Copytrack – Protecting Photographers’ Copyright by Using Blockchain

Copytrack.com is a German-based company which pursues copyright infringements – that is the use of peoples' images without payment. It is a widespread problem, lots of businesses use pictures and either don't know or don't care to pay for them. See my previous article here. A shocking statistic from Pixsy says that in one of their surveys 64% of professional photographers had their work stolen over 200 times last year. Individual photographers and other licencing companies like photo libraries are losing significant sums of money, if an image licence was worth say 300 dollars or euros per use.

Some of those uses might have been non-commercial social media like blogs, but some are commercial companies which should pay, for example, if they use an image on a t-shirt, or put it in an advertisement. Unfortunately, most photographers have neither the time nor the inclination to pursue infringers. It is particularly difficult if the infringement happens in another country.

Copytrack is one of a number of companies which have seen a business model which pursues unlicenced photos and splits the fees with the photographer. Joining is free, and the company does not bill the photographer but takes 30-50% of the money recovered.

By using their own picture recognition software (similar to Google reverse image search), pictures can be compared and where they are used transmitted by Copytrack to the photographer or copyright owner, who can then see if they were licenced correctly.

Marcus Schmitt, CEO of Copytrack, set it up in 2015. “We offer a global, risk-free service for photographers to recover money for infringed images." The system works in a four-stage process, when images appear not to be licenced: firstly Copytrack sends a polite email, asking the user to provide a licence, and putting forward a fee to be settled if the image was not originally purchased – this is called "Post-usage licensing" and is successful in around 45% of cases. If there is no resolution, then Copytrack becomes sterner, with increasing fees for non-compliance. After that, there is a legal letter, then finally as a last resort, court proceedings.

The company has been very successful and now handles recovery in 140 countries.

Copytrack.io - New Company formed for ICO

There are issues to contend with: copyright legislation differs from country to country, and it may be difficult to prove who took the photograph and owns the copyright. Digital photos have image header information within them, but this is easily removed. So are visible watermarks, and one solution, digitally watermarking the image, has not been very popular.

Copytrack saw blockchain technology as a useful tool to protect copyright. So they set up a new business in Singapore – to reach the Asian market – and because Singapore is known for being a trustworthy jurisdiction. Not coincidentally they are also one of the small countries which are enthusiastically jumping on board the crypto train.

Copytrack raised USD 12million during their ICO (token CPY) in December to January. Marcus admits it was a hair-raising time, as they had chosen to execute the ICO when the market became massively volatile.

Marcus says, “The problem we see now with licensing can be the lack of transparency. Agencies licence images but the fee never makes it back to the photographer. Also, many images are not used because researchers cannot trace the copyright holder, and our registry will make this easier."

The project uses the Qtum (pronounced Quantum) blockchain – decentralised blockchain application technology which Marcus says they chose it because "With the cryptocurrency path the fees will be much lower. Bank charges in different countries can end up taking a large amount of the fee we recover, sometimes as much as 25%. With our CPY token and smart contracts, everything will be fast and scalable. We expect to have 1000-5000 nodes, with a Proof-of-Stake model.” The plan is to roll out the free images registry in July 2018, and build it up it over the next year or so.

They will also develop an API so that other organisations with an interest in IP registration and licensing can piggyback their projects onto it. Already they have had interest from music and video companies.

So, if you are a photographer or copyright owner, you need to look out in July when the registry will go live.

http://www.copytrack.com

Julian Jackson is a writer whose interests encompass technology, cryptocurrencies and blockchain, the environment, as well as photography and film. His portfolio is here:
https://julianj.journoportfolio.com www.brightgreenpr.co.uk www.bitcoin-consultancy.co.uk