What do blockchain technology and Frightened Rabbit's front-man Scott Hutchison have to do with one another?
The simple answer is that the author of this post is a massive fan of both. But there is another, more tenuous link between the two that you obviously missed: the photo which I took (above) of Scott Hutchison playing Old, Old Fashioned in Maboneng, Johannesburg last year has been encrypted onto the bitcoin blockchain by Binded.com ("Binded"). Binded have also been so kind to provide me with a copyright certificate to prove my ownership.
How does this work? Well Binded have what they call a vault, and in their vault they store your digital files. For every image that you upload to the Binded vault, Binded create a digital fingerprint of your photograph and write a permanent record to the bitcoin blockchain.
Binded aims to become the standard for copyright globally and is using blockchain technology to do so. Binded's mission, as articulated in the FAQ on its website is rather noble:
"Binded's mission is to make creativity the world's greatest asset. To support our mission, we're making copyright simple.
Imagine that as soon as you create an image, you have a permanent record that you own the copyright. Then your image is monitored for copyright infringement. If we find an infringement we give you simple actions to take. Also, we help you make money with your copyrighted work.
We're going to do all that and a lot more soon."
TechCrunch note here why the platform exists.:
"Why is that kind of standard needed? Well, in the U.S., while your creative work is copyrighted as soon as it's created, you need to register it with the U.S. Copyright Office if you want to file a lawsuit. Nathan Lands (the CEO of Binded) has pitched Binded's platform as an intermediate step — less time-consuming and expensive than registration, but still creating an independent record that should have legal weight."
In South Africa, where there is no platform to register copyright (aside from films), it is arguably even more relevant and useful. This is because having some proof or record of the authorship and ownership of your photo, encrypted into an independent ledger at a point in time, will likely bolster your copyright claim should you ever be required to prove copyright authorship/ownership before a local or international court (Note: This has not been tested before local courts in South Africa or anywhere we are aware of).
If you are a photographer or an Instagrammer of Note, your question should really be: why am I not using Binded's platform for FREE copyright protection?
We are excited to see what can be done to safeguard intellectual property rights with blockchain technology and on IPLive, we will continue to showcase services that showcase innovation at its finest.
See the Binded certificate issued for the photo I took below:
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