Blockchain and Copyright

Advances in the field of digital technology are constantly introducing new levels of controversy into copyright policy. Blockchain is the most recent technology with significative impact in digital copyright. Combined with smart contracts, blockchain enables new efficient forms of distribution of copyrighted works and also a new model of private ordering regarding the control of uses of works on the Internet. The chapter aims to examine the relationship and the most relevant intersections between blockchain, digital exploitation of copyrighted works, copyright law, and privacy law.

Developing a Copyright Curriculum for Nigerian Universities for the Creative Digital Space

This paper explores the significance of teaching and learning digital copyright laws within a reformed Nigerian copyright regime. It further analyzes how an experiential and clinical teaching pedagogy, developed as part of a copyright law curriculum, will become an agency to protect, safeguard, and impel the development of Nigerian creative industries, particularly the film sector. Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy and an emerging creative industrial power. The training and expertise of its legal professionals in the knowledge and creative economy have significant impact beyond Nigeria, across the length and breadth of the other African countries. The article sets out to provide a recipe for a functional approach to the development of a digital copyright curriculum in the law faculties of Nigerian universities as a pragmatic and industry-focused way of teaching while adding value to the creative industries. The paper further examines how the law faculties of Nigerian universities could redesign their copyright curriculum to teach not just theories but, more importantly, the wider policy framework. The paper also explores how to understand the practical, business and economic systems of the creative industries. The paper uses ‘Nollywood’, the contemporary Nigerian film industry, as a case study to continue the discussion on the sustainable development of the Nigerian creative industries.

A Novel Video Copyright Protection Scheme Based on Blockchain and Double Watermarking

With the continuous development of multimedia, more and more digital works such as videos are spread, stored, and used in the network. In recent years, digital copyright infringement disputes have occurred frequently. The traditional copyright protection system has some problems, such as difficulty confirming copyright, monitoring infringement, and obtaining evidence for rights protection. To this end, we have designed and implemented a novel video copyright protection scheme based on the blockchain and double watermarking technology. We use the image correlation coefficient method to extract video keyframes. And we combine with Contourlet Transform domain, QR decomposition, and SIFT algorithm to improve the robustness of watermark against geometric attacks on the premise of invisibility. After that, we use Arnold Transformation (Cat Map) based on the Maximum Entropy Threshold Segmentation to encrypt the robust watermark and strengthen the security. Moreover, based on the characteristics of the fragile watermarking, we accurately locate the attacked video’s tamper position and complete the integrity authentication of the watermarked video. In addition, the hash digest of the video watermark and the user ID of the copyright owner is signed by SM2 and uploaded to the blockchain. The user can register the copyright after passing the identity authentication. We conduct tests and security analysis on the blockchain performance of the system, the performance of the commercial cryptography algorithm, and the security of the watermarking system. The experimental results show that the blockchain used in this system conforms to the industry standard, the performance of SM2 and SM3 is better than ECC-256 and SHA-256, and the system security is well guaranteed.

Joined Cases C-682/18 and C-683/18 Peterson v. Google & Youtube And Elsevier v. Cyando (C.J.E.U.)

Since its inception, the internet has challenged many basic principles of international copyright law. While some key “digital copyright” issues have been addressed in multilateral treaties, one of the most vexing issues with the global digital network remains—the question of the responsibility of third-party intermediaries for copyright infringements by internet users.

Survey on Data Hiding Based on Block Truncation Coding

Data hiding technology has achieved many technological developments through continuous research over the past 20 years along with the development of Internet technology and is one of the research fields that are still receiving attention. In the beginning, there were an intensive amount of studies on digital copyright issues, and since then, interest in the field of secret communications has been increasing. In addition, research on various security issues using this technology is being actively conducted. Research on data hiding is mainly based on images and videos, and there are many studies using JPEG and BMP in particular. This may be due to the use of redundant bits that are characteristic of data hiding techniques. On the other hand, block truncation coding-based images are relatively lacking in redundant bits useful for data hiding. For this reason, researchers began to pay more attention to data hiding based on block-cutting coding. As a result, many related papers have been published in recent years. Therefore, in this paper, the existing research on data hiding technology of images compressed by block-cut coding among compressed images is summarized to introduce the contents of research so far in this field. We simulate a representative methodology among existing studies to find out which methods are effective through experiments and present opinions on future research directions. In the future, it is expected that various data hiding techniques and practical applications based on modified forms of absolute moment block truncation coding will continue to develop.

Research on digital copyright protection based on the hyperledger fabric blockchain network technology

With the recent development in network technology over a few years, digital works can be easily published online. One of the main issues in the field of digital technology is the infringement of digital works, which can seriously damage the data owners’ rights and affects the enthusiasm of the owners to create original work. Thus, more attention is required for the protection of digital copyright as it has a great impact on the development of society. Many digital copyright protection techniques were developed in the past, but still, there are many loopholes in the protection systems to be covered. The protection means are still relatively weak, timeliness is poor, infringement is frequent, a right determination is cumbersome, and the results are not ideal. Aiming at the mentioned problems, this paper proposes a protection technique, which can realize the automatic management of the complete digital rights life cycle on the blockchain using fabric's smart contract technology. The proposed system is based on blockchain technology, which leverages the distributed, tamper-proof and traceable characteristics of blockchain. The system uses smart contracts to manage the full life cycle of digital copyright. The test results show that the proposed system provides effective protection of the digital copyright system and can efficiently confirm the rights of digital copyright.

END-USER FLEXIBILITIES IN CONTEMPORARY DIGITAL COPYRIGHT LAW – AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENTS

In the platform age, copyright protected contents are primarily disseminated over the internet. This model poses various challenges to the copyright regime that was mainly designed in and for the analogue age. One of these challenges is related to the fair balance between the interests of rightholders and other members of the society. Copyright norms try to guarantee the high level of protection of rightholders and preserve some flexibility for the benefit of end-users. These flexibilities range from statutory limitations and exceptions (e.g., private use); resales (covered by the doctrine of exhaustion); or complaint-and-redress mechanisms. Platforms, with their private norms, especially end-user license agreements (EULAs), might effectively enforce that balance in their role as intermediaries in the chain of (e-)commerce. In our research, conducted within the frames of the „reCreating Europe” H2020 project, we focused on how these private norms allow for or diminish the exercise of user flexibilities. We collected, analysed and compared twenty private ordering practices. The analysed platforms include streaming sites with or without host function for end-users; online video game stores and other online marketplaces; and social media. Our empirical examination demonstrates that the intermediaries, in line with their technical nature and business model, offer substantive flexibilities for their consumers, on the one hand, and they meaningfully limit the possibilities and decrease the expectations of end-users by restricting certain uses and providing limited access to contents, on the other hand. Based on our findings, we measured the user-friendliness of the selected platforms.

Research on Copyright Protection of Digital Works Based on Multi-blockchain

Background: With the development of network technology and the continuous increase in user-generated content on the Internet, the protection of digital copyright is particularly important. Objective: In order to better protect the copyright of digital works, this paper proposes a Polkadot scheme based on the advantages of blockchain cross chain technology. Methods: The scheme sets up three parallel chains, including digital works chain, copyright management chain, and dispute arbitration chain, and shows the information interaction process of Validators, Fishermen, Collators, and Nominators. Results: The research shows that the scheme has more advantages than single chain or alliance chain. It has a shorter block creation time, better security and availability. Conclusion: The findings provide new ideas for copyright registration, copyright trading, and infringement maintenance of digital works, and also broadens the application of cross chain technology of blockchain.

The limits of Intellectual Property: Exhaustion of rights, international trademarks and digital copyright

Strong Intellectual Property (IP) protection is a fundamental point in the establishment of a market for new products and services. IP can give significant power to the owner of intangible assets in financing, manufacturing or in general commercial transactions. However, as with any sort of power, too much of it can have detrimental effects. This work provides a discussion on the limits of IP by examining the exhaustion of rights doctrine. The paper briefly presents the legal evolution of the doctrine for trademarks and digital copyright. A discussion follows on the controversial concept of international exhaustion and on the most important points of digital exhaustion.