Copyrights and reposts

Matters of copyright

Since the post stored inside an NFT token is essentially a copyrighted product protected by copyright laws, it should be explained how the Crypto.Page system protects the copyright to the content of the post.

It should be noted that copyright protection is not possible entirely with the help of blockchain tools, and, in extreme cases, it may involve entities from the real world (for example, court). However, Crypto.Page implements a set of practices to make the copyright management process more controllable.

One of the reasons that require additional attention for copyright management is the implementation of storing posts on IPFS and the use of consecutive numbers as token identifiers. Such an approach, in the absence of additional control, can lead to the fact that the uniqueness of tokens will be violated, and people will publish someone else's content as their own, leading to the fact that there will be two or more separate NFT tokens referring to the same content.

To solve this problem, Page.NFT contract stores information about all IPFS links that have ever been published, along with information about what copyrights are set for each of these links at the first publication. The author creating the first post with any IPFS link will have to specify one of the 4 copyright protection systems:

• Unlimited use. In this case, the user can create as many NFT tokens as he/she wants with a link to this content to any participant of the Crypto.Page ecosystem. The value of the “creator” field of a token will indicate the user who generated the token, and he will receive a reward in Page.Token for creating such a post.

• Permission to copy with indication of authorship. In this case, the user can create as many NFT tokens as he/she likes with a link to this content to any participant of the Crypto.Page ecosystem, if the author of such a token is the author of the original content, and the reward in Page.Token will be received by the author of the original content. The owner of such content becomes the one who generates this token, or the one he points to (if the transfer control rules are followed). From the point of view of a social network, such use of content is a "repost" - for example, a repost of a popular meme created by someone in some community, which brings additional income to the author of the original meme both for the repost itself and further comments, and also leads to an increase in the number of rating tokens for such an author.

• Paid copying (Rental). In this case, the user can create as many NFT tokens as he/she likes with a link to this content to any participant of the Crypto.Page ecosystem, with the preservation of authorship and rewards for the original author (as in the case of copying with an indication of authorship) and with the payment of additional remuneration to the author of the original token in the amount established by such author or through Page.Marketplace auctions.

• Protected from copying. In this case, the creation of a token with the same content is prohibited, a token indicating the same IPFS path will not be created.

The owner of the original content can change permissions to use his content to any level from the levels "Permission to copy with attribution", "Paid copying" and "Protected from copying". It is impossible to change the level from the "Unlimited Use" level to any other level - the content given to the community for unlimited use remains in this state forever. It is also impossible to return from any other level to the "Protected from copying" level, since the content has already been copied.

It should be noted that for the cases "Permission to copy with attribution", "Paid copying", "Protected from copying" - the author can call a special method and transfer the authorship rights to any other wallet (which from that moment will start earning on such a token). Also, the author can specify information that authorship is tied to the value of the "owner" field when creating a token, or at any other time, completely transferring the rights to monetization to the owner of such a token.

There may be situations when content originally created outside of the Crypto.Page system is placed inside the system by a user who does not have copyrights to such content. To prevent such situations, when downloading content through the Page.DAPP system, the user must guarantee the rights to such content before downloading, and agree to be responsible for the consequences if he does not have such rights. The original copyright holder can use offline mechanisms to protect his/her rights.

There may also be situations where the author of the original content uploaded data to one blockchain (and generated an IPFS file for such content), but another participant in the Crypto.Page system decided to place such data on another blockchain ignoring the rights of the original author. In addition to using offline protection mechanisms in such cases, Crypto.Page offers three extra mechanisms to minimize the damage from such actions:

• When creating a post via Page.DAPP, if there is a file with some content in IPFS, Page.DAPP checks other blockchains supported by the system, and if the rights to such content do not belong to the "Unlimited Use" level, prohibits the creation of such content and reports automatically via Page.Messenger to the author of the original content about an attempt to clone his content in another blockchain.

• The author of content on one blockchain can synchronize a token from this blockchain (simultaneously with copyright protection) to other blockchains using the Page.Crosschain.Bridge mechanism. With the development of the Crypto.Page ecosystem it is planned to launch separate mass synchronization contracts, where authors can join pools and synchronize many tokens in one transaction to save gas costs during such synchronization.

• If a violation of rights still occurred (the token was not synchronized via Page.Crosschain.Bridge and not created through Page.DAPP), authors can open the voting in Page.DAO to recognize the authorship of content on another blockchain by providing the necessary evidence. Voting inside Page.DAO (possibly carried out by offchain) can recognize one of the participants in the dispute as the author of the token by changing the value of the “creator'' field of the token. Such recognition will only prevent future violations of rights, it will not change the current owner of the token, nor compensate Page.Token rewards and Page.SoulBound rating tokens which were not received. This is the only way to change the token authorship in the Crypto.Page ecosystem.

Unfortunately, the copyright control system is not able to protect copyrights for encrypted posts, since it is only enough to change the encryption key in order to turn the post into another one, from the copyright protection system point of view. The same applies to cases when minimal changes are made in the content that do not affect its display or affect it minimally (for example, adding a space to the end of a line). In such cases, it is necessary to use entities of the outside world (court, police, and so on) to protect copyrights, if the affected party believes that they have been violated.

In general, the task of the copyright protection system is not to prevent all cases of copyright infringement, since this is impossible, but to provide a clear and transparent mechanism for all parties involved to confirm the absence of infringement in cases where copying content is not a violation.

It should be noted that publishing a comment with the IPFS link repeating the link of any existing post will lead to a copyright system check. If such a post is marked as encrypted or paid, the system will not allow generating such a comment. It is allowed to publish posts related to the "Unlimited Use" and "Repost with a link" classes, and for posts of the "Permission to copy with indication of authorship" class, it is mandatory to indicate the author of the post in a separate field "author of the original" as an additional comment field, and paying a reward to the author for such a comment is also mandatory.

For other cases, Crypto.Page does not support copyright protection of comments. According to the Crypto.Page user agreement, the rights to the comment content are immediately and irrevocably given to the entire Crypto.Page users community on all blockchains. A user's comment in one post can be repeated in another post by this user or another one without any additional checks.