The Digital Sovereign in the Age of Cryptography

Protocols and technologies such as blockchain, cryptographic hashing and public key cryptography make it possible to digitally sign and thereby appropriate certain rights and identities. The digital signature is the act of digital sovereignty, a new authority and control over a persistent and indissoluble bond that is able to link identities and self-descriptions, works and metadata.

DE:PICT Framework

The eco Blockchain Governance Framework (eBGF)

The eco Blockchain Governance Framework (eBGF) is an initiative to create a framework that will support organisations that have the intention to set up a dedicated public-permissioned, consortial blockchain network.

By establishing a governance for the blockchain and the members of the consortium, the consortium creates a root of trust for the operation of the blockchain. A transparent documentation of the goals and values as well as the technology of the network will enhance the trust in the consortium and the blockchain. And it will improve the reliability and quality of the network, its services and the community in order to operate a professional, production-grade, public-permissioned blockchain.

For each of these topics, the eBGF will offer guidelines, recommendations for all relevant topics and links to best practice implementations of consortial blockchain networks.

The framework suggests a structure and possible paths for the creation of a specific network governance and possible paths for the actual writing process.

DE:PICT Framework
DE:PICT Framework

The DE:PICT Framework

The decentralised publication of cryptographically verifiable metadata and rights management information, the use of decentralised identifiers for rightsholder and digital media assets, and the use of content certificates will allow decentralised and automated transactions peer-to-peer or machine-to machine using verifiable credentials (VCs).

The DE:PICT framework suggests the use of ISCCs, DIDs, VCs and blockchains for verified and verifiable decentralised digital content licensing at scale.

DE:PICT Framework

Licium Rights Engine

Licium is a rights engine for digital media content. It allows rightsholders and other creative users to digitally sign their works and thereby re-appropriate content and digital rights. 

Licium is a decentralised application for digital content licensing and the distribution of verifiable metadata and rights management information, creating trust in assertions, claims and the authenticity of the original content.

The Open Content Certification Protocol (OCCP)

The OCCP provides a description of the process and involved technologies that can be used by creative individuals, media organisations or consumers to generate or verify certificates for digital media content.

Content certificates allow rightsholders to inseparably and verifiably connect information, basic metadata, licensing terms and other rights management information to digital content.

It is the goal of the certification process to create trust in assertions, claims and the authenticity of the original content, and to ensure accountability of entities, even if they must or prefer to remain pseudonymous.

Read the post: https://posth.me/occp/ 

Post on Medium: https://medium.com/@posth/open-content-certification-protocol-9d5b1adb2b0a

Read the whitepaper on Github: https://github.com/licium/occp

Example of Content Certification

Consulting on Digital Innovation, Building Applications on Decentralized Ledgers

Posth Werk offers strategic consulting on corporate, digital development as well as product and project management with competence in implementing tailored solutions for media organizations in the fields of decentralized ledger technology, blockchain governance, NFTs, digital innovation, digital publishing, digital content aggregation and distribution.

For many years we have worked together with media organizations, publishers, intermediaries, retailers, and academic institutions on implementing digital strategies, building services and applications to drive innovation in the media businesses.

Feel free to reach out and start the conversation!

Decentralization and Scarcity — Blockchain and the Cultural Industries

In 2019 I wrote a post on the structural implications of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies for the creative community in a truly decentralized media environment. It tries to give a brief outlook on the future of business models, services and applications for writers and artists as well as for other professionals within the cultural industries and institutions.

https://posth.me/decentralization-and-scarcity-blockchain-and-the-cultural-industries/

The post has been published by the Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) in the AC/E Digital Culture Yearbook 2019 in Spanish language on May 8, 2019. You can download the e-book for free.

ISCC - International Standard Content Code

Freely accessible standard identifiers, which are specifically designed to manage digital content, are a fundamental prerequisite for efficient transactions in a decentralized and increasingly heterogeneous media environment.

The ISCC (International Standard Content Code) is the first open, generic identifier designed for digital media content. It can be used to register content on the decentralized ledger and also in off-chain environments.

Content Blockchain Project

The Content Blockchain is an open initiative and decentralized blockchain network tailored to the specific needs of the digital media content ecosystem. The global network supports content related transactions and digital media licensing. It operates based on an open governance model and is owned by the participants themselves.

The initiative is providing the foundational tools and standards required for building innovative applications and services on the blockchain. These enable creative individuals, media companies and cultural institutions to better discover, access, manage, share, offer and license digital media content and exchange value through the network.

Content Blockchain nominated for the 'Blockchain for Social Good'-Prize

The Content Blockchain Initiative has been nominated as one of the 24 finalists of the ‘EIC Prize Blockchain for Social Good‘.

On the 30st of June 2020, the European Commission came to a descision: Congratulations to the winner teams! 

This is the transcript of our short presentation:

https://posth.me/blockchain-for-social-good/

Content Blockchain Project honored with the 'digital publishing award' 2019

The Content Blockchain Project is the winner of the ‘digital publishing award’ 2019 in the category ‘startups’. The collaborative initiative has been awarded in recognition for its ambition to trigger digital innovation in the publishing industry by promoting a blockchain infrastructure dedicated to media content. The project also provides tools and standards with immediate utility for publishers that want to engage with decentralized ledger technology.

The ‘digital publishing award’ is hosted under the patronage of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy. 

Content Identification on the Blockchain

The ISCC is defined as an open and decentralized digital media identifier, unambiguously identifying digital content. It is a unique, hierarchically structured composite identifier, that is generated algorithmically and in a decentralized way. It is built from a generic and balanced mix of content-derived, locality-sensitive and similarity-preserving hashes generated from metadata and content. This inseparably links any specific content to a specific ISCC identifier. Read more …

What is a Smart License?

Smart Licenses are legal representations that will allow rights owners a simple means to offer and trade content globally in a secure and reliable, open and transparent, automated and machine-readable way on the Content Blockchain. Read more …

International Digital Distribution

Changes in publishing and distribution technologies offer publishers and authors worldwide the opportunity to break out of their geographic region and to sell books print-on-demand and in e-book formats and sell to readers in the European and global markets—without licensing, directly, at a reasonable cost.

Through my broad international network of marketing experts I am happy to support local publishers marketing books worldwide, which are not licensed in the traditional way, and connect publishers to readers in the various global markets.

Blog

Occasionally, I blog about digital media and publishing in the 21st century, the time of digital transition. The posts on this blog are intended to accompany digital change in the media industry, providing background knowledge and specialist information as well as analyses of digital topics.

Bitcoin Whitepaper – Onepager A2 Poster

On 31 October 2008, a link to a paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled 'Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System' was posted to a cryptography mailing list. This publication triggered a revolution in banking and the financial industries. The dynamics of...

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The Open Content Certification Protocol (OCCP)

The Open Content Certification Protocol (OCCP) suggests a process to create and verify content certificates by using open, content-derived, decentralised content identifier technology on public blockchain networks.

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Network Event at Frankfurt Bookfair 2018

At Frankfurt Bookfair 2018 (13 October 2018) the Content Blockchain Project invited publishers, innovators, executives, developers and other stakeholders of the media industry to a networking event during the THEARTS+ conference.We had the opportunity to...

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