How the Blockchain Delivers Eternal and Irrefutable Proofs for Your Copyrights

It’s all about Cryptography..

.. but it’s not that difficult to understand!

In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto released a protocol named Bitcoin that consists of a decentralized ledger of cryptographic transactions called the Bitcoin BlockChain. It is immutable and as long as people use it is unstoppable!

This is the transfer of scriptural money through the internet without a central authority! The first decentralized currency was born and it is really revolutionary!

The NXT protocol is descendent of Bitcoin which operates its own blockchain. It is inspired by the same principles but has been improved in term of energy efficiency and long-term security.

I recommend to use both chains for recording copyright proof over the long run but for the rest of the explanation, we can consider that we have only one.

When you write in a BlockChain, it is graved forever!

A blockchain is an accounting ledger wich records how many coin each account is allowed to spend. The validity of this recording in time is one of the obvious prerequisites for the currency not to be cheated, and hence, a prerequisite for it to have any kind of value.

Today, the value of a Bitcoin on the exchange platforms is about 400 $ and thousands of them are moving hands every day !

My point, here, is not to demonstrate if the blockchain based crypto-currencies are safe or not, but only to observe that people around the world are betting billions (with a B) that they are. Security experts consider them to be safe, and even the largest banks now believe it too.

So, I suggest, we will assume it too ;-)

Magic Hash!

Along with a coin transaction, you can write small comments that are rather limited in size. So you can not write a full document. It would be too easy.. and more seriously would rapidly “bloat the chain”.

But the art of cryptography offers us to get around this limitation thanks to the class of the hash functions that compute unique Digital fingerprints of any electronic document.

A hash function is a function that transforms a digital document (movies, scans, photos, executable, text, binary or even a zip of your entire hard-drive) into a string of a fixed number of characters, called a hash, like this :

369a9dbdfa6814a81f1b3927762f331dcf22731c550382e047e29b9662e2a63d

If a single bit of the original document is modified, the hash will be completely different for instance like this:

982efbd1907ecbce9e4289b46515fe3926bf272326c554116b9927aadfbf697a

There are various known and well-validated hash functions available. To be a valid hash function, one must be confident that the function equally distributes its results over the space of the possible combinations such that the probability of collision (two different input can give the same output) is so small that it physically impossible to find some.

For the hash function we choose SHA256, cryptographic experts consider that the security level is 128 bits. It means that to obtain 50% chance to produce two identical hashes from two different inputs, one must randomly perform 2¹²⁸ computations. 2¹²⁸ = 3.4*10³⁸ (it’s 340,000,000.. followed by.. 30 zeros! ) . That is without targeting a specific hash, if you do, you have to perform :

5*10⁷⁶ computations which is about 10³⁸ times - more !

With such numbers, it can be calculated :

That the only practical solution to produce a given hash, even if billions of pre-computed hash were available is indeed to use the original document and none other.

Which yields to the popular terminology that the hash is really the “fingerprint” of the digital document.

In other words, if you have a document that produces a given string with a strong cryptographic hash function. When you see this string somewhere else, you can bet your life that this string was produced by hashing the exact same document !

All Together:

If you write (make a transaction with) a document fingerprint (hash) in the a blockchain, you gain, forever, the possibility to present an irrefutable proof that this document existed prior to the block date in which the transaction is included.

Then, if the document mentions your name, or if this writing in the blockchain originates from an account that was previously labelled withyour name, the proof of your ownership (or more precisely, the fact that this proof can only serve your benefice) is also established.

Then, if you really are the creator of this document and if this is the first public trace of this document ever recorded, then your copyrights become impossible to contest.

To sum up, to certify a document, all you need is:

• A digital version of the document (scan or photo is good for physical documents)
• Calculate the fingerprint (hash) of the digital document (search for online sha256 hash calculator).
• Make a transaction in a quality Blockchain that includes this fingerprint. With Bitcoin it will be an OP_RETURN transaction, and with NXT, a simple arbitrary message in clear sent to your self.
• If your document can not mention that you are the copyright beneficiary. Do it with an account (an address) whose history previously shows you as the beneficiary, for instance previously send with this address a message that states it.
• Wait that your transaction becomes sufficiently confirmed: 720 confirmations ~ about 24 h for NXT and may be only 20 confirmations ~ 2 h for Bitcoin.
• Keep the original document very cautiously (never modify it, archive multiple copies and regularly check their integrity.
• In a doc called “certificate”, write down, at least, the blockchain(s) transaction Id(s) and, if you are bit paranoid, all the transaction details as well.

Now, you are equipped to claim and prove your copyrights for eternity! And it only cost pennies.

Now, if you want it 100% FREE and with only one click of a button, you may fall in love with our NotBot (Notary Bot) that maintain an unlimited private registry of copyright proofs on notbot.me