAA Athletes NIL Compliance Transfer Portal MLBPA / MLB CBA NFL · NBA · NHL PAs
FORCE 02 — Legislative
The Laws Are Already Signed
California AB 1836 and AB 2602 create statutory liability for unauthorized AI likenesses and AI-generated performances — in the state where most major studios and sports leagues are headquartered. NY S.8420-A and S.8391 extend those protections. In Europe, Article 50 of the EU AI Act took effect August 2, 2026, and the grace period for machine-readable marking of AI-generated content from systems already on the market ends December 2, 2026. California’s AI Transparency Act, aligned to the same date, goes further on January 1, 2027: large online platforms must detect and display provenance data — and may not knowingly strip it. Mexico now requires performers’ express consent for AI cloning of their voice and image. The federal NO FAKES Act cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously in June 2026. CPRA exposure for SSN-based talent identification is an active, unresolved legal risk today. This is not anticipated regulation — these are active laws creating active liability right now.
CA AB 1836 CA AB 2602 NY S.8420-A NO FAKES Act EU AI Act Art. 50 CA AI Transparency Act CPRA
FORCE 03 — AI Provenance
AI Made This Urgent. HAND Makes It Solvable.
Synthetic media, AI-generated likenesses, and digital replicas have made talent identification a trust crisis across sports and entertainment alike. C2PA’s Content Credentials can attest the chain of custody of a file. HAND attests who is in it. Provenance without resolution is a label on an empty box. HAND’s Type 02 Licensed Human Likeness IDs create an auditable consent chain linking every AI or other generated human replica likeness back to a verified, consenting person — the infrastructure every AI governance policy assumes exists but hasn’t. Until now.
C2PA Member CAI Member CAWG Member Type 02 Consent Chain SAG-AFTRA / AMPTP
For the Sports World Specifically

The jersey number is the closest thing sports has ever had to a persistent identifier.
HAND is what comes next.

A jersey number belongs to the team. It gets retired, reassigned, retired again. It doesn’t follow the athlete through a trade, a signing, or a pivot to broadcasting. HAND IDs follow the person — from college scholarship to first professional contract to broadcast career to legacy licensing — across every system, every partner, every platform.

“A jersey number belongs to the team. A HAND ID belongs to the athlete. Forever. It never expires.”

🎓 NCAA Compliance Departments
500K+ athletes. NIL deals. Transfer portal. AI likeness risk. One portable, neutral ID handles all of it — and lives with the athlete, not the school.
🏆 Professional Leagues & Player Associations
CBA negotiations need neutral infrastructure. HAND isn’t owned by the league or the union. That structural fact is exactly why both sides can adopt it without conceding anything.
📷 Sports Media & Broadcast Rights
Streaming rights deals multiply platforms. Every new platform is a new name-matching problem. HAND solves all of them at once, permanently, with a single resolvable ID.
The Registry Is Already Running

The standard is operating
at scale in your industry.

HAND didn’t launch into a vacuum. The registry now holds more than 2.7 million records, and these registrations happened ahead of industry calendars — demonstrating that the registry can operate at scale, proactively, before the market demanded it. The question isn’t whether HAND IDs will be part of your industry’s workflow. They already are.

Sports — Baseball
July 2026
50 Top 2026 MLB Draft Prospects
HAND issued IDs to 50 top prospects ahead of the 2026 MLB Draft — including consensus top-ranked players Roch Cholowsky, Grady Emerson, and Justin Lebron — before a single name was called. The second time in three weeks HAND has established identity ahead of a major sports draft, across two different sports.
Learn More →
Sports — Basketball
June 2026
2026 NBA Draft Class
34 top projected prospects in the 2026 NBA Draft class — including AJ Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer, and Darryn Peterson — received HAND IDs before draft night, the first time an ISO-standard talent registry has established identity for college athletes prior to NBA Draft selection.
Learn More →
Entertainment
September 2026
All 771 Nominees for the 2026 Emmys
For the first time, every nominee for the 78th Emmy Awards — Primetime and Creative Arts, above and below the line — received a HAND ID before the September ceremonies. 771 creative professionals, up from the top acting categories in 2025.
Learn More →
Recent milestones
Proof in Practice · IBC Accelerator 2024

We proved it in 2024.
Most people still don’t know.

At IBC 2024 in Amsterdam, an IBC Accelerator project proposed and led by HAND — and championed by ETC, ITV, Paramount Global, and SMPTE — created a working chain of custody for a consented human likeness, from 3D capture to distribution. Actor, rapper, and SAG-AFTRA member Evan Shafran was scanned with his consent. Evan and his Licensed Human Likeness each received a HAND ID. The finished video carried C2PA Content Credentials naming the content by its EIDR ID and the talent by its HAND ID — verifiable at the point of distribution.

The full story → See the live identity graph ↗
01 — Consent first
A consented likeness, captured on the record
A Licensed Human Likeness of a working performer, created with his consent and captured by The Scan Truck.
02 — One resolvable graph
Human ↔ likeness ↔ producer
Type 01 human, Type 02 likeness, and Type 04 production entity — linked in the HAND registry and resolvable today.
03 — Content + talent, signed
EIDR for the content. HAND for the talent.
C2PA Content Credentials carried both IDs as cryptographic source metadata, detected at distribution end-points — what California requires of large platforms from January 2027.
ChampionsETC@USC · ITV · Paramount Global · SMPTE ContributorsEIDR · C2PA · HAND · EZDRM · The Scan Truck · Videntifier · WaveSeven · Wild Capture · AMD · Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
What is HAND?

A forever ID for every
notable public figure.

HAND issues persistent, unique, globally resolvable DOI-based identifiers for quantifiably notable humans, their connected Licensed Human Likenesses, Fictional Characters, Legendary Figures, and the Legal Entities that credit and attest them across the Cultural Industries. Every HAND ID is sourced from verifiable, independent citations — not self-reported claims, follower counts, or gamed metrics.

⬡
Persistent — no expiration date
A HAND ID issued today remains resolvable forever. It follows talent across careers, platforms, and formats — and survives platform shutdowns, organizational changes, and data migrations.
⭈
Globally unique and freely resolvable
Every HAND ID resolves via the DOI Foundation’s global handle system — the infrastructure built by Dr. Robert E. Kahn, co-inventor of TCP/IP, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Across all of its Registration Agencies, the DOI system handles more than 3.5 billion resolutions a month.
⭗
Five public ID types — the full talent graph
Type 01: Human Identity. Type 02: Licensed Human Likeness (consent-chained to Type 01). Type 03: Fictional Character. Type 04: Legal Entity. Type 05: Legendary Figure. Linked to one another as a resolvable graph.
⬜
Interoperable with EIDR — sibling standards
EIDR identifies content. HAND identifies talent. Both are DOI Registration Agencies on the same Handle System. A production record can carry both. They are complementary, not competing.
Public Object Types · Live Examples
TYPE 01
🧑 Human Identity
10.23/59BB-1EA7-1BAB-413B-37DC ↗
Athletes, actors, directors, musicians, creators. Citation-Backed Notability™ verified.
TYPE 02
🤖 Licensed Human Likeness
10.23/E46E-7EB9-3AF8-E551-23D4 ↗
AI likenesses & synthetic voice models. Always linked to Type 01 — auditable consent chain. This one was born at IBC 2024 →
TYPE 03
🎭 Fictional Characters
10.23/5F45-8D85-5C84-E4AD
IP-protected characters from film, TV, gaming. Rights tracking & licensing automation.
TYPE 04
🏢 Legal Entity
10.23/F90B-E2F3-AF95-276A-A2D7 ↗
Studios, leagues, agencies, producers — credited as they were at the time.
TYPE 05
🏛 Legendary Figure
Mythological, folkloric, and religious figures — public-domain reference identifiers.
Search the HAND Registry → Lookup is always free
Citation-Backed Notability™

Not fame. Not followers.
Verified notability.

Andy Warhol said everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. In a world of viral moments and algorithmic amplification, fame is no longer a reliable proxy for notability. Citation-Backed Notability™ is HAND’s rigorous, reputational methodology for quantifying genuine, enduring significance — the threshold that makes a HAND ID legally, commercially, and professionally meaningful. Only HAND has it.

◯
No single point of failure
Eligibility is determined by a multiplicity of independent citations — not any single arbiter, authority, or algorithm.
◈
No self-reported credentials
No follower counts, no purchased verifications, no self-submitted claims. Every record is sourced from verifiable, reputable third-party citations.
◇
Legally meaningful threshold
The cumulative weight of verifiable citations provides the most durable foundation for legally protected NIL rights in an AI-generated likeness world.
◆
Proprietary to HAND
Citation-Backed Notability™ is a HAND trademark. It is the methodology that makes HAND IDs defensible where it matters — in courts, in contracts, in compliance workflows.
™ Citation-Backed Notability™ — Only HAND Has It

HAND is not a crowdsourced database. Unlike Wikidata, Wikipedia, or IMDb, no one — talent, fans, or members — edits HAND records directly. Records hold only basic public disambiguation data, drawn from independent sources. When public information changes at those sources — including Wikidata, where HAND IDs are linked through property P14750 — HAND picks the changes up.

Governed By Industry Veterans

The people who built the standards
the industry already runs on.

HAND’s leadership is not assembled from generalists. Every person on this page brings specific, irreplaceable institutional lineage — from the bodies that created EIDR, C2PA, CAWG, and SMPTE. Every credential here is publicly verifiable.

RTJ
Renard T. Jenkins in
Chairman, Board of Directors
Founder, I2A2.io. President, HPA. Past President, SMPTE. Thirty-plus years building bridges between creative communities, technology platforms, and global media standards. Named HAND’s first Board Chairman, January 2026.
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers sets the technical standards for how content is made. Its former President now chairs HAND’s board.
WK
Will Kreth in
Executive Director (Non-Voting)
Founder & CEO, Human & Digital. Former Executive Director, EIDR. Former Director of Metadata Management, Showtime Networks, Time Warner, Apple Multimedia Lab. Co-founding team & 1st employee, Wired Magazine. The architect of the HAND standard and the two-entity structure that keeps it neutral.
The standard’s architect serves as Executive Director in a non-voting capacity — preserving the independence of HAND from its commercial parent.
Strategic Advisors
Raymond Drewry in
Co-Founder, HAND. Co-Founder, EIDR. Principal Scientist, MovieLabs. Author of the 2019 MovieLabs white paper “Creating a Talent Identifier for the Entertainment Industry” — which called for exactly what HAND built.
Scott Perry in
C2PA Conformance Lead. CAWG Co-Chair. Sitting at the intersection of content authenticity and AI provenance — the exact standards bodies that make HAND IDs the talent-layer answer to AI-generated content.
Paul Jessop in
Former CTO, IFPI & RIAA. Executive Director, US ISRC Agency. Co-author, ISNI (ISO 27729). Principal architect, DDEX standards. Among the first people Will Kreth brought into the HAND conversation. Author of A Manifesto for Creator Identification and Protection (written October 2023, first published 20 November 2023) — a nine-point bill of rights for exactly the infrastructure HAND was already building.
David Hughes in
Longtime media technology standards executive. RIAA and Sony Music background. Deep expertise in the identifier and rights management infrastructure that underpins the global music industry.
Who HAND Serves

Two industries.
One infrastructure problem.

Sports and entertainment look different from the outside. From the inside, they share the exact same broken plumbing: nobody can verifiably identify the talent that drives all the value — not across systems, not across organizations, not across careers. HAND fixes that. For both. Permanently. And the brands that write checks to both industries need the same fix.

Sports 🏆
Sports — Leagues, Associations & Colleges
500,000+ NCAA athletes are now NIL-eligible, with zero portable identity infrastructure. Professional player associations are negotiating CBAs that will define AI likeness rights for a decade. Leagues and rights holders are distributing athlete identity across more platforms than ever. HAND is the neutral, persistent identifier that works for the league, the union, the athlete, and the compliance department — because it’s controlled by none of them.
Why HAND? A jersey number belongs to the team. A HAND ID belongs to the athlete. Forever. It never expires.
Entertainment 🎬
Entertainment — Studios, Guilds & Platforms
Film studios, TV networks, music labels, streaming platforms, and the guilds that represent above-the-line talent have lived with the talent identity gap for decades. EIDR solved content. HAND solves talent. AI-generated likenesses, synthetic voice, and digital replicas have turned that gap into a legal and reputational liability. HAND’s auditable consent chain is the infrastructure every AI governance policy assumes exists — but didn’t, until now.
Why HAND? Content has had a global ID since 1997. The people who make it deserve one too.
Talent ⭐
Talent & Their Representatives
Athletes, artists, and creators don’t sign up for HAND — and don’t need to. HAND IDs are issued from independent public record and stewarded through the organizations that already represent talent: agencies, management companies, guilds, unions, and leagues. The ID persists through every career transition, platform migration, and change of representation. Your HAND ID follows you. Nobody else owns it.
Talent? Ask your agency, guild, union, or league about HAND. That’s your lane in.
Brands 📈
Brands & Advertising
The brand writing the NIL check and the studio licensing the digital likeness have the same infrastructure problem: they need to know, verifiably, who they’re paying — and prove it, in court if necessary. Advertising is the economic engine that connects sports and entertainment. HAND is the identity layer that makes verified talent attribution possible at scale — across every campaign, every platform, every market.
Why HAND? Because “we thought we had the right person” is not a legal defense.
Traction

They saw this coming.
Now you can too.

Not testimonials. Receipts. These are statements from the people who run content operations at major studios, build metadata infrastructure for Hollywood, and produce at the intersection of sports, IP, and emerging technology. Independent voices. Unprompted. All pointing at the same gap.

Athletes should have another number to navigate and simplify their careers.
“There is a reason why there are numbers on every athlete. They should have another number to navigate and simplify their careers. We should consider the individual advantages if talented people could have more control over their work identities. I think HAND is a step in that direction.”
James Blevins
Chairman, HPA NET · Media Consultant & Producer (Lucasfilm) · Sports & Entertainment
True automation arrives when all key master data is machine readable.
“In my years working to optimize content supply-chains at Warner Bros. Pictures — we always thought it would be great if not only content, but talent — had a unique, global ID. True automation arrives when all key master data is machine readable. HAND Talent IDs will help push this vision into a reality.”
Susan Cheng
ex-EVP, Content Operations — Warner Bros. Pictures
This is a great move for the industry to get aligned around the value of global, persistent talent IDs.
“Fabric looks forward to HAND’s Talent ID standard arrival. We’ll definitely include them in our workflows via our orchestration layer. This is a great move for the industry to get aligned around the value of global, persistent talent IDs in media & entertainment overall.”
Rob Delf
CEO — Fabric · Cloud metadata orchestration for major Hollywood studios & global VOD platforms
Attribution of character in new virtual environments will be essential for IP rights holders to be compensated correctly.
“I am constantly reminded of the fact that attribution of character in new virtual environments will be essential for IP rights holders to be compensated correctly. What HAND is looking to do with a global Talent identifier could go a long way towards helping reduce friction and ambiguity in these emerging storytelling worlds.”
Chris Pfaff
CEO, Chris Pfaff Tech/Media · Co-Chair, VR/AR Association · Member, Producers Guild of America
Memberships & Affiliations
DOI Foundation ISO 26324:2025 C2PA CAI CAWG (DIF) IPTC DPP SMPTE Metadata Registry Ayra (via HAND Foundation)

The standard is being built.
The question is whether you’re inside it or outside it.

HAND membership is how your organization participates in the governance, development, and adoption of the universal talent identifier standard — before the next CBA cycles close, before the legislative enforcement windows open, and before your competitors are already integrated. Lookup is always free for everyone. Membership is how you shape what comes next — and our rates are public.

Pioneer · Founding Board
Founding Board Member
$50,000 / year
 
✓ Board seat, vote & attestation
Major studios, networks, sports leagues, guilds, and player associations. The only tier that votes on how the standard is governed.
Contact HAND →
Pioneer · Institutional
Institutional Member
$25,000 / year
 
Attestation · committees · no vote
Mid-market studios, talent agencies, and sports organizations. Bulk catalog mapping, registration, and deduplication services.
Contact HAND →
Pioneer · Associate
Associate Member
$10,000 / year
 
Committees & working groups · no vote
Agencies, production companies, independent producers, regional leagues, and university athletic departments.
Get in touch →
New · Startup
Startup Member
$2,500 / year
2-year commitment
Working groups · no vote
Independent companies five years old or younger, with under $20M in annual revenue.
See what’s included ↓
Developers & Integrators
Platform integration
API-first teams building HAND ID resolution into products and supply chains: sandbox, SDK documentation, C2PA / CAWG / EIDR guidance. Priced by scope.
Always free
Public registry lookup
Anyone, anywhere, can search the registry and resolve any HAND ID at no cost, forever. No membership needed.
What each tier includes
 Founding Board$50K / yrInstitutional$25K / yrAssociate$10K / yrStartup$2.5K / yr
Board seat & voting rights✓———
Authorized record attestation†✓✓——
Standards committees✓✓✓—
Working groups✓✓✓✓
API access & ID resolution✓✓✓✓
Bulk catalog mapping & deduplication✓✓——
Member roster listing✓✓✓✓

Only Founding Board members vote. Institutional and Associate members sit on committees and working groups, where the standard is actually shaped, without a vote on the board. Every membership includes an annual review with the HAND team. †By agreement; see below.

†Where a Founding Board or Institutional member holds the rights to a character, or a documented representation agreement covering talent, HAND can authorize it to attest and maintain those records — by agreement, and only while membership is active. A HAND ID itself is never sold, transferred, or locked against the person it identifies.

Additional details, terms, and conditions are available to HAND participant member companies as part of membership.

New · Startup Member
Building the future of talent, AI, or provenance?
Build it on the standard.
A discounted membership for early-stage companies whose products touch talent identity, licensed likenesses, AI media, provenance, or creator tools.
Who qualifies: independent companies five years old or younger, with under $20M in annual revenue. See the fine print ↓
$2,500 / year
Billed annually · two-year commitment

What you get

  • API access to search the registry and resolve HAND IDs in your product
  • Sandbox, documentation, and HAND ID candidate submission rights for qualifying named talent entities and notable public figures*
  • A seat in HAND working groups — a voice in how the standard evolves
  • Listing on the HAND member roster as a Startup Member

What you give

  • A two-year commitment
  • Put HAND IDs to work: resolve them, display them, carry them in your metadata
  • Flag errors and identity changes you find, so the registry improves for everyone
  • Share what you learn in working groups — and, with your OK, a short case study

The win-win

Every company that resolves HAND IDs makes the standard more useful for the next one — and makes your product interoperable with the studios, leagues, and platforms adopting the same IDs.

You get infrastructure you couldn’t build alone. The ecosystem gets one more system speaking the same language.

Apply as a Startup Member → Choose “Startup Member” on the membership form. The HAND team follows up directly.
Startup Member eligibility — the fine print
  1. Five years old or younger, measured from the date of incorporation.
  2. Under $20 million in annual revenue (trailing twelve months).
  3. Independent: not a subsidiary, spin-out, or affiliate majority-owned or controlled by a larger company. Those organizations join at the standard tiers.

*All HAND ID candidate records must attain the required citations and/or affiliations for admission to the HAND public registry.

Additional details, terms, and conditions are available to HAND participant member companies as part of membership.

The Advertising Connection

The brand writing the NIL check and the studio licensing the digital likeness have the same infrastructure problem. Advertising is the economic engine that connects sports and entertainment — and verified identity is the infrastructure advertising has always needed but never had. HAND is how brands, leagues, studios, and platforms all operate from the same verified record of who the talent is.

Commercial identity intelligence services — enriched talent records, Citation-Backed Notability™ scoring, NIL analytics, and enterprise integrations — are provided by Human & Digital, Inc., the commercial services partner that operates HAND’s registry infrastructure.
humandigital.tech →
Membership

Is Your Organization Ready
to Join the Standard?

HAND is a B2B nonprofit trade association open to any organization with a stake in how notable talent identity is managed and protected across Cultural Industries — player associations, talent agencies, studios, networks, platforms, guilds, leagues, NCAA programs, and technology companies. Tell us about your organization and we’ll be in touch.

How HAND IDs are issued
HAND identifies notable talent from independent, verifiable public record — Citation-Backed Notability™ — not self-submission. There is no individual sign-up, and HAND does not provide consumer support.
TalentAsk your agency, management company, guild, union, or league about HAND. That’s your lane in — HAND works with organizations through their verified affiliations with the talent they represent.
OrganizationsIf your company manages, represents, or credits talent — agencies, guilds, leagues, studios, platforms — we want to talk to you. Use the form below.
Step 1Confirm you’re contacting HAND on behalf of an organization.
Step 2Pick the membership tier that fits — or “help me choose.”
Step 3Tell us about your organization. The HAND team reviews and follows up directly.

Are you contacting HAND on behalf of an organization?

Not sure? Choose “help me choose” and we’ll recommend the right fit. Looking up HAND IDs is always free — no membership needed.