Registered Commons

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About RegisteredCommons.org

RegisteredCommons provides secure registration of authorship of creative workings, no matter if it's photography, poetry, a series of mp3 files or an open source software project. If somebody infringes the license associated to your work, your registration helps to prove your authorship.

In order to register your work, you need to sign-up. The trust level associated to your work is highest, if you use a personal certificate, such as by CAcert.org. You can choose, which personal data is visible to others. After uploading a release of your work, we generate a hash code and request a secure timestamp from A-cert. You can generate yourself or order a printed and signed certificate, which you may file with your contracts.

The timestamp is stored for 35 years by A-cert. We store the hash code for at least 7 years. Your work is being stored by fair-use principles. We do not guarantee its availablity, depending on used disk and backup space. Even if we do our best to have the data available 24/7, we can not be liable for data loss.

RegisteredCommons started in 2006 as a public-private partnership. The public partner, the Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences, located in the Austrian Alps close to the Swiss and German border, supprted research and provided infrastructure. Private partners were organised in the International Media Coop osAlliance. In 2012, the co-operative with all members was merged into ALLMENDA. Registered users of the service may also become shareholders. The co-op members keep control over the service through their vote in the general assembly.

The software has been developed by strg.at as a member of the Competence Network for Media Design and a member of osAlliance, using the database modeller spunQ. Its development was co-financed by FFG / FH-plus in 2006 and the service was launched in Berlin. Today, the software and service is maintained and hosted by ALLMENDA.