Have a file with the registered content with our copyright registration metadata in it if possible. For instance puting the work registration information link, or author profile in Safe Creative link in the copyright or authorship field of the work’s metadata http://www.photometadata.org/meta-tutorials-adobe-photoshop
When we have to explain what is Safe Creative for we quickly reach a basic doubt: What is what motivates people most to register their creations?
During thisyears we have found answers all kinds, and really there is not one single motivation, but several that come together at the same time; the priority although usually varies depending on the wishes of the authors which is also reflected in the type of rights declaration they wish to state.
While one cannot generalize, we have noted there are two major trends that drive people to register in direct connection with this we have said in the previous paragraph:
- Generate and communicate evidence of authorship to prevent others from copying a work the author reserves all rights of or…
- … generate enough information to ensure that a work that the author wants to share, it is in the desired terms.
The first group is the most classic in the use of “copyright” and seek to avoid to the maximum that his creations may be copied and used without your express consent. We say that is classic as this vision is based on what the copyright laws and copyright have been giving by default for some three hundred years and has prevailed well into the 90s.
The second uses the new licensing models that allow authors to give certain permissions, such as Creative Commons licenses for their work to be spread and used, though, ensuring that the wishes expressed in the license are complied with, that is, to correctly attribute, to be or not be used commercially, and/or to permit the making of derivative works being those, if allowed, with the same license of the original work or possibly using a different one.
Whatever the model, the need to generate evidence of rights holding is critical but probably not the most critical issue: The bottom line is that the registration information is easily accessible either on the own work, or the environment in which it is published.
Therefore the truly desirable and main function should be paramount in any registration system is that the “report” is the focal point of it, because to some degree will prevent or somewhat discourage plagiarism or misuse of registered works. After that first step, and if something goes wrong, something that can occur, evidence of authorship generated will help try to make amends if possible and always with the best guarantees.
Magical solutions do not exist, and as Voltaire would say “Luck is what happens when preparation and opportunity meet and fuse.” Prepare yourself by registering and seize the opportunities that new technologies provide.
A question we get quite often is about death; death of a proyect, of a company. It’s a fact, not that there’s a possibility that a company might dissapear, but when will this happen. Of course we want to exist for many many years, but it’s true that someday, in a few centuries of course, we will go away as happens with any other company that today exists. And what will happen with all that’s been registered?
First thing is that’s the main reason behind adding quite some time ago a redundant independent, officially recognized timestamp. This means that if you have the registration certificate of the work registered (you can get it starting with the premium account and from previously recorded works too), and a digital copy of the registered file in your computer or other storage service, you will be able to proof your authorship and other rights even if Safe Creative is no longer there. And this is also this way because to identify the file itself we use the best hashes around. If we see we have to close or change, will inform our users with enought time to act upon this and most probably will facilitate ways to download all this vital information.
The second thing is that we are in close touch with other registries, no matter private or public and with institutions such as WIPO (World Intellectual Property Office) in order to be able to transfer our registration information prior consent from users. This way the registration information might stay still publicly accesible.
Of course, any other idea or proposal is most welcome.
One of the major challenges we are facing and will face in the coming decades is concerned with the preservation of the digital content created. Although at first glance it may not seem so, to preserve digital content is becoming very difficult even impossible in many cases.
There are two basic questions that must be examined:
a) The obsolescence of formats and ways to access them
b) The huge amount of content being generated
A digital content may turn obsolete?
Yes, and for many reasons. The first and most obvious is for the media on which are recorded. We could speak of floppy disks, hard diskes and finally the cloud. The “cloud” is a concept that seems very esoteric and in our imagination could solve many problems, but actually they are servers hosted somewhere physically with their own hard drives and challenges to endure. However the problem is more visible when dealing with file formats and the respective applications that open or run those, or the operating systems that provide the ability to view, interpret those files or programs. Eventually what is now new becomes old and eventually obsolete in a very short period of time. Furthermore, considering the speed at which technology evolves, that obsolescence may occur in a few years when not months. If we add the portable reading and even creating devices that connect to services using complex set of rules, with the obsolescence of such equipment at stake, is not always possible to recover what he had access to or had created with.
It also happens that we eventually tend to forget where we have things stored, the passwords providing access to accounts and even more importantly, many service providers that generate and store those contents may disappear without giving option to regain some or all created items in there. Hence, it is necessary for the good practices of any company, be prepared for an emergency of this kind, as it isn’t not only not rare, but is sure will someday happen. Hardly a business is going to last “forever”. All companies and institutions have an expiration date, just happens we do not know that date. The contents, however, should be able to continue to exist somewhere somehow.
Is it possible to store all content always being generated? That is another big challenge. Should we keep it all? And if so, is it possible to keep it all?
Internet Archive ( http://www.archive.org ) knows well what we mean by this. This huge project of UC Berkeley stores as much digital content as is able to, and content mainly dedicated to the public domain in its wider definition (works whose authors expressly allow to share) with the aim to preserve for future generations.
But with every passing second new content is generated and uploaded to the Internet. In one day we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of new works. The volume is huge and to store and make it available consumes huge amounts of energy.
Not all the contents have the same quality nor relevance, that’s clear, but… who are we to judge now what deserves or not to be rescued for the future? As a simple example we could mention any of those painters who died in misery who could not imagine the fortunes that were to be paid for their paintings or historical relevance of their works.
Even the most insignificant item is part of who we are today and has its relative importance. We may never preserve everything, but at least we have to try so that the future generations better realize the historical context that did make their time as it will be.
Bottom line:
We are very far from being able to save everything, but we should not underestimate the importance of even the most apparently trivial item as it may be essential in the future to understand the story that will have to be studied. A simple tweet may have been the spark that changes the world forever. Everything holds its value and as a future challenge, when technology permits to store everything indefinitely, it will be to be able to interpret in the right context all that information. Meanwhile we must each do the necessary work for the archiving and preservation of the content we create and maintain.
Internet is not, although lot of people will think otherwise, an exploitation window such as TV or radio (one direction media). Internet is an amplified technologically based expression of the analog reality, thus something just as real also. To confuse the “exploitation windows” concept is something very dangerous and is happeing already in many aspects. It’s a philosophycal question, but we need to understand it or we fall into the risk of enforce ourselves into the sole digital environment when the key to success (whatever it means to anybody) has to deal with seing reality as it is now, with it’s digital and analog sides completely related to each other.
Now to certify that an email, together with its content and recipients, has been sent, is as simple as putting stamp@mailstamper.com in copy
Companies, creatives or any other professional can send mock-ups or works for hire preventing the risk of their customers being tempted to claim ownership over them saying the mail sent never existed.
It is also possible to proof that a mail requesting the cancellation of a membership was sent to the email specified in a contrat, or that an assignment was sent before the deadline, etc.
The new mailstamper.com service is very simple to use: to generate an evidence of an email sent, its content and the recipients, we only need to carbon copy the email to stamp@mailstamper.com
“Even in the very early testing phase of the project some users reported us success stories where large companies, little given to quickly respond to complaints from users, replied within hours after learning that the dispatched email was being certified” says Mario Pena, community manager “so we soon realized we really had a especially easy to use efficient tool.”
MailStamper remits the email content in a ISO 19005-1:2005 (PDF / A) campliant digitally signed document, including a time stamp from Safe Creative Ltd, thus acting as a trusted third party , so it can be considered as proof of the email having been dispatched togehter with the information of the sender, recipents, content and time it happened
This new service has been launched this week at the direction http://www.mailstamper.com offering five free of charge mailing certifications. Additionally packages are available for 10 or 50 certificates, and an unlimited certification suscription is available for an annual fee.
If something has happened with the arrival of the Internet is that we are faced with a whole lot of new options and things we can do.
But at the same time we tend to tell people what they should do and when based on our past experiences, leaving little option to the very much needed experimentation.
Also not all the choices do have the same support from a legal or technological perspective.
That is why we are what you could call a “pro choice” of authors regards their works. What does this mean?
From the very beginning we have had the following in mind:
To offer a solution for any budget, even the non-existent budget one, all with the same level of evidence generation strength.
To be agnostic regards the “licensing” or “protection” mode the author chooses, providing any of those options with the same kind of tools.
About the solution for any budget:
In Safe Creative you will have the best prices of any private and even public registrators, as you can choose for a basic free of charge account, and very afordable payed accounts, like the premium, professional and corporate accounts. Even more, you can even hire our engine to create your own registration service, for any purpose, and for a very low fee. And all registrations made with Safe Creative, no matter the account, receive all the benefits of our technology. All type of accounts can use digital certificates to identify the user, and the evidence is timestamped with the same technology. The difference between accounts? Simple, some features: Some features oriented for specific user profiles. The more professional you get to be, the more and new things you are likely to need.
So basically anybody can use the best registration technology with a fair price.
About the protection mode:
And here is the matter of the article. We don’t prejudize the protection mode an author chooses. In Safe Creative, from the very beginning of the project, authors have been able to ecqually choose “all rights reserved” and or “some rights reserved” philosophy at their will. Why? Because we provide a service for many, and everyone has different needs, issues and sensibilities. We cannot know everything and in a context of changing environment, such as Internet, the ability to change your opinion, therefore protection mode, is key for success. And here is where Safe Creative stands as a system that allows options to be choosen.
Right, we all know that not all the pictures we take during your summer can be considered as art works, but as a matter of fact, and since we take so many pictures during these days, it’s likely to happen that we find ourselves with a couple of great pictures. And those images deserve some kind of protection because they might be outstanding.
What to do?
Quite simple: Our suggestion is to register them in Safe Creative using ART.
What is ART?
ART stands for Automatic Registration Tool, and well, the name -ART- is quite cool also.
We simply have install the ART program, we will find in our tools section of our web, in our computer. It runs on GNU/Linux, Mac and Windows systems, and allows to define a folder which contents will be registered. All the new contents we put in that folder, when ART is running, will be automatic registered in Safe Creative under a profile of our selection.
We might have several folders with different assigned profiles, thus different type of works and or protection ways.
So all we do is start ART, authorize it in Safe Creative when it ask for it, copy or drag and drop files to be registered there, and once registered we have the technological evidence we need to be confident enough to send those files to other online publishing services, like social networks.
If we have many pictures we recommend to hire a premium account for only 36 euros a year.
And if anybody has a question, trouble or suggestion, we will be more than happy to try to help through our contact form.
By the way, enjoy this months and don’t forget to follow us in Twitter and Facebook
Publishing, editing or any other innovative project can now incorporate Safe Creative’s stamping and registration engine to both protect their works -generating creation dates and authorship evidence- and give birth to new ideas and business models.
Fully operational within 24 hours of hire.
A private stamping and registration service.
A private intranet and an application that automatically sends all files from computers to register and stamp.
Including an API to connect any system that requires stamping and registration.
Madrid, June 25, 2012. Safe Creative, worldwide leader in online private registration of copyrights, launches SerialStamper: The service that allows any business and project to incorporate the most robust digital system for registering and stamping, sized to any need.
In the digital changing and volatile environment, where nothing seems to remains unchanged for a long time, providing technically irrefutable evidence to show when a file or content started to exist and that it hasn’t be altered since then, becomes especially relevant. “The independent digital stamping and registering, not only offers clear improvements in speed and efficiency to organizations that need these elements of security,” says Juan Palacio, CEO of Safe Creative “but opens the door to new, valuable and interesting services, saving in production costs and maintenance. ”
Architects, photography and legal associations, smartphone application developers, insurance companies, auditors and almost any existing project that creates or manages contents and files can benefit from the possibilities of SerialStamper. Entrepreneurs of innovative projects and applications can generate evidence of creation and authorship of files to avoid and defend against plagiarism and usurpations; and all with the guarantee of Safe Creative.
During the promotional phase of SerialStamper there exist favorable conditions for hiring.
About Safe Creative
Safe Creative is the leading company in online copyrights registration. It focuses on creating tools that work for the open, free and independent copyright registration in web environments. Thanks to the work of Safe Creative more than 75,000 authors can easily and intuitively self manage the rights of their works and take advantage of the semantic potential that registering in the platform brings to those contents.
The interesting whole day and two parts event at Brussels has been the first step of many to follow to try to adapt the copyright regime to digital today’s facts and challenges.
Moderated by Nick Ashton-Hart from the Computer and Communications Industry Association, Mario Pena, from Safe Creative, Liv Vaisberg from the Federation of European Publishers, Paul Keller from Creative Commons and Kelvin Smits from Younison, Europe’s association of independent musicians, debated about the following proposal: “Users and creators must be able to use copyrighted material to produce a new compound work for non-commercial purposes without needing a licence” not being all in total disagreement at all, but some putting some conditions such as the following:
1) The need of correctly crediting all original creators,
2) for non-commercial purposes, meaning direct commercial use when first published,
3) to use simplified, convenient and affordable technology to inform the original creator about the usage and
4) should the work become commercial, to allow the authors of the parts of the works being used, to decide if they want that and/or to be remunerated by a percentage of the revenue and if so, making the revenue sharing automatic and transparent.
As a matter of fact, authors already use other’s artist works for the purpose of learning and for private training, but the conflict might arise when the work goes public even for a small group of contacts or friends, specially in user generated content projects under social network schemes.
There’s a clear need for artists to access others’ works, and the result will be published whether they like or not, so the best solution is to bring technology into play together with clear common sense quotation rules. It is specially sensible, and we all agreed, when the work goes viral and starts to generate revenue, it makes sense that the original author of the work partly used is able to decide to get some revenue or not.
Other consideration relates to moral rights. Again we all agreed, moral rights should prevail but therefore we need a flexible harmonization, together with quotation rules, with all existing legal jurisdictions.
Of course we will keep on working together with the organizators and participants to help improve whatever is necessary to help all creators and users of contents to achieve the best technologies and good practices.
If you want to know more about the event and all that was said, clic here.
