Monthly Archives: February 2018

For many content creators, managing their digital art and imagery across multiple platforms has always been a frustrating experience. IPStock aims to revolutionize this market; it offers a visual content registry on the blockchain, as well as a license management system using smart contracts.

Want to sell your images? Good luck.

Many talented people around the world are using their photographic and graphic design skills as a source of income. Photos and designs can be uploaded to image storage sites such as ShutterStock or GettyImages, where interested individuals and organizations can purchase them for commercial purposes.

However, it’s not uncommon for artists and photographers to find their work plagiarized, or used without permission, on a website or blog. They often don’t have a way to fight back, as the legal fees and procedures involved are simply not worth it.

Even if a creator somehow manages to avoid copyright issues, their earnings can also be significantly lower than expected. Today’s image markets can charge up to 70% fees, which means consumers suffer from overpayments and artists barely get paid.

This means that creators don’t just lose money because of copyright infringements; only a tiny fraction of the small portion bought legally will ever reach them due to exorbitant fees.

IPStock – Providing new opportunities

By providing a decentralized blockchain marketplace for stock images, consumers and artists alike have a lot to gain. By using a more transparent and open platform, content providers will not only earn more royalties; they will also be able to manage and protect their copyrights through a single cloud solution.

IPStock democratizes the digital content market by virtually eliminating the middleman and ensuring that the entire process is risk-free and transparent. In turn, this will lead to accelerated development and growth of the market.

Consumers can also make sure they’re buying legal and original content with a transparent history and a variety of options. By connecting consumers, content providers and registry agencies, time and money can be saved when creating content databases. Customers will be able to see a complete transaction history, with flexible options to manage their licenses, royalties and subsidiary rights. By solving the copyright issue, IPStock will revolutionize the entire global stock image market, which includes photos, illustrations, videos and other visual content.

IPStock also aims to create a new segment in the archival photo market. The role of “content buyers” will be made available through IPStock – participants who will be able to redeem individual copyrights from its original authors. This will dramatically change the landscape of the copyright market by increasing the capitalization of the copyright market and making it more attractive to artists.

Need content? Use IPS

IPStock is a well-established content platform founded in 2015, in partnership with thousands of users, content providers and buyers. The project was launched in Switzerland with the support of Fongit – a Swiss incubator of innovative startups with more than 25 years of experience.

IPStock will launch the IPS token – a utility token used exclusively to pay transaction and service fees on the blockchain-based IPStock platform, which already has a working prototype. IPS tokens will also be used as a means of exchanging smart copyright licenses; increasing high quality content on the ecosystem will lead to increased demand for tokens.

The company aims to enable a smart contract-based marketplace to buy and sell blockchain copyright licenses before the end of 2018; smart contracts will use the IPS token, based on the ERC20 standard. This means that the system benefits all participants by being completely transparent and automatic, with minimal fees.

The presale of the IPS token has already started; it will end on February 28, 2018. Participants will receive a discount of up to 30% on IPS tokens during presale – up to one third of available tokens will be sold during this period. IPStock aims to sell up to a maximum of 30 million IPS tokens at a price of 0.00125 ETH per token – the ICO will start on March 1 and end on April 30.

For more information on IPStock, please visit ipstock.com.

What do you think of the IPStock platform? Can blockchain technology help protect the intellectual property rights of content producers? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Images courtesy of IPStock, PxHere