Logo fairregister

Register and secure your work

Prove authorship with timestamp

fairregister emerges as a service from the netidee-funded project faircommons and represents a relaunch of RegisteredCommons.

RegisteredCommons was provided as a web service to prove ownership of digital works at a certain point in time from 2006-2022. The uploaded work could be described with an appropriate license, predominantly Creative Commons (CC) licenses. That way the terms of use could be made visible in a legally binding way, as a timestamp was attached.

Within fairkom's commons activity field, amd with support of the Austrian netidee fund, RegisteredCommons was totally re-emgineered with a micro-service architecture and soft launched as fairregister in September 2023. The registration process has been revised and simplified. Creative Commons and common open source licenses are available for licensing the works. All works from registeerdCommons.org have been migrated. Users just need to login again with their e-mail and reset their password.

Fairregister.net

Digital works such as texts, images, music or videos are readily shared online and, if necessary, made available to a community for further use. For the author, it may be important that the name is mentioned when the work is reused and that the work may only be used under certain conditions. Conversely, it may be important for the user of a work that the rights to the work are clarified accordingly and that there is legal certainty for further use.

Two perspectives
for the use of fairregister

 

The authors

The author would like to register the work under an appropriate license in order to be able to prove the date of authorship in a legally secure manner.

 

The users

The user would like to search for licensed works in order to be able to use them in a legally secure manner for his / her own work, for example.

This results in two requirements for the service, the licensing of works and the search for licensed works.

In addition to the possibility of licensing works, fairregister should also offer a search option for licensed works. Artists, creative professionals and media producers who depend on the works of other artists for their work can thus search for specific content and check which conditions apply to the use of a work on the basis of the licensing.

Works previously deposited on RegisteredCommons are to be made statically accessible.

The goal of fairregister is to ensure legal certainty for works with a license selected during registration. More works are to be defined as commons and made accessible to the general public. fairregister is to establish itself in the long term as a directory for openly licensed works.

Register a work
using the example of a photo


1) User wants to register a work

In this example, a photo under a CC-license.
There are two ways to do this.


2a) Access via the web-service

Call up fairregister.net and switch to the tab register work.
Upload the work and enter information.


2b) Access via the nextcloud

The work is stored in the nextcloud and is thus secured there.
It is planned to offer fairregister as an app for the nextcloud as well.


3) Licensing

To select a CC-license, two questions must be answered.
According to the answers a license will be assigned.


4) Save metadata

Metadata (information about the work and the author) is stored in the fairregister database and in IPFS.


5) InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)

The IPFS functions as an immutable database. The data is stored there hashed to ensure legal security.


6) Save work

The author can decide if he / she wants to be responsible for the backup of the work or if the fairregister file system / IPFS is used.


7) Share works

Registered works can be made available to a wide public, in case of plagiarism or misuse, the time of authorship can be proven.

Logo netidee

Development funded by netidee open source fund.

Project documentation at netidee