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Slightly off topic but its a question related to BlockAI... Does anyone know if this is actual proof that has been accepted in a legal court in any country in

Slightly off topic but its a question related to BlockAI... Does anyone know if this is actual proof that has been accepted in a legal court in any country in regards to a copyright dispute? https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2006/08/25/the-myth-of-poor-mans-copyright/ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2006/08/25/the-myth-of-poor-... > Then, in the courtroom, things don't get any better. First off, the court room will not be a federal one, but a state one. Since you didn't register your work, you can not sue in federal court and, thus, will only be eligible to receive either the amount the infringement made or the amount you lost, whichever is greater. Sadly, in many, if not most, copyright matters that amount is equal to exactly zero. http://www3.ce9.uscourts.gov/jury-instructions/node/262 http://www3.ce9.uscourts.gov/jury-instructions/node/262 > A copyright registration certificate can shift the burden of coming forward with proof of plaintiff’s ownership of a valid copyright. The certificate constitutes prima facie evidence of the validity of the copyright and facts stated in the certificate. Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Seattle Lighting Fixture Co., 345 F.3d 1140, 1144–45 (9th Cir.2003). The judge may consider instructing the jury using Instruction 17.5 where: 1) the plaintiff submits no certificate of registration, or 2) the plaintiff produces a registration made five years after the date of the first publication, or 3) the plaintiff submits a registration made within five years of first publication and the defendant submits evidence to dispute the plaintiff’s ownership of a valid copyright. > A person who holds a copyright may obtain a certificate of registration from the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. This certificate is sufficient to establish the facts stated in the certificate, unless outweighed by other evidence in this case. That seems to imply its still the strongest evidence.

williamcotton 11y ago
Yup, you're correct that an official registration with the Copyright Office is required to successfully sue for infringement but what changed with the Copyright Act of 1976 is that registration can happen after the fact, even if you've been denied, in which case you'll definitely need some evidence of ownership or some other proof of publication. Until there is more statutory law or common law precedent set around even the fundamental notion of using digital signatures to as a proof of authorship all of this is really sort of up in the air but we're trying our best to work within the existing legal structures in the jurisdictions where we're doing business The bigger picture with Open Publish is to create a software platform for digital ownership that allows for say, a Patreon-like application to seamlessly integrate with a Spotify-like application, if that makes any sense! Our first attempt at a product built with Open Publish is just a simple proof of publication service that people can use along with existing legal notions of copyright with the hope that we can start registering content before we worry about solving the problems of a two-sided marketplace!
- fweespee_ch 11y ago
  Good luck and thank you for being honest. :) Yeah, I'm aware of the 5 year window.
troymc 11y ago
Your comment only applies to US citizens, who make up about 3/70 of the world population. What about the vast majority of the world? There was a time when DNA and faxes weren't considered admissible. It just takes time for legal systems to catch up with new technologies.
- williamcotton 11y ago
  Considering that Blockai's offices are located in the United States, I think it was a pretty good question! You're correct that the bigger picture is a solution that, like the Internet itself, crosses international borders, which is why we chose to build on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. Blockchain technology has the ability to work seamlessly within existing legal systems. At Blockai we're having to explore the nuances of a good deal of those existing legal systems and we're starting with our own home turf. It's a good time to be an IP lawyer, that's for sure!
  - troymc 11y ago
    If you get big enough, you'll find that Bitcoin's blockchain a terrible blockchain for what you're doing. It's throughput is on the order of 1 transaction per second, you can't store much data per transaction, the latency is on the order of an hour (before you can be sure your transaction is "in"), and the fees per transaction are on the order of tens of US cents (unless you want to wait even longer). There are other problems, but I'm sure you read the news.
    - williamcotton 11y ago
      Considering that registering with the Copyright Office takes 8-10 month I think that waiting a few hours for a transaction to end up in a block during peak times is a big improvement! Open Publish doesn't need to be on any specific blockchain. We started with the most popular and most secure. All that Open Publish needs is a decentralized consensus public-access datastore based on public key cryptography. We could also very easily batch registrations and transfers in to just a few Bitcoin transactions an hour. Since we're using our own Bitcoin you can be pretty sure that as our costs begin to climb upwards that we'll look in to making things cheaper! We have been actively building software on top of the Bitcoin blockchain for over two years. We're very familiar with both the protocol and the intermittent weather on the network. The pros and cons are well known to us but that doesn't mean your concerns are not valid! You are free to try it out for yourself: https://github.com/blockai/openpublish https://github.com/blockai/openpublish

williamcotton 11y ago

Yup, you're correct that an official registration with the Copyright Office is required to successfully sue for infringement but what changed with the Copyright Act of 1976 is that registration can happen after the fact, even if you've been denied, in which case you'll definitely need some evidence of ownership or some other proof of publication. Until there is more statutory law or common law precedent set around even the fundamental notion of using digital signatures to as a proof of authorship all of this is really sort of up in the air but we're trying our best to work within the existing legal structures in the jurisdictions where we're doing business The bigger picture with Open Publish is to create a software platform for digital ownership that allows for say, a Patreon-like application to seamlessly integrate with a Spotify-like application, if that makes any sense! Our first attempt at a product built with Open Publish is just a simple proof of publication service that people can use along with existing legal notions of copyright with the hope that we can start registering content before we worry about solving the problems of a two-sided marketplace!

fweespee_ch 11y ago
Good luck and thank you for being honest. :) Yeah, I'm aware of the 5 year window.

troymc 11y ago

Your comment only applies to US citizens, who make up about 3/70 of the world population. What about the vast majority of the world? There was a time when DNA and faxes weren't considered admissible. It just takes time for legal systems to catch up with new technologies.

williamcotton 11y ago
Considering that Blockai's offices are located in the United States, I think it was a pretty good question! You're correct that the bigger picture is a solution that, like the Internet itself, crosses international borders, which is why we chose to build on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. Blockchain technology has the ability to work seamlessly within existing legal systems. At Blockai we're having to explore the nuances of a good deal of those existing legal systems and we're starting with our own home turf. It's a good time to be an IP lawyer, that's for sure!
- troymc 11y ago
  If you get big enough, you'll find that Bitcoin's blockchain a terrible blockchain for what you're doing. It's throughput is on the order of 1 transaction per second, you can't store much data per transaction, the latency is on the order of an hour (before you can be sure your transaction is "in"), and the fees per transaction are on the order of tens of US cents (unless you want to wait even longer). There are other problems, but I'm sure you read the news.
  - williamcotton 11y ago
    Considering that registering with the Copyright Office takes 8-10 month I think that waiting a few hours for a transaction to end up in a block during peak times is a big improvement! Open Publish doesn't need to be on any specific blockchain. We started with the most popular and most secure. All that Open Publish needs is a decentralized consensus public-access datastore based on public key cryptography. We could also very easily batch registrations and transfers in to just a few Bitcoin transactions an hour. Since we're using our own Bitcoin you can be pretty sure that as our costs begin to climb upwards that we'll look in to making things cheaper! We have been actively building software on top of the Bitcoin blockchain for over two years. We're very familiar with both the protocol and the intermittent weather on the network. The pros and cons are well known to us but that doesn't mean your concerns are not valid! You are free to try it out for yourself: https://github.com/blockai/openpublish https://github.com/blockai/openpublish