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Can Blockchain and Smart Contracts Protect Copyright?

Smartz
Smartz Platform Blog
Published in
6 min readSep 4, 2018

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Since the massive adoption of the internet, copyrights have had a somewhat interesting relationship with it. Whether we look at peer-to-peer file-sharing services for digital audio files or the use of photographs on the web, copyrights have not been regularly respected. Copyright protection and enforcement were difficult enough without the internet — the online world has made it that much harder. From a copyright holder’s perspective, copyrights have been downright either ignored or under attack. Consistent with this ignorance of the law, unauthorized file-sharing and use of copyrighted content have remained a significant problem. The question now, can this problem may have finally found its digital match with the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts? There are two main technologies that have significant use for the improvement of copyright: timestamping and hashing.

Trusted Timestamping

Blockchain may substantially increase visibility and availability of information about copyright ownership. Such information can be provided by means of so-called “Trusted Timestamping”. A timestamp is a sequence of characters or encoded information identifying when a certain event occurs, usually giving date and time of day, sometimes accurate to a small fraction of a second. Trusted Timestamping understood as the process of securely keeping track of the creation and modification time of a document is an indispensable tool in the business world. It allows interested parties to know, without any doubt, that the document in question existed at a particular date and time. According to the eIDAS Regulation (Regulation (EU) №910/2014) on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market adopted on 23 July 2014, time stamping is one of the electronic trust services, which are considered to be key enablers for secure cross-border electronic transactions and a central building block of the Digital Single Market.

Hashing

By means of hash function, which is a type of mathematical function which turns original data into a fingerprint of that data called a “hash”, an author or other right owners may obtain a unique digest of their copyrighted work. Hash function forms the basis of the security and immutability of blockchain. Two digests can be the same only if the initial data is the same: minor differences will lead to a different hash amount. Such hash will distinguish one copyrighted work from another. If there is some transaction with a copyrighted work a hash of such work is included in the transaction and once it becomes verified in accordance with blockchain protocol, the transaction becomes timestamped and the content of the transaction becomes encoded on a blockchain. As a result, information about copyright ownership and its subsequent changes with relevant timing is integrated on a blockchain and cannot be forged. Thus, records about ownership of a copyrighted work may be immutably reflected in the blockchain database, and therefore easily verifiable by any interested person.

Quite similar solutions can be provided by a third party based on conventional technology. The most prominent example is the ContentID technology used on YouTube as a part of a rights management system.

So what Content ID does?

  • Generates a digital fingerprint from the reference material downloaded by the user and subsequently scans other users’ videos against the fingerprint and identifies any matches;
  • Claims matching user videos and applies the partner’s match policy.

Which difference blockchain introduces?

The level of trust and potential scalability: a digital fingerprint’s main purpose is to serve as a tool for enabling a liability exemption for online intermediaries and thus is highly dependent on the policy of particular online platform and its infrastructure. Terms of their use may be changed unilaterally at any time. This is the inevitable price of centralization. Blockchain offers a solution based on the principle of decentralization: there is no dependence on particular provider and the terms of use can be embedded in the code, changes to which would require a consensus among a majority of users. Such system may be more trustworthy and viable from a long-term perspective.

Each digital copy of the copyrighted work is the same and cannot be distinguished from another by their quality. Blockchain allows a scope to individualize each digital copy of a copyrighted work. It may be done by means of the same hash function, described above with regard to time stamping functionality of blockchain. Cryptographic hash functions are optimized to generate a unique hash with low probability for collisions. This means that inputs with small differences generate very different hashes. Therefore, a hash function can be used to self-issue new and unique identifiers for each copy, which may have minor differences in them e.g. adding simply the serial number to each digital copy will create a new hash for otherwise similar content. The functionality of the relevant blockchain-based copyright management service may allow assignment of separate license terms to each copy, e.g. one copy can be provided with the modification rights, another — with limited public access rights via the Internet. Or, for example, it is possible to assign different types of open source licenses to each copy of computer code distributed via blockchain.

How does it work in practice?

Let’s take a look at an example. Images online is one of the biggest problems for rights holders who place their images online is policing the use of such images. We have all heard stories about companies and individuals taking images found online and using them on their websites or in marketing materials without first asking permission from the copyright holder. What we talk about here, is not when images are uploaded to public domains. We talk about when images that were taken by photographers and uploaded onto their websites, or otherwise provided to third-party websites by the copyright holder under license.

Potentially, images can be uploaded to a blockchain to provide not only authentication for ownership, but a means to police unauthorized use. How does it work? When an image uploaded on a certain blockchain, a cryptographic hash is created for each copyright record that contains the image file as well as the copyright owner’s name and email. By uploading a batch, a secure chain of immutable records is created. With a digital fingerprint at its fingertips, copyright owners can then digitally police online sites, including social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter.

Challenges of using blockchain to protect copyrights

Storage of content on blockchain is one, especially if we are talking about a large network of users with increasing transaction amounts, which needs to be reflected on a blockchain. Finding correct incentives for users, which are ready to store relevant data will be a very challenging task, since their costs associated with storage may be substantial.

An additional challenge for someone seeking to make a blockchain for copyright is the hashing issue. A hash of a work isn’t the same as the work itself and copyright is generally broader than just the specific arrangement of bits. Even a slightly modified work is likely to still be covered by the original work’s copyright but the hash will be completely different.

There are some projects that are already working to change the current situation:

  • Ujomusic.com uses blockchain technology to create a transparent and decentralized database of rights and rights owners, automating royalty payments using smart contracts and cryptocurrency;
  • Po.et — universal ledger that records immutable and timestamped information about your creative content and uses our open protocols designed for interoperability with current industry standards in media and publishing;
  • Creativechain.org — platform for multimedia registration and distribution that indelibly certifies the intellectual properties and their distribution licenses of digital art.

Blockchain may shape up to be transformational for copyright holders trying to protect their copyrights online. Without question, it has just begun making its presence known for copyright holders. Whether the enforcement mechanisms outlined for these platforms will actually perform in practice has yet to be seen, but the prospects remain encouraging. But it’s hard to believe that blockchain will be used to protect copyrights in the next couple of years. The technology has to be massively adopted first and only then it may be massively used for the copyrights protection.

References

Blockchain
Smart Contracts
Copyright
Cryptography
Intellectual Property

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Smartz
Smartz Platform Blog

Written by Smartz

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Multi-Chain Smart Contracts Management System

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