Bitcoin Forum

While folks are working on creating asset tokens for Bitcoin 2.0, I would ask for development of an image format akin to DRM that first checks the blockchain for the outputs before accessing the image data. Then anything done with the image like printing, displaying, or selling would require a transaction (with a fee) and would remove the color from the token.

Important documents would be authenticated by the author as a notarization. This wouldn't deter copyright infringement, but would be useful for authenticating original artwork. Rights for displaying lower resolution images in the case of artwork could be granted with different color (and cheaper) tokens.

This would mostly be useful when it is important to authenticate the originality of the document or artwork. For instance, applications could be developed that prove that "selfie" images were taken by the camera installed on the device. Games like "Magic: The Gathering" could sell virtual cards displayable once on a device. And of course, contractual tools could be developed.

What I understand about your concept is an image will open only with private key. But image is about showing others, unless it is a secret doc. Does it find any purpose in the normal concept of image sharing ?

No. Any digital image can be copied, but images encrypted that can only be displayed with special software will help protect your purchase from being copied if you don't want it to be. It's only to prove authenticity, not copy protection.

Let's say you are an artist and want to sell a limited edition run of electronic prints. You would issue colored coins that are partially embedded into the print itself. You would be able to authenticate your ownership by signing your colored coin that is verified to be the print number that is owned by you. If you sell the digital print, you will also have to transfer the colored coin. If you sell the digital form, the image would need to be re-hashed and a new colored token would be created that would be traceable to the previous token. If multiple tokens are hashed, they would be seen in the blockchain. It behooves the owner to never expose the original to the internet. You would need an offline or sandboxed device to render the image for display purposes.

So, u r talking about replacing third party authentication of digital signature through a decentralized public ledger ? 2 questions...

1. What would be the miner's benefit to maintain the blockchain ?

2. Is not ethereum already working on it ...a distributed database ?

1. I'm talking about Colored Coin tokens. Bitcoin mining is already part of the protocol.

2. Ethereum, NXT, Mastercoin, Counterparty, et al. could do this as well. This is a Bitcoin forum, so I am using Bitcoin based Colored Coin as an example.

imagine microsoft office that asked you to register first and then supplied you with a download, and the licence key was a public key. to use it you just needed to pay to that public key.

because microsoft owned all privkeys. then people cannot simple use random public keys, and key gens would be useless due to the fact that any key not linkd to micosofts privkeys would be useless..

now things you still have issues with.
people that can crack the DRN/blockchain checker. or atleast feed the data false information...

Again, I'm not talking about copyright infringement. I'm talking about the buyer wanting to protect his particular investment, not the company that created it.

in the end its the same thing..
whats to stop a person putting in a different public key that has lots of coins thus pretending 2000 printouts are pre-paid(my solution registering the user and giving a public key linked to a privkey kept by artist/copyright)
but..
whats stopping me removing the checker (cracking)
whats stopping me preventing the image from checking a true blockchain, and feeding it false data
whats stopping someone from when just viewing it on screen. just screen grabbing the image and printing it a non altcoin image editor
what incentivising people to want to replace current image editors/printer drivers that force them to pay

and lastly.. can you please call this asset token an altcoin... the whole bitcoin 2.0 is just crap PR.. its nothing to do with bitcoin.. its an altcoin with separate services

This isn't about copyright infringement. It's about protecting the buyer's interest. The original creator/artist could die for all I care. In fact, that usually makes art more valuable.

First, you would not reveal your original copy, that would be like giving away your private key. You would only do so to sell the asset. The buyer would then create a new token from your token and there would be a blockchain history. Screen grabs would not be provable as authentic print releases from the artist. If you have the original digital print and the hash, you can sign your token to prove ownership.

Sure, you could make a million pirate copies, but they would not be traceable to the original colored coin that was issued. Really, having special software is for your own protection but not necessary if you have better means to secure the asset.

In the case of software like microsoft or magic the gathering, you could use Verisign, but web based tokens are not as secure as the blockchain.

i used the microsoft analogy. because when you have the artwork. you become microsoft. so th point about you holding the privkeys and anyone wanting a copy of... art.. pays a small fee..

blah blah

the point that is the same is. by never showing the art publicly is in it self protecting the investor... that is a human attribute not a code/protocol.

and if the investor wanted to sell the art on he could do that again without code..a genuine art collector would not make copies anyway. and a dodgy art collector who your trying to prevent from making copies.. would still find a way to make copies. and i can already see ways to make each copy be validated as the authentic original..

so in my out-of-box thinking... what will it achieve...

oh and as for real canvass art.. lets take mona lisa

which version of mona lisa made a museum the most money?
the original?
the copy?
answer: the copy. imagine it $10 a poster x millions of art tourists to the museum gift shop each year

after knowing the answer you will see your trying to solve a non problem by using a blockchain. without realising there is still cracks in the plan and work arounds, even if there was no need to have an authenticity code.

im still trying to think up a scenario that would require such technology, and how it would be uncrackable

If you have an original copy that was sent to you by an artist, how can you prove you didn't copy it before selling it and sell another copy to someone else as an original print?

All I'm saying is that you add a bitcoin transaction into the mix to prove it is legit. You could do it without a Colored Coin and just use any cryptocurrency, but it would require keeping an off blockchain registration list. Colored Coins are publicly unique and don't need a central server to register them.

I don't care about physical art like the Mona Lisa, but if you had Leonardo's original digital rendering and could prove so cryptographically, then you would sell the original colored coin with the painting.

Let's just forget the physical printing part. It's not important because print technologies are constantly improving.

I think you are conflating two different transactions. The creator of the art can make as many colored coins as he wishes and that number is known when they are issued.

Secondary owners (purchasers) would have to transfer their colored coin with the original digital art. They could keep a copy, but it would not be a legitimate copy they could resell.

So if I buy a digital print and get the corresponding color coin, why can't I make 10 copies of the digital print and give away 10 copies of the corresponding colored coin private key? As long as all holders of the private key don't remove the funds, all 10 people can use the digital print. Right?

You could make copies, but only one would have the colored coin to verify it. The person you sold it to would not be happy that multiple copies were released.

Edit: You have to transfer the colored coin, not just give away the keys, just like a bitcoin.

An infinite # of users could have the same color coin...only one could spend it :)

You can say the same thing about Bitcoin.

I proposed this idea a few years ago to a certain Bitcoin gambling mogul to invest in developing the idea. He didn't think art was a good fit for Bitcoin. In fact, I think most Bitcoiners have no interest in art.

Yes. Exactly.

The colored coin protection of access to a digital object discourages (but does not preclude) sharing as anyone sharing the object could transfer ownership exclusively to themselves or just take the corresponding funds.

The software allowing access to the digital object needs to be trusted to only allow access when the user has the colored coin private key _and_ the colored coin is funded with the desired amount (do I have that detail right?)...I'm uncertain how that trust model would work.

Horrible idea, I hope it never see the light of day. This could prove to be...a serious anti-piracy tool and it can cause the destruction of...quite a lot of things.

Lately, I keep wondering how people can sit around and think these kind of destructive ideas, like not just this thread, many more.

The software is to protect the buyer, not to secure the artwork. You can use any encryption. The cc is not a key to the artwork, it only verifies that you have a legitimate copy. The hash of your digital master is historically verifiable on the blockchain. If you give away digital copies of your numbered digital master, then you deserve to lose the value you paid for it.

This is no different than the digital assets being addressed by Open Assets, Ethereum, et al. It would just be simpler with Colored Coin.

I'm probably overthinking this. When I was working on the idea a few years ago, colored coin didn't yet exist. I was planning to use Casacius style security stickers on paintings. Colored coins should be easily attached to digital prints. It's probably just a matter of developing an easy to use colored coin client that hashes a limited set of digital copies for Deviant Art users.

while reading all comments and usefulness.. im also trying to find solutions to the ability to make duplicates.

so lets say that there was a new version of zip encryption that could lock data inside. the main password was the privkey, and the zip program generated a thumbnail if someone entered the publickey.

so now the privkey is obviously of the address that contains the coloured coin. and anyone in the world can have a copy of the zipped up file and know the coloured coin public address. to verify it as being real and valid, by seeing a thumbnail using the public address of the coloured coin

the owner can write a signed message (as he is the only one with the privkey) to show he is the owner of the privkey and ultimately the only one with access to the true high quality 'print'.

ok i think im on the same page as cbeast...

so the owner using the privkey can sign messages announcing the sell of the art and include an auction site or email to contact him for the sell)

in a ethical world that cbeast wants the art world to be. once the buyer hands him the bitcoin. the owner gives the buyer the privkey. now the new owner, can make a new privkey, move the coloured coin from old address to the new address and rezip the image under his new privkey, announcing that all he now has control of the coloured coin.

even if millions of copies of the zip file spread the planet. all people would have access to is the thumbnail

now then....
whats stopping the old owner from then giving away the original privkey to 1000 people so they can open version one zipfile (old password) that have thousands of version1 copies around the internet, thus giving everyone access to the high quality image.

whats stopping the owner from not selling the privkey to just one person but to 20 people simultaneously, knowing it will take 10 minutes for the coloured coin to move. giving him a nice 10 mile head start with 20 peoples money. simply because he didnt want to sell it to just one. i know in the end only 1 person will have the privkey for the coloured coin.

but in both scenario's unlike canvass painting. if 20, 1000 or millions people have a high quality image.. they dont care about the coin.. thus making the coin useless..

....

i think cbeast is trying to make it that the coin is the true value of the digital art.. but once people have the image in a quality resolution they want, the coin is useless and valueless to everyone. and yes a few people may b butt hurt that the first owner scammed them..

but how would you stop it!

I think there's a solid and useful idea here...I'm uncertain on the details, but some way of making a ledger of "authentic" copies of digital objects that can be transferred.

Right now, Bitcoin does exactly this for a specific fungible divisible digital object (basically an integer, # of Satoshi's). Your idea generalizes the concept to non-fungible or non-divisible (or both) digital objects that can be more than just integers.

My gut tells me there is something brilliant in your idea...I just don't see it all clearly.

I'm not talking about that at all, but I'm glad you are brainstorming. I'm not against the idea, but I'm not a security expert.

Use escrow.

This is a moral question. Do you donate to shareware? Again for the third time, I'm not trying to defend copyright. The coin gives you bragging rights. It is a collectible. If an art piece ever becomes legendary, people might value the coins.

....
It's art speculation in the digital age.