I worked as an illustrator and I can say that the copyright problem is really very urgent. Tell more about creating a smart contract in your system for these purposes. Does this happen through the choice of a smart contract template or you have a "smart contract constructor"?
Good to know you are an artist.
There are 2 contracts mainly.
For proof of ownership. All info regarding the author/artist goes on blockchain.
Full Name
State, City
Country
StockBlock Artist ID(Unique)
Image Hash/Fingerprint
Copyright Info If any(Legal)
URL of the image uploaded on the server/cloud/blockchain
All above details are time-stamped on ethereum blockchain.
Human readable data will be compiled in a PDF format for the artist. Just like a certificate of ownership.
The data can also be viewed on etherscan.io. (Read Smart Contract Tab)
The ContractABI code will be published for the artwork.
The SmartContract will be owned by StockBlock and The Artist.
A kill function would be implemented just in case the user wants to delete the contract information.
Some additional parameters will be added to switch cases as per need.
When the user adds the image in marketplace they might creates editions with price depending on the needs. Those multiple editions will correspond to a new smartcontract for each. The buyers pays for these editions and the status of the transaction is updated and the editions are updated accordingly after transaction confirmations. All transactions of that artwork will be tracked as artwork history.
Thats the basic functionality of the smartcontracts. The artist never pays for the contract creation. It happens in the back-end. All transactions will be batch processed to save gas and stuff.
I am not able to upload images here yet.
This is how it will look.
http://stockblock.io/images/preview1.jpghttp://stockblock.io/images/preview2.jpgLet me know what you think.