Blockchain for content creators: Part 1: Blockchain and the copyright process

Published in

Coinmonks

4 min readDec 24, 2020

Read my original post at Voice.

While we have been talking a lot about Defi and NFTs, there have been few areas that are low-hanging fruits where blockchain can heavily impact. Content copyright is one such area where blockchain can become a transformative solution.

Copyright issues have been a major concern for every content creator. There are two high-level aspects to it 1. Copyrighting your work 2. Identify whether your work has been plagiarized so that you can take immediate actions. Even in popular platforms like Youtube, we have seen the content of creators re-uploaded by others. It is difficult to fight against this problem mainly because 1. You will not know that someone has copied your work 2. Litigation is a long process 3. Proof of original work is a manual cumbersome process.

Copyright laws, particularly for content creation, essentially states that you have to prove that you are the creator. That essentially means that performing a copyright certificate process through the copyright office is not mandatory. You just need to create a record of the date and time of your creation and prove it when needed.

In cases where to be on the safer side you want to do a copyright certificate of your content there is a formal process. This process varies for different countries however below is an overview of the process we follow in my country, India.

The current copyright Process

1. You have 2 options

a. Use a web upload

b. Send a copy of your content to the Copyright office.

Let us go for the easier process, the web upload.

2. Type or scan your content as a soft copy.

3. Create an account online with the copyright office

4. Agree to terms and conditions and upload your copy.

5. Fill the online form

6. Pay a fee. (This fee is not usually not much). You also get an option to combine your content to have a single copyright

7. Submit your content.

Now, this does not end there

8. You now need to take hard copies of your content and courier 3 copies to the copyright office along with some filled out forms.

9. Once the copyright office receives your content, they will wait for a month for anyone to counter your claim

10. If anybody counters, you have to prove your claim. If there is no counterclaim, you get the copyright

See how long the process is! Now here are the drawbacks:

1. You have to pay fees to the copyright office + pay courier charges, essentially increasing your spend

2. Creators like me who make content every day will not be willing to copyright every single content every day.

3. Your courier might get lost in transit

4. There is a complete lack of visibility on what is happening once the content goes out of hand

5. Your wait period is more than one month

The fundamental concept of blockchain, immutability, can single-handedly resolve this issue. It can easily reduce the steps of the current process by 60–70%. It can totally eliminate the role of the copyright office as a validator. The copyright office can only get involved in cases of dispute.

Let’s see how the copyright process in blockchain looks like

1. Type your content as a soft copy.

2. Upload your content in the web portal (You need to have a blockchain-based copyright plugin installed)

3. In a click of a button timestamp your content in the blockchain. Your content remains there forever. Receive an automated certificate immediately with the transaction hash.

4. Note that the plug-in service offering might require you to pay a fee.

That’s it. Now, in a blink of an eye, you have your content in the blockchain, forever. Nobody can tamper with it. Also, as a separate service, you will be able to scan through the internet automatically and identify if anyone has used your content. And in case, a dispute happens, your certificate will prove your claim. Nobody will be able to fake a claim at a prior date than yours. Also, this kills all the middlemen.

The only struggle we have now is adoption and sorting out the processes with the copyright organizations.

In my next article, I will take you through one such plug-in, Wordproof, which I personally use.

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Read my previous article: The World of NFTs: Part 7 — Opensea -Key Points

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