Public Crypto BLOG: CopyTrack - The Future Global Copyright Registration

Digital content management faces two types of challenges – those faced by users and those faced by rights-holders. Users often misunderstand the usage of digital images online and the corresponding licensing options. On the other hand, rights-holders have few or no methods to prove ownership of original content and derivative work.

Also, they often have inadequate tools to track the usage of their copyrighted images and identify violations. Both users and rights-holders are faced with the challenge ofreducing the cost of payments, and these costs are invariably added to price of use-rights. In addition, both groups struggle with facilitating seamless and timely settlement of payments.

COPYTRACK is a fair online platform for publishers, photographers, image agencies, and e-commerce vendors. We stand for just and fair management of intellectual property on the internet.

CopyTrack Mission

COPYTRACK will set the precedent for a global, transparent and decentralized register for copyrights of digital content. At the same time, COPYTRACK will implement the first use-case for the decentralized ledger: The Global Copyright Register for Images. It will be followed by a marketplace for digital images and other external business models are free to interface with the open ledger.

In an extremely short time frame, COPYTRACK has grown to become the leading company in the worldwide market of highly automated copyright enforcement. Starting in Berlin and having a presence in New York and Tokyo has allowed us to directly engage with artists and their networks all over the world, and has helped us to quickly increase our customer base. The lack of entry hurdles ensured high conversion at all steps of our processes.

Currently, COPYTRACK’s services are geared towards searching for our customers’ images across the web. If there is a successful match, we then move forward with enforcement and licensing. However, we will expand our services to include registering images via the blockchain and provide a new marketplace for artists and buyers.

As we all know, pictures are copied and distributed illegally countless times each day. These pictures are stolen from their creators countless times, who are put at a great financial disadvantage due to the current copyright enforcement system. In the current system, copyright infringements are difficult to pursue and are often considered a trivial offense.

There also remains a legal risk to rights-holders, in addition to the time required to detect an infringement and take action against it.

CopyTrack services are outlined as follows :

1. Post-licensing in over 140 countries
2. Legal advice by qualified lawyers
3. “One-click” case management
4. Personal customer service

COPYTRACK provides a tool to comfortably navigate this process without any risk or hassle to rights-holders. We offer our service free of charge, and even bear the risk of legal fees. COPYTRACK only takes a small success-related commission. The benefits for rights-holders are:

1. Free use of platform
2. Zero risk of legal enforcement
3. Focus: “post”-licensing
4. Fair approach for both parties

COPYTRACK has developed a unique start-to-finish process for the enforcement of copyright, once the rights-holder has identified the unlicensed use of their images. The whole process is highly automated, only requiring manual assessment at 2 of the nearly 50 stages. The following diagram illustrates the process for our customers. This mechanism can be broken down into 3 simple steps:

1. Image Upload
• Upload images directly or via API
• Create collections and select categories
• The crawling process kicks off automatically and runs constantly

2. Select Hits
• Mark illegal images among the search results
• Filter already licensed pictures
• Option to whitelist whole domains or a single hit

3. Lean Back
• Assign a royalty fee
• Submit the case and the post-licensing process starts
• We take care of the rest

Our new platform consists of 5 layers and begins with creating an account, followed by the upload of images, proof of authorship and ends with the artist exercising full copyright control. After creating an account, an artist will upload an image. We will then perform an audit on the authenticity of the authorship and if successful provide a blockchain- based certificate to prove ownership. From here on out, the artist maintains complete copyright control.

CPY will be the native token on our blockchain platform. It will be used for payment in our flexible and modular licensing systems. This enables automated payments to rights-holders based on licenses they design themselves in our friendly and easy-to-use interface. The blockchain and underlying smart contract interface can be extended to incorporate a wide range of additional functionality such as programmatic contracts, variable pricing, and payment routing.