Babbitt column | Application of blockchain in digital art

Intellectual property issues related to digital art work can be solved through blockchains.

Artists, designers, and creative workers can easily share their work or ideas on the Internet, but in the current Internet world, it is difficult to prove that they have ownership or reasonable compensation to maintain their rights.

There is currently no transparent way to resolve ownership issues for things that can be easily copied and completely copied.

The problem of establishing ownership on the Internet is seriously flawed.

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Once the work is put online and even sold online, the author will lose control. Dr. Chen Zhisheng's team is working on establishing an ownership-oriented agreement for digital content in the Internet architecture, which is built on the application layer of the Internet. And the R&D creation tool allows the author of the work to understand where the work is spreading.

On the Internet, the channel between the author, the channel and the consumer has not been opened. The creators don't have a stable way to get a fair reward, and consumers are also faced with the inability to buy what they want. Even for distribution channels, getting licenses and legally selling content is not always easy. There is still no universal solution for sharing videos, movies, music, images and photos, 2d and 3d digital graphics.

So why is this happening?

The way the Internet works is through simple hyperlinks, so it's impossible to tell where the original content came from and whether the content is copied.

Although later, people thought of rewarding the author's contribution by mentioning the authors in the references and praising the pictures they copied and used. But this system does not solve the problem very well. People can always find a way to copy content without giving a signature, so that the author does not know and will not be notified.

Or, people give the author's signature, but because it is a one-way link, the author still doesn't know that someone has cited his work. To make matters worse, it is possible to sign other people who are not the original author under the name of the work, causing confusion. This is the high-speed information dissemination of the Internet, but it cannot guarantee the ills of reliable information.

On the Internet, the sharing of digital content ignores the important features of its digital property rights. This is the lack of the Internet.

The blockchain technology is now used to achieve visibility into its digital ownership by finding digital property registrations and copies.

With regard to visibility, we can find a copy of all protected content on the Internet. This can be done by searching the entire Internet and matching the creator's content for similarity. This is a machine learning similarity search problem. Once the copy is found, the system performs an automatic two-way link. The author then decides whether to request a license fee or request a removal request.

When selling digital intellectual property, not only sell copies, but also sell ownership and use rights, modify or resell content.

To carry out such ownership sales (rather than licensing sales), you need to sign a legal contract, hire a lawyer, and so on. The idea of ​​using blockchain to store and sell data ownership is simple: send a signed email and the user transfers ownership of its content.

The blockchain is a publicly displayed trusted distributed ledger that will protect the copyright of all users. When a dispute of ownership occurs, the time stamp of the transaction can be used as evidence in court.

Regarding the implementation of the blockchain, a corresponding protocol can be developed. This agreement is designed to record transactions related to the ownership of digital assets.

Artists can set a fixed number of versions of the work, which can then be transferred to ensure that each version is authentic and from the artist.

Therefore, the user can transfer ownership of one or more versions when making a transfer transaction. These versions are stored in a chained database and hashed for use in the Blockchain.

Therefore, when transferring ownership, the user creates a transaction for one of his works, including the hash value, version, and new owner. The user signs the transaction and sends it.

Since a blockchain similar to Bitcoin is used, a public browser that knows the hash value of the work can track the ownership of the work and find the address corresponding to each version.

In addition, a new, modern and user-friendly digital art market can be established through blockchains. It can help artists and owners of works manage the rights and business value of their digital work.

From the user's point of view, with the blockchain-based digital art market, authorized digital media can be bought and sold directly under the terms, rights and prices controlled by the author.

The blockchain digital art market promotes the use and trading of digital artwork by photographers, designers, illustrators and other media creators.

The market allows authors to create and customize licensing contracts to establish the use of their digital artwork. There are four types of licenses: art licenses for non-commercial use, photo news licenses for editing, product image licenses for commercial use, and licenses with all rights.

The author has a public catalog, such as his portfolio, which is publicly available and available for sale. The blockchain tracks ownership history.

However, retaining only information about the owner may not be enough in the market. There are many sales contract data and product metadata that are as important as the product. Due to size considerations, we were unable to include this data in the blockchain. This is why the blockchain ecosystem is also needed in other digital markets.

What the solution needs is integration with other services. Therefore, ownership data will remain in the blockchain to maintain trustworthy traceability and irreversibility. However, other documents related to the product can be stored in the document database. These files may or may not be encrypted.

Regarding digital art itself, it can be stored in a document database. For example, files can be stored on Amazon Simple StorageService (S3). The ecosystem should find a way to link blockchains, document libraries and digital art storage.

Figure 1 – Blockchain ecosystem

The last attribute system to be examined is called a "bit tag", which allows the transfer of digital and physical objects. However, storing information about physical objects such as cars, computers, or homes as an abstract asset poses a challenge to how to document and organize assets.

By applying a hash algorithm on it, we can easily obtain digital data fingerprints, but when it comes to physical objects, there is a new solution. This is the framework for identifying tangible assets based on unique surface level texture patterns.

Each asset in the registry first records its fingerprint, metadata, and registrant signature. When the asset is set to the new owner, a new bit tag is created. The ownership of the bit tag can then be changed by the ownership transfer transaction.

Regardless of the solution, the Internet has left a lot of information that has lost the author. Looking ahead, however, blockchains can provide proof of ownership by storing hashes of digital art in time-stamped transactions.

Proof of ownership of digital art through blockchains, the essence of the idea is that the owner will have a hash of the private key and the original copy of the artwork. No organization can change the data. The author can sell the artwork, and the new owner will now own the private key of the artwork.

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