China Launches Internet Court that will Use Blockchain to Fight Plagiarism
In the Eastern Chinese City, Hangzhou an Internet Court has been launched that will now use blockchain to fight plagiarism for online writers, according to local Chinese news outlet China.org.cn.
China launched its first internet court in the city of Hangzhou to deal with internet related cases, save time and lower the overhead costs of getting justice out of the system.
When it launched, the court was expected to accept court filings and cases electronically and given the mandate to rule online cases through live stream. Plaintiffs can verify their identity with a government-issued ID or via their Alipay account.
The Hangzhou Internet Court functions as an incubator for the governance of the internet space in China to settle diversified Internet disputes and a ‘first mover’ for the revolution of Internet trials.
There is a large percentage of online writers in the city of Hangzhou. The Binjiang District of the city has a “writers’ village,” which is where a hundred favourite online writers work. These writers have had problems with piracy over the years, and it has become more and more challenging for them to prove that they own any piece of work. The report explained that while these writers used to downloaded content and used screenshots as proof of ownership, these pieces of evidence can easily be faked, rendering them ineffective as proof.
Another challenge is the cost of legal services and notaries. It is hard for writers to pursue justice against those who infringe on their copyright due to the expense, stated the report. However, the Hangzhou Internet Court thinks that it is nearly impossible to tamper with evidence that is logged on a distributed ledger or blockchain because of its decentralized and open distributed ledger technology.
One judge at the court, Wang Jiangqiao, believes that blockchain is beneficial to writers because of its tamper-proof nature, which gives it the capability of tracking authorship, time of creation, content, and proof of infringement.
Recently, the Hangzhou Internet Court became the first court in China to recognize blockchain technology as a way to store evidence. The decision resulted from a case where the plaintiff, a company based in Hangzhou, sued the defendant, a Shenzhen-based tech firm, for making publications of the plaintiff’s copyrighted material on their official website.
The plaintiff captured the webpage of the defendant in addition to the source code and uploaded them to the Bitcoin blockchain. After the investigations were completed, the Hangzhou Internet Court maintained that this form of electronic data would now serve as a form of proof in copyright infringement cases.
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