Accompanying video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLORX6w_OZI&feature=youtu.be Abstract: When it comes to ownership, the internet is broken. Artists, designers, and other creatives can share their work easily on the internet, but keeping it as "theirs" and get fairly compensated has proven difficult. How do you "own" something when bits can be copied freely? It turns out that visionaries of hypertext foresaw this issue in the 60s. They even proposed systems to handle this. However, those systems were too complex and hard to build. By the early 90s, the simpler WWW had won, but unfortunately in its simplicity it left out attribution to owners. We ask a new question: can we retrofit the internet for ownership? It turns out the answer is yes, with the help of python-powered big data, machine learning, and the blockchain. First, we crawl the internet and create a large scale crawl database, then preprocess all media into machine learning features. Then, creators can "register" their work onto the blockchain. Finally, we use machine learning to cross-reference registered works against the large-scale crawl database. We can do this for images, text, and even 3d designs; and it works even if the design has changed meaningfully. Python-powered big data is making it possible to revive the dream of ownership on the internet.

1. Trent McConaghy
© ascribe GmbH 2015
Version 0.9, May 29, 2015
ascribe ID: 167DLM2vXEKLEMd4kRLJVqBmgW3iFMBues
Rewiring the Internet for Ownership
with Big Data and Blockchains

2. Problems

5. Fun with
rootkits

8. Jonathan Monaghan
Escape Pod
2015, 3 editions
How do you
collect digital
art?

9. Jonathan Monaghan
Escape Pod
2015, 3 editions
How do you
collect digital
art?

10. http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/17/4844814/would-you-pay-2000-for-a-gif
"the question of ownership
[of digital art]
… is still unsolved
... the elephant in the room”
-the Verge, 2013

11. How do you share 3d-printing designs?
“my conclusion is that whatever
you put on the internet you lose
it. Maybe keep the rights, but
lose the power over it.”
-user on Shapeways blog
http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/19789-copyright-3d-printing-and-you-what-does-it-all-mean.html

12. Fortified: Restricted, difficult
to reuse, difficult to share
Copyright Zone Public Domain Ocean
Open: Unrestricted reuse, but
much material is inferior or
outdated
Adapted from http://xanadu.net/NOWMORETHANEVER/XuSum99.html

13. Ownership of digital property
(especially on the internet) is a mess
• Creators – hard to get compensated. Sharing =
losing control.
• Collectors / audience – no secondary markets
• Connectors – distracted by legals
• For almost every digital media vertical: digital
art, photography, 3d, music, videos, ..

14. Ownership of digital property
(especially on the internet) is a mess
• Creators – hard to get compensated. Sharing =
losing control.
• Collectors / audience – no secondary markets
• Connectors – distracted by legals
• For almost every digital media vertical: digital
art, photography, 3d, music, videos, ..
Where’s my stuff?

15. Ownership of digital property
(especially on the internet) is a mess
• Creators – hard to get compensated. Sharing =
losing control.
• Collectors / audience – no secondary markets
• Connectors – distracted by legals
• For almost every digital media vertical: digital
art, photography, 3d, music, videos, ..
Where’s my stuff?
No visibility Painful legals

16. Why?
Ownership of digital property
(especially on the internet) is a mess
Some WWW history…

19. Create some art,
and put it on the net.
Trent’s
(obviously great)
work of art

20. original
The WWW Zero links: Copy with no attribution

21. original
Uni-directional links:
Attribution but no
ownership control
The WWW Zero links: Copy with no attribution
or mis-
attribution

22. original
Uni-directional links:
Attribution but no
ownership control
The WWW Zero links: Copy with no attribution
or mis-
attribution
Where’s my stuff?
No visibility Painful legals

23. “The current world wide web does
basically one thing: simple, stupid, mindless
hyperlinks.
But even that alone was enough to build a
functional and useful internet for the world.”
-Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror Blog
http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-xanadu-dream/

24. Does it need to be this way?
Some pre-WWW history…

25. “[Consider] a unified .. service that would
provide storage and publication services,
and manage .. royalty payment on a .. fair
basis that would facilitate unrestricted
virtual republishing”
-Ted Nelson
-on a vision from 1965
http://xanadu.net/NOWMORETHANEVER/XuSum99.html

26. Restricted
Copyright
Zone
Unrestricted
Public Domain
Zone
Unrestricted
Transpublishing
Zone
Anything may be quoted, and
republished, without
prearrangement or difficulty,
retaining © and © benefits
Growing pool
of republishable materials
Public domain
ocean
1. Theodor H. Nelson, "A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing and the indeterminate." Proceedings of the ACM National Conference, 1965.
2. Image adapted from http://xanadu.net/NOWMORETHANEVER/XuSum99.html
“.. a new middle realm, one which renders copyright benign and
flexible .. a win-win system, as it is beneficial both to rights
holders and to users, in a way that other copyright systems are
not beneficial to users.” –Ted Nelson
The Xanadu Vision (from 1965)
“The original hypertext project”

27. original
1. Bi-directional links,
2. Baked-in copyright
The Xanadu design

28. original
1. Bi-directional links,
2. Baked-in copyright
Where’s my stuff?
The Xanadu design

29. original
1. Bi-directional links,
2. Baked-in copyright
Where’s my stuff?
The Xanadu design
Visibility via
bi-dir. links
Baked-in
copyright

30. http://xanadu.net/NOWMORETHANEVER/XuSum99.html
The Xanadu design: 1972 mockup

31. The Xanadu design was actually
“a little” more complicated (1968)
http://xanadu.net/NOWMORETHANEVER/XuSum99.html

32. original
Bi-directional links:
Owner awareness,
“baked-in copyright”
Xanadu
What happened?
1. Complex → hard to build
25+ year effort – “vaporware”
2. The simpler WWW came along
3. And ate its lunch…

33. original
Uni-directional links:
Attribution but no
ownership control
Zero links: Copy with no attribution
or mis-
attribution
So now we have
the WWW,
warts and all
“HTML is precisely what we were trying
to prevent -- ever-breaking links … no rights
management.” –Ted Nelson

34. Summary so far
• Ownership of digital property (especially
Internet) is a mess
• Despite being anticipated since the 60s
• And designed for
• But simplicity of www won out
• Leaving “where’s my stuff?” unsolved

35. A new Q:
Can we retrofit
the Internet for ownership?
(and realize the Xanadu aims
in the process)

36. original
The ascribe idea
1. Auto-discover
bi-directional links
2. Easy, secure legals
auto
auto
auto auto

37. original
The ascribe idea
1. Auto-discover
bi-directional links
2. Easy, secure legals
auto
auto
auto auto
Where’s my stuff?
Auto bi-dir.
links
Easy, secure
legals

38. original
The ascribe idea
auto
auto
auto auto
Where’s my stuff?
How (ascribe):
• Crawl the entire internet (220 Tb text)
• Similarity match against creator’s content
(10G+ images, 3d designs, ..)
• This is a machine learning problem, at
Internet scale
• To know when someone’s using your work

39. original
The ascribe idea
auto
auto
auto auto
Where’s my stuff?
• Easy legals via terms of service: “I claim
copyright rights” (creator) and “I transfer
[beneficial-use] copyright rights” (sale).
• Copyright in a box!
• Secure copyright by time-stamping evidence
of ownership actions onto a trusted ledger
(bitcoin blockchain).
• Special “SPOOL” protocol for ownership: unique
editions, consign, loan ..
• Time-stamp = evidence for court in case of
ownership dispute (thank you Silk Road!)

40. Easy legals: snippet of ascribe terms of service

41. Secure legals: blockchain ownership protocol
SPOOL = Secure Public Online Ownership Ledger. github.com/ascribe/spool

42. ascribe ownership REST API
ascribe web appmarketplaces
How: full ascribe tech stack
blockchain
PySPOOL + transactions
bitcoin protocol
ascribe TOS
(+ legal counsel)the Internet
(crawl me)
ascribe ownership servers
ascribe crawl,
machine learning
2. Easy, secure
legals
1. Auto-discover
bi-directional links
SPOOL protocol

43. BITCOIN OVERLAY (SPOOL*)
Interface 1/4 on the ascribe stack
*SPOOL = Secure Public
Online Ownership Ledger
For adventurous
BTC hackers 

44. Bitcoin overlay (SPOOL): register tx
Example on 3 editions
Hash of work
ascribe
address
Edition 1/3 addr
Edition 2/3 addr
Edition 3/3 addr
BTC change
OP_RETURN “register”

45. Bitcoin overlay (SPOOL): transfer ownership tx
Old owner’s
addr for piece
New owner’s addr
for piece
OP_RETURN “transfer”
BTC change
≈ the first time any bitcoin leaves existing owner’s wallet,
ownership is transferred to the output wallet

46. Bitcoin overlay (SPOOL):
Provenance emerges naturally
Owner 1 Owner 2 Owner 3 Owner 4

47. Bitcoin overlay (SPOOL):
Each edition of each work gets a unique ID
Hash of work
ascribe
address
Edition 1/3 addr
Edition 2/3 addr
Edition 3/3 addr
BTC change
OP_RETURN “register”
Bitcoin address of original owner
= Piece ID

48. Bitcoin overlay (SPOOL)
Register tx binds work hash to piece IDs
Hash of work
ascribe
address
Edition 1/3 addr
Edition 2/3 addr
Edition 3/3 addr
BTC change
OP_RETURN “register”
Piece’s digital fingerprint
is permanently bound to
piece ID

49. Interface 2/4 on the ascribe stack
For pythonistas!
PySPOOL (ownership)
transactions (ez btc txs)
github.com/ascribe

50. PySPOOL Details
https://github.com/ascribe/pyspool

51. PySPOOL Details
https://github.com/ascribe/pyspool

52. PySPOOL Details
https://github.com/ascribe/pyspool

53. PySPOOL Details
https://github.com/ascribe/pyspool

54. PySPOOL Details
https://github.com/ascribe/pyspool

55. “transactions” details
https://github.com/ascribe/transactions

56. REST API
Interface 3/4 on the ascribe stack
For marketplaces of digital
goods (art, photography, 3d, ..)
to answer “where’s my stuff”
for their users, and themselves

57. WEB APP
Interface 4/4 on the ascribe stack
For individual creators (artists,
graphic designers, photographers,
writers, ..) who want to register,
consign, and archive their work
directly.
And for individual galleries.
And for collectors.

58. How ascribe tech helps ownership
• Creators – Can claim & protect ownership. Can
share without losing control. Cryptographic
Certificate of Authenticity (CCOA).
• Collectors / audience – digital provenance
enables secondary markets.
• Connectors – mitigate friction on legal side
• For digital art, 3d, photography, ..

59. Demo

60. Trent’s
(obviously great)
work of art #2

61. Landing page

62. Signup

63. Register work 1/3

64. Register work 2/3

65. Register work 3/3

66. Piece detail

67. All works
=archive =wallet

68. Transfer ownership

69. Interesting aside:
While this app uses bitcoin,
you don’t have to know bitcoin at all.
Though if you do, you can cross-check…

70. Easily cross-ref
blockchain 1/2

71. Easily cross-ref
blockchain 2/2

72. ascribe status

73. ascribed digital
art at world-
class gallery
(bitforms NYC)
Jonathan Monaghan
Escape Pod
2015, 3 editions
ID: 1P1EumqcJoxMMGf79WwdkFn7uCRBeNaCR8
http://ascri.be/1KfMJt0

74. Berlin Art Prize tech platform:
349 artists ascribed 598 works
http://ascri.be/1E3eUck

75. 152-year old art museum MAK
Vienna bought ascribed digital
art to its collection
http://ascri.be/1datNRs

76. Online art gallery
Cointemporary sells ascribed
digital art, for bitcoins
http://ascri.be/1EgF3Ws

77. We’ve even bought ascribed work
to use on our landing page.
#eatingowndogfood http://ascri.be/1DE6uVu

79. Creative
Commons FR
With CC licenses of
course!

80. Other ascribe users
Digital artists
Photographers
3d design
marketplaces
Other creatives
Art marketplaces Photography
marketplaces

81. tech status
• Webapp – alpha – Mar 2014
• Webapp – beta – Sep 2014
• Tracking/ML 20M images – Dec 2014
• REST API – alpha – Feb 2015
• Webapp – v1 – Mar 2015
• REST API + tracking/ML Internet scale – beta – Apr
2015
• Open-source PySPOOL & transactions – June 2015
• REST API + tracking/ML – v1 – June 2015
• Webapp + tracking/ML – v1 – June 2015

82. Conclusion 1/2
• Ownership of digital property (especially
Internet) is a mess
• Despite being anticipated since the 60s
• And designed for
• But simplicity of www won out
• Leaving “where’s my stuff?” unsolved
• .. Until ascribe

83. original
1. Auto-discover
bi-directional links
2. Easy, secure legals
auto
auto
auto auto
Where’s my stuff?
Auto bi-dir. links
via Internet-scale
machine learning
Easy, secure legals
via TOS
& bitcoin blockchain
Conclusion 2/2:
By answering this…
… we’re building
the ownership layer of the internet.

84. Red pill?
ascribe.io/jobs