The Canada Council for the Arts has awarded a $495,000 grant to support the creation of digital tools to protect the rights of Canadian visual artists in the online sphere.
The money will go to a partnership between several groups that work to support artists: the Canadian Artists’ Representation/Le Front des artistes canadiens, Copyright Visual Arts, Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Quebec, Access Copyright and its innovation lab, Prescient.
The digital tools will be built using blockchain technology and will establish what is called "a reliable and authoritative connection between a creative work (or its digital version), data related to the work, and the rights holder."
In the project’s first iteration, artists will be able to identify their creations, identify the copyright owner, and list physical ownership of the art.
Visual artists have increasingly faced unauthorized and uncompensated use of their works in the digital sphere.
The project follows earlier explorations in blockchain led by Access Copyright and Prescient, one of the few organizations globally to explore creator-centred blockchain applications.
“Blockchain technology holds the potential to radically change the way we interact with content in the digital space,” said Roanie Levy, president and CEO of Access Copyright and CEO of Prescient Innovations.
“This partnership brings together Canadian leaders in intellectual property, blockchain technology, the creative economy, as well as working artists and writers, to build new ways for creators to assert their rights, share and monetize their work.”
Initial digital tools will be available to select creators by late 2019.
“The lack of a single, comprehensive registry for Canadian art compromises the cultural record,” says Paddy Lamb, a visual artist who is the director and co-chair of Copyright Visual Arts. “Misattribution is a significant problem and, in Canada, art collectors have few resources to verify purchases. Together, we’re working to change this.”
Source: Access Copyright