EZDRM’s Olga Kornienko Talks C2PA, Content Authenticity, and DRM at Streaming Media 2025
In a candid interview at Streaming Media 2025, EZDRM COO and co-founder Olga Kornienko and Future Frames producer Doug Daulton trade helpful analogies in discussing the growing importance of content provenance in the age of generative AI and deepfakes, as well as the role that the C2PA standard and DRM providers like EZDRM can play in protecting content authenticity and content creators’ rights in a changing media landscape.
The Importance of Content/Data Provenance
Daulton introduces himself and Kornienko and asks, “Can you tell us a little bit about EZDRM and what y’all are working on?”
Kornienko shares, “EZDRM is a hosted, managed video content security-as-a-service company. We have been working on expanding our offering and going from being known as a DRM provider to adding a number of other services and products to our portfolio to expand it to offer a more complete video security solution.”
Daulton wonders if data provenance is part of what EZDRM is working on, and Kornienko notes that “provenance has been a very important topic lately.” She explains it as attempting to show people how to understand the source of the content they’re seeing “and whether or not it’s been modified since it’s been published.”
Daulton adds that provenance also protects the intellectual property (IP) itself. “Some of the stuff that we’re seeing now from the Sora 2 tests, where [for example,] you’re seeing Dr. [Martin Luther] King’s speeches being manipulated as a test to show how authentic it looks and then having a watermark or some other thing that flags in the system, just [helps people] understand this is satire,” he says.
What C2PA Protects
Kornienko builds on this observation by bringing up C2PA, the Coalition for Content Provenance, which “does not attempt to answer the question of whether or not this content is factually correct. It basically wants to say that if you believe the Earth is flat, you can talk about it, and you can say that ‘the Earth is flat and I believe it, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.’ And as long as you don’t claim to be [a] scientific organization … and don’t claim it as scientific fact, you can say whatever you want,” she explains. “And then the other part of it is tagging AI content and saying that it is AI.” She notes, “I just watched somebody create a video of a guy fighting an ant; it was hysterical. Nobody’s trying to pretend that it’s real.”
Daulton and Kornienko discuss the trend of videos showing babies interacting with wild animals. “So to your point—I think it’s an interesting one—you can say whatever you want, but if you’re going to show a video that says that it claims to be this thing, at the very least the audience needs to know that it’s been modified. It’s not the original source footage,” Daulton summarizes. Kornienko adds that it could be the original footage, but someone could claim to have created it instead of the true creator. Or if the person posting it claims it’s from a legitimate news source, such as CNN or Fox News, that would be a problem.
“Somebody approached me and said that they get content from various news organizations, they’re posting it, but they don’t understand why they would need C2PA,” Kornienko continues. “My response to them was, ‘Well, in case you post it maybe with your logo or something—give credit to New York Times to post it with your logo—and then somebody modifies that and starts propagating that,’ and then New York Times starts going, ‘Wait, no, this is not an authentic content we gave you.’ You have a defense mechanism of saying, ‘Well, look, this is what you gave me. This is what I posted, and it’s signed with my company’s signature, and now this content that’s out there doesn’t have the signature anymore.’ It means that somebody modified it and didn’t bother to sign it.”
Daulton expands on this point: “Well, and there’s the IP violation issue there, but then there’s also the legal liability issue and being proactively defensive about that. So if you post something and then someone modifies it and then a bad actor goes and acts on that, and then they come back and say, ‘Well, Olga said X.’ Well, no, she didn’t. She can prove that she didn’t say X. They took this and manipulated it, and then that’s another very important business case to consider.”
“And that also goes into brand reputation and also potentially manipulating markets,” Kornienko agrees. She introduces another example from her conference panel, in which two companies issuing a joint press release could be erroneously reported to be merging, thanks to AI. “People go in to buy their stocks; stock market goes up. By the time information comes out, somebody made a lot of money, and it was all completely fraudulent.”
“And then the SEC is going to come knockin’ and asking questions,” Daulton quips.
“Exactly. Whereas, and if it’s protected with C2PA—and I use the word protected, meaning that it’s signed with C2PA and it protects your brand reputation—you can go back and say, Well, this is the version that we published, and this is what we shared,” Kornienko explains.
Daulton has a good analogy: “It’s essentially the digital media version of a notary being able to say, Hey, I witnessed that this content is factual and this is the state it was in, and if it gets manipulated or changed down the road, you have a way to say, No, [it’s] on the internet. Somebody can do whatever they want with it, but you can’t come back to me with it.”
Kornienko nods. “Correct. And contrary to DRM, where once content is encrypted, it can’t change anymore, C2PA allows for creativity still because if you come up with a funny video of a cat saving a baby from, I don’t know, a bear, and I decided that a unicorn should be involved in that whole process too somewhere … I can make that change and I can then sign it myself, and then people can see that this is your version and this is my version, and if they for some reason are anti-unicorn, they can’t go after you for torturing poor unicorns or something.”
Daulton reiterates her message, adding: “It seems like it’s an extension of the Creative Commons ethos. And then [there’s] the remix culture [that’s] been extant for the last 10 years between YouTube and now TikTok. And so there’s a way to say, ‘Hey, let my content go viral and be reused and mashed up,’ but also be able to say, ‘I didn’t actually say that.’”
Kornienko emphasizes, “I think a lot of it comes back to making sure that your rights are protected, and with C2PA, you can continue to do creative things with content while protecting the original creator’s rights, and IP, and reputation, and so on and so forth.”
What C2PA Doesn’t Do
EZDRM has been a member of C2PA “for a while now, and I feel like even recently at IBC, at NAB, I would sit down and I’d say, ‘Hey, we’re working on C2PA,’ and most people go, ‘What is that?’” Kornienko laments. “At this show, we’ve noticed that completely spontaneously there were conversations about the technology and the standard that people are having, that the industry is starting to get to know the technology and the standard. And maybe [there’s] a little bit of confusion about the fact that some people believe it still validates the content, where it basically says that if this is signed by C2PA, it means this is how it happened and this is what actually happened, and this is the utter truth.”
Daulton helps out when she falters for a moment in thinking of an example: “If you were to say that the sky were blue in this video, then it’s not actually going to certify that the sky is actually blue.” He adds, “It’s really just certifying that it’s your content that you created. … It’s, ‘I have ownership of this.’”
Kornienko replies, “And even if the sky is orange and I say it’s blue, then it’s my own opinion.”
Getting the Public to Understand C2PA
Kornienko says, “Short of that confusion of what C2PA actually means, I feel like there’s a lot more conversation about it. The industry is starting to understand the technology and understand use cases and starting to get kind of comfortable with it. And I’m hoping the next step would be to have the public at large get into it, understand it as well, and actually start to possibly demand content that has provenance in it so that we can at least say, ‘Yes, this is C2PA content and we can trace the source of it.’”
Daulton offers this analogy from a panel he attended: “For years and years and years, there was HTTP and HTTPS, and it took a while to educate the public that you don’t want to make a transaction unless you’re on an HTTPS site, and all you need to do is look for that little green lockbox in the browser. And it feels like that’s the same kind of thing, or training the community to say, ‘Hey, I’m looking at this. It doesn’t look like it’s legit. How do I find out whether it’s legit?’ I just don’t go to Snopes. There’s a standard way to go, ‘Oh, okay, this is legitimate ... not legitimate content, but Olga says she created this and she owns it.’ Then I know ... and if I trust Olga, then I trust the content.”
Kornienko adds that there’s confusion over who is supposed to educate the public. “Earlier I also heard a conversation, somebody asked, ‘Well, maybe, hopefully one day we’ll have a setting within the browser that says [to] only show me content, be it video or photo, with provenance,’” she says. “One day, maybe, hopefully.”
Daulton suggests a little banner that could pop up on smart TVs that shows when content is questionable. Right now, he says, “It’s something simple and easy to understand by the consumer [that is as of now] overly complex and obtuse.”
Kornienko notes that EZDRM does have a solution for live video. “Right by the Play button, there’s a little content credentials, CR, little logo. And if the CR is just plain old, regular CR, that means this content is fine. And then if the CR has a little X through it, that means that in this video that there’s pieces of it that have been manipulated, and the little X doesn’t show up until you get to the manipulated frames.”
Daulton has a suggestion: “Ironically, probably the easiest way to communicate this is, it shows up in a Law & Order episode in a forensic analysis or something, and they’re in the courtroom like, ‘See the little red X. That means that this has been manipulated.’”
Kornienko laughs. “Well, maybe we should go talk to them.”
Daulton laughs too. “Yeah. Dick Wolf, if you’re listening …”
Join us December 9-11 and tune in for more great conversations at Streaming Media Connect! Registration is free and open now!
Related Articles
Describing YouTube as the "Hunger Games of content," pocket.watch SVP Channels David B. Williams explains how pocket.watch identifies the "apex predators" and brings those stars to additional streaming platforms, merchandising, and more as the relationship between the creator economy social media "farm teams" and traditional CTV and OTT platforms and the dynamic of creator and audience continue to evolve in this discussion with Streaming Media Contributing Editor Timothy Fore-Siglin at Streaming Media 2025.
21 Oct 2025
In this wide-ranging interview from Streaming Media 2025, streaming industry vets Sarge Sargent and Timothy Fore-Siglin talk leveraging and deploying machine learning (ML) and generative AI (Gen AI) beyond the hype.
17 Oct 2025
In this interview from Streaming Media 2025, Cocoa Creative CEO and Iowa State University assistant professor of practice Terrence Thames discusses his approach to teaching students about the creative and business aspects of streaming with Streaming Media contributing editor Timothy Fore-Siglin.
17 Oct 2025
Elecard Head of Strategic Partnerships Victoria Tuzova joins Future Frames Podcast Co-Producer Doug Daulton for a candid interview on the show floor at Streaming Media 2025, discussing livestream monitoring for sports and other large-scale events, ways to improve the sports fan experience through ultra-low-latency and personalization, and her work with Women in Streaming Media to heighten women's representation in the industry.
14 Oct 2025
Almost live from Streaming Media 2025, Vevo Head of Data, Research & Measurement Natasha Potashnik discusses the many uses of streaming metadata with Streaming Media Contributing Editor Timothy Fore-Siglin.
10 Oct 2025