About HAND

WHAT IS HAND?

HAND (Human & Digital) is built on a unique identifier standard: ISO 26324.2022 – Digital Object Identifier System (DOI) providing global Talent Identity resolution & verification  – enabling cost savings, greater security, and revenue acceleration.  

As a B2B SaaS company, HAND bring simplicity and scale to talent identity with Identity Intelligence – our interoperable talent ID framework – built to enable reliable verification of quantifiably notable real (legal & natural) persons, their virtual counterparts, and fictional entities. 

As talent’s consent-based Digital Replica usage grows, trusted tools providing vectors of authenticity for talent’s unique NILV (Name, Image, Likeness, and Voice) are essential. Authorized by the DOI Foundation as one of only 12 registration agencies in the world, HAND’s ID registry meets emerging needs for talent provenance automation in the digital age.  

WHAT DOES HAND IDENTIFY?

HAND’s interoperable, forever IDs enable standards-based verification of THREE TYPES of quantifiably notable talent objects in the modern media supply-chain: Legal & Natural People, their connected Digital Replicas, and Fictional Character – in sports, entertainment, news/politics, gaming, fashion, and more.

LEGAL & NATURAL PERSONS
HAND ID: 10.23/F72B-0103-B361-05F9-3Z71
CONNECTED DIGITAL REPLICAS
HAND ID: 10.23/5F45-8D85-5C84-E4AD
FICTIONAL CHARACTERS

HAND is more than Hollywood, it's SPORTS & Public Figures...

By Cyrus Saatsaz - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=95661895
HAND ID: 10.23/B77C-A6A1-D3E8-1E13-D6C7
By Erik Drost - https://www.flickr.com/photos/edrost88/51959977144/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=131408908
HAND ID: 10.23/825C-139B-34A6-9DED-E6DE
HAND ID: 10.23/3950-E6C7-068B-0D04-C734

..and Fashion, Gaming, Music, & beyond

Key Features & Benefits

Unique Talent Identifiers Built For: 
Entertainment 🎬 • Sports 🏟 • News/Politics 📰 • Fashion 👗• Music 🎹
Gaming 🎮 • and Beyond


Just as a barcode effortlessly standardizes information about products in a resolvable manner, HAND standardizes essential talent information for the media and entertainment ecosystem. By authenticating notable human talent, their connected digital replicas, and fictional characters, HAND’s interoperable Talent ID tracks, protects, and and unlocks new revenue streams by automating talent utilization across the media supply-chain.

 

Global Talent Identity Resolution 

Imagine a seamless onboarding process where a constellation of star talent, real, virtual, and fictional –  can be easily identified and tracked. By eliminating duplicate entries and ensuring accurate data, organizations save time and resources.

Cost Savings

When everyone in the media supply-chain operates with the same reference point, clear and immutable IDs simplify tracking of rights, royalties, and residuals. This automation reduces time spent fixing manual errors, higher audit costs, and the need for extensive reconciliation efforts.

Revenue Acceleration

Similar to a barcode, HAND’s Talent ID ensures accurate tracking of real and virtual talent-related transactions, as well as expediting licensing and monetization of legacy content for talent rights clearances.

Meet HAND CENTRAL - a 1 Minute Demo Video

In this quick-fire demo video of HAND Central(made from a 6 minute demo compressed to 1!) you can see our world-class data transformation platform for talent identity.  

Developed in partnership with 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. 

Industry Experts on HAND

“In my years of 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
“Fabric Data 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 ID’s in media & entertainment overall.”

 

ROB DELF – CEO – Fabric-Xytec
“..I am constantly reminded of the fact that attribution of character in the new virtual environments will be essential for IP rights holders in order 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 LLC, Co-Chair, VR/AR Assoc., Member, Producers Guild of America – New Media Council East
“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 (MESH, Valid Essence, Lucasfilm)

A Manifesto for Creator Identification and Protection

by Paul Jessop

first published – 20 November, 2023

Those involved in the creation and interpretation of artistic works such as literature, music, dance, movies and television should have the right:

  • To be unambiguously identified through machine readable codes that can be associated with their endeavors,
  • To have their name and an unambiguous code associated with their endeavors when they elect to require this,
  • For this association to be a technically robust binding so that it is hard to remove the association,
  • To be able to license, or refuse to license, their Name, Image and Likeness (NIL – including their vocal timbre and style) for the creation of digital replicas,
  • To have their name and unambiguous code robustly associated (when they require it) with digital replicas in a way that makes it clear that the replica uses the NIL of the creator but does not capture the creator themselves,
  • To have an unambiguous code associated (when they require it) with each distinct authorized digital replica so that compliance with the relevant license can be ascertained,
  • To be protected from digital replicas that assert or imply that they capture the creator themselves,
  • To be protected from digital replicas that are not in compliance with the license conditions applicable to the identity of the relevant replica.
  • To be protected from captures and digital replicas that are associated with names or codes that are incorrect, whether or not this is done in pursuit of gain by the party involved.


NOTE:
some of these rights are close to rights that already exist in (for instance) implementations of the WIPO treaty protections for Rights Management Information (RMI) or implementations of moral rights. However, these existing rights are imperfectly implemented globally and are heavily circumscribed by (for instance in the case of the protection of RMI (termed Copyright Management Information) in the DMCA which effectively requires an act to “induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement of any right”.

Ver. 1.0 – PMBJ – 2023-10-06 

HAND Advisor Paul Jessop is an independent consultant who provides advice through his company, County Analytics Ltd. in the UK.  After a career in engineering and strategy with British Telecom, Paul was for 13 years CTO at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and subsequently at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Since 2016, he’s been a technology advisor to the DOI Foundation.

Paul is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the Royal Institution of Great Britain. He is a Member of the Audio Engineering Society. He obtained a degree in Engineering and Computer Science at Cambridge and a post-graduate Diploma in Management Studies at Oxford.

BOTH IS BETTER

We intentionally named the company HAND (Human & Digital) – because we wanted to help foster a world where the co-existence of human creativity, augmented by the capacities of digital technologies – are acknowledged for the potential of their additive (not reductive) inter-relationships.

An ethical world where IP rights are respected, where human agency is a given, consent is essential, where trust and transparency are a feature, not a bug.

A world that respects both the Human – and the Digital – which is why we say: