Protecting your content from plagurism for free via blockchain based apps

I recently posted a review of a new blockchain based application called Stop The Fakes which aims to help companies and individuals eliminate unauthorized use of their intellectual property. That includes brand names, trademarks, copyrights images, etc. etc. Stop The Fakes is not yet available to use yet and is also not really, so far, aimed at small-time users. it is really a platform for incentivizing third parties to hunt down IP infringements where a bounty of several dollars can be placed as a reward.

However while researching STF I did come across a couple of other solutions using blockchain based technologies that are already live and usable and more importantly for free by folks like you an me and not big brands with deep pockets to protect their IP.

While some people think intellectual property should not exist during my 6 months as a Steemian I've seen strong support on Steemit for downvoting of posts that are plagiarism - unattributed and unauthorized copying. As a community, it seems we generally want to create a rising tide that floats all boats by rewarding quality content that brings more users to the platform that increases the value of STEEM which brings more content producers to the platform and so on in a virtuous cycle. If you post some content be it an article, artwork, photographs, images, audio, video, and then someone steals your rewards by just copying it that doesn't help anyone. You'll probably go elsewhere to publish your best work, Steemit will become a platform of copied and stolen work and less of an authoritative source of quality publications.

To that end I think ideas like Stop The Fakes are good and while researching that review I came across two other services that are exploiting the blockchain to protect users content.

Solutions

Binded

Binded lets users upload images, optionally request a US copyright registration, and monitor the web for copies of that image showing up which will result in a notifaction to you. Enforcement of your rights is up to you but the information provided by Binded can be used to prove the image is yours. It is not clear if the monitoring service, which is in beta, could handle finding derivative versions of the work such as resized, rescanned, or reformatted versions.

Binded also allows you to link you account to Instagram and Twitter although the purpose is unclear. I belive it is to indicate that image copies showing up on those sites are not unauthorized. I think a more valuable feature would be to automatically register and images showing up in those feeds. However since people sometimes post images by others on their feeds that might not be the best options.

Binded dashboard

Ascribe

Ascribe is a similar service to Binded except it allows of uploading of almost any digital work including images, documents, audio, and video. So far there is no automatic monitoring for copies showing up on the Internet, Ascribe just services as a repository for documents of all kinds, and a source of a unique ID you can reference. They claim they will add such a feature, along with features to allow you to transfer ownership of your works to others, and license their users by third parties.

Ascribe says it is based on Bigchaindb, I believe Binded uses IPFS.

Interestingly they even put their own Whitepaper into Ascribe - nice idea!

Document registration in Ascribe

The future

While both these products are in early stages of development I think they make perfect sense. It would be good if they could integrate with other blockchain based identity solutions like Civic or Blockpass to prove identity of owners and users. It is also unclear just how permanent their storage will be. The possibility of the products going dark and leaving countless petabytes of content to "rot" on the blockchain or tertiary storage would be, what can I say.... unfortunate?

Please post below if you know of or encounter any other alternatives for protecting content producers rights.