China Takes Blockchain as a Weapon against Online Plagiarism

[Ozark]

Chinese Internet Court will use blockchain technologies to protect online authors from plagiarism.

China has created an Internet Court in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou to deal with online-related cases and disputes, according to local media. The new establishment will use blockchain to combat plagiarism for Internet writers.

Scientific and journalistic misconduct is a grave problem in China, which is flooded with plagiarism cases, fraudulent data, false CVs and fake reviews. Furthermore, writers publishing their work on the Internet are even more vulnerable to abuse than their offline peers as it is hard to track the originality of the content and protect their legal rights.

Online authors used to make screenshots as evidence of their copyright. However, this process lacked legal credibility and often left most writers unprotected. Meanwhile, the high costs of professional lawyers and notarial procedures forced them to give up attempts to seek justice in cases of plagiarism.

However, the blockchain technology implemented into China's new court procedures might offer a solution.

According to Wang Jiangqiao, a judge at the court, the decentralized nature of blockchain guarantees data integrity, while the distributed ledger safely keeps all records and digital footprints, including authorship, time of creation, content, and evidence of infringement. Considering the immutability of blockchain, these records can have legal effect.

Due to its online nature, the court accepts filings in electronic form and rules on Internet-related cases via live stream. The hearing’s participants, including plaintiffs, can verify their identity with a state-issued ID or Alipay account.

A few weeks earlier, Hangzhou Internet Court created a precedent of using blockchain records as evidence to confirm the intellectual property rights of an online author. Having looked into the matter, the court concluded that this type of electronic data could be used as evidence of in copyright infringement cases.

China is not the only country that is exploring blockchain potential in the realm of copyright protection. A member of the European Parliament offered to use a blockchain to fight copyright infringement earlier this year.

SOURCE