Registered Commons

Registered Commons takes the process of licensing creative works, anything covered by copyright, one step further by allowing individuals to securely register their authorship.

URL = http://www.registeredcommons.org/

Description

At registration time the type of license that is applied to the work, such as Creative Commons or GNU for example, can also be recorded and hence it is made clear who can use the work and in what circumstances.

Registered Commons can't guarantee protection however they undertake to maintain the time-stamp for 35 years and store the hash code (a small digital "fingerprint") for at least 7 years all of which could help support an individual's claim to their work.

As Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons, said about Registered Commons:

“I think this will be extremely useful. You guys took something we did, and you added to it in a way that will really add important value and really make the copyright system - in a way that it should - work much better.”

More Information

Martin Springer: The Value of Registering Creative Works