Topic: Copyright without KYC (Read 423 times)

I think any operator of No-KYC marketplace knows that if he operate it openly, not hiding his real ID from the state, he will be arrested very quickly, e.g. for assisting to launder crypto from drugs sale.
Copyright law is your least concern when you assist a rebel group, which is hostile to the US govt like Houthis from Yemen, to buy parts for making suicide drones.
So "No-KYC" in real life means "will NOT cooperate with the state in any case".

In this specific case we are talking about, an image marketplace, there is no law that requires the marketplace to have KYC.
But if there are copyright issues and there is no KYC, it is the platform that is sued and not the person who actually violated those rights.

If some marketplace works without KYC, it will never cooperate with the state regardless the subject of complaint. It is very naive to think they will obey privileges granted to you by the state (so called "copyright") and reject other complaints regarding drug sales, money laundering, weapons for terrorists etc.

Semi-legal marketplaces have no practical sense in real world: you have either to operate anonymously and reject any state's intervention or obey ALL laws including KYC.

So you didn't look more closely at a stock image, without KYC and with payments in Bitcoin?

I would contact the marketplace, present my proof and leave it up to them to take down the seller. If it was posted at another art site as being created by a different person - same thing: present my proof and leave it up to the site to take it down.

If a marketplace or website does not comply - bring lawyers into play against the sites.

But you can only request this if the user in question has KYC.

Imagine that someone takes your work and puts it on the marketplace without KYC. How could you accuse this person? I wouldn't be able to do it, I would have to go against the marketplace. Right?

How can a balance be created between these two sides?

This discussion is NOT about using Bitcoin and the KYC involved nor how your apparently corrupt government deals with it vs the US and EU... At least in the US and EU BTC is completely legal and yes for the US at least, in my opinion quite reasonably regulated and taxed.

So getting back on topic I should add that most of my artwork IS copyrighted under Creative Commons as 'free to copy and distribute for non-commercial use provided credit to the Author (me) is given'. Would I pursue legal actions against anyone selling it or claiming it as their own work? Damn straight I would!

The problem that I have seen is that many do not like to associate KYC with the use of Bitcoin. As soon as you do KYC and receive Bitcoin, you are creating this connection, which many don't like.

Now, I understand that it all depends on the purpose of KYC.

No, when you use your Bitcoin to make a transfer, you still have your original bits. They are worthless now, but you still have them.


So you seem to conceded that the US and the EU are still dominions that are safer for Bitcoin holders, but yet you wish for all of us to perish.

You are going to need to pick a lane .

At first, my point was about exclusive ownership: you lose your crypto if transfer it to another person, but you don't lose original copy if you make another.
At second, no sane person will go to authorities about crypto theft because with 99% probability he will be charged for "money laundering". If you own crypto, you keep it in the absolute secret from the state - it is the rule of survival in my country.

Regardless of my wish, US and EU just now rapidly transforming to the political-economic form of my country (BTW, 90% of world population lives like in my country and NOT the US).
Rejecting universal moral leads to this. I very hope all of you, US govt supporters, will see civil war in US because have really deserved it!

Well, It's been a long time since I've dabbled but my art is on DeviantArt https://www.deviantart.com/phluph and gallery is https://www.deviantart.com/phluph/gallery
Would I accept BTC as payment for prints? Sure. Only problem is that DeviantArt is not setup to use it.

As I've said before, I have NO problems with KYC and see absolutely NOTHING wrong with requiring it. Let's put it this way - when I purchase something expensive that has a warranty guess what? I register it. If the retailer only accepts CCards - again KYC is in place. That is just 2 examples of KYC in everyday life..

But you implied above that since intellectual property does not have a physical manifestation, it is somehow not property that should be protected by law. Both Bitcoin and intellectual property are non-tangible assets. Either you believe these should be protected or you don't.


That's awful. That's not the way it works in my country, thankfully. Here in the USA, if somebody steals something from you, you go to the authorities. That goes for physical things like your car, or non-tangible things like Bitcoin or your copyrights.

I hope you don't wish for the whole world to work the way your country does, because that sounds like a pretty bad place.

Bitcoin ownership is exclusive. If you have received 1 BTC, other person have lost it.

BTW, even in case of Bitcoin theft nobody will go to the state authorities in my country because very likely even legitimate owner will be charged for "money laundering", "terrorism financing", "illegal banking operations" or similar.

Details can be confidential for ordinary people, but not state authorities. You lose all confidentiality/privacy when doing KYC. There are no exceptions!


[moderator's note: multiple posts have been merged]

By chance, I would like to know if the designers and photographers here on the forum would place their work on a marketplace where they would receive dividends in BTC. And whether they were willing to do some kind of KYC.

Anyone here to give feedback? 

You probably could do this by giving power of attorney to a lawyer who keeps your details confidential and proves it on your behalf where only the lawyer knows who you are so just prove you are the copyright holder in their presence and timestamp it. You could also just register mail the design to your lawyer and they keep it sealed and in the event of a court case they can open the sealed letter in court revealing the designs and timestamp along with date of letter being rewgistered and posted.

Being completely anonymous would be difficult when bringing a case to court but you could use an attorney as mandate.

So by that definition somebody who takes your Bitcoin isn't a criminal, since Bitcoin is not physical. Nice.

It is just your subjective opinion, other people have opposite views.
By definition, the word "stealing" means taking other physical property (thief gets the item, you lose).
Copyright and patents are in fact state privileges, regardless like you or not.

If you glorify violence (regardless from state or private actor), you must accept the fact that other people have no moral obligations to refrain from using violence against you, e.g. incite state's authorities against you for any reason. In my country there are a proverb "If there are a man, an article of law to prosecute him can be found". People who pass KYC and reveal their real IDs are the most vulnerable to state's violence. You even don't know how easy is to make you fall into disgrace of the state, especially if you use KYC'ed crypto and don't use anonymization technologies like VPN, TOR, encrypted mail, mixers.

So think again, it is just not in your interest to start this war!

Using the courts to force action against people who willfully & knowingly infringe against you by in essence STEALING rightful income and/or credit for you creating something unique does not qualify as 'state violence'. It is the government acknowledging what you've created and if desired, that as the person that created it you deserve to be the only person to directly profit from it for a fixed amount of time. No more, no less.

I take it you have never created something useful or desired by others: If you had you would understand the importance of being able to control how it is distributed and yes, if desired, who can profit from it. One is of course also free to let anyone copy it and if you don't care that they may say that they created it and sell it with you getting none of the money they make - well that's up to you. Personally I'd be pissed.

I don't know what country you live in that makes you fear your gov so much but I'm glad to live in the USA where I enjoy the protections that copyright (and Patents) provide.

Be honest - so called "copyright" is a form of privilege from the state. A century ago in many countries patents had been openly called "privileges".
So if you want to use state's violence against someone who uses your content be ready to be subject of this violence to yourself: I hope all people on this forum know what will happen if you reveal your physical ID via KYC and the state doest't like you for some reason.

Copyrighting somethings implies suing for damages from infringement in a court of law, ergo the idea of 'no KYC' - or more correctly put, no legal proof of ownership is a non-starter. Sure one can embed a digital signature proving that you created some work that can be copyrighted but at some point you WILL have to make your identity known as soon as you go after folks for infringement.

There are a lot of good reasons for not wanting to divulge your identity--being safe from online criminals, for instance. It would be great if we didn't have to do it as often.

But if you buy a product you want delivered to your home, well, you need to divulge your address. If you buy a car, it must be done under your own name in case it is stolen. If you want to protect your intellectual property, you need to declare that you created it, and the "you" here has to the real you and not an anonymous entity. Not every problem in the world has a neat technical solution.

So, considering that many don't like KYC, I ask if there is a better way to do things.

Because it's not enough to say that you don't like it, that it's abusive. But then no minimally valid solution is presented.

Insofar as there are contracts between parties, the parties cannot be anonymous. It's as simple as that. If you refuse to believe that, you are likely to get taken by a scam.

Scam NFT's work because a few people believe "some technical solution" will override the laws of physics...

Right, that's why they propose that technology will solve or help solve these issues/problems.

The point will be to think of something that can work without KYC or at least with something more limited, that can be useful in cases of rights violations.
Can we find a solution?

You are talking about the law protecting the rights of two human beings. So no, there is no crypto solution to this problem...

Yes, the NFT could serve this scenario, but it would not be completely effective.
Because as you say, to have copyright, you have to have an identity.

Still, it didn't resolve the issue.
Imagine a photographer who puts his photos up for sale in a stock image. Someone takes these photos and puts them in another image stock, which does not have KYC, and sells them as their own. The photographer could only process the platform, never who actually did it.

Would there be a way to protect both sides: platform and photographer?

I suspect what you are asking for is essentially an NFT.

Most people don't understand NFTs, which is why I wrote an article about this subject.

A copyright, by it's nature, it a declaration of ownership by a legally identifiable person. A private key cannot go to court and defend it's rights--that must be done by a human being.

A person possessing an contract declaring their ownership of a copyright (viz. if that contract is connected to an NFT, and therefore a private key) would have to go to court to prove damages in the event of a breach of their copyright. In that trial, they would need to prove their ownership of said copyrighted materials, which would get down to the NFT's legal contract, which would specify the nature of the work, the rules for usage, the rights of the holder (e.g. how many copies the seller could sell), and so on.

If the seller of the contract breaches their contract, then they are sued. That is the only recourse, and thus the only thing that makes the NFT valuable.

You can't sue a private key. It must be an actual human being.

That is why identity must be part of copyrights. Anything else is a scam.

What exactly you mean by KYC? Because that's literally about proving your identity, which you are looking a solution for. If you mean by replacing current KYC methods by something else, there's always zero knowledge proofs. In that you don't need to send any info to exchanges or casinos, but you would use the ZK proof instead. That's something Dusk has been building with their Citadel btw. But i am not sure how that's going, or if there are any alternatives around. But i am fairly sure that's coming in some form, because documents get stolen all the time, and ZK fixes so many privacy issues.

On the one hand, I think I would know how to determine who the person registering is and verify their data.

On the other hand, there is no guarantee of privacy.

Yes, that's usually the logic.
The problem is on the intermediary's side (if there is one), who, as they do not collect KYC data, end up being responsible for any process that occurs.

Oldest is the real one, if someone copies and sell it as theirs, just compare the date when it was posted.

Regarding prosecution, it just same like the way your country handling copyright issue, but it seems that most countries didn't yet have clear regulation about online copyright issue using cryptographic.

So from your perspective, what would be the best way to protect intellectual property without KYC? Or do you think there is no way to do this?

The negative consecuencias or the prosecution would come easily whether the system is centralized and have repercussions in the already established systems of courts, but that would be against the very principles which were used in the foundation of decentralized cryptography, like the one which is used by Bitcoin.
In short, I am not sure how it would be possible to prosecute or punish those who steal content. the proof of ownership is not as problem as I already explained. but the next step it tricky, if you asked a lawyer , then next step would be to take the case to a court, but in reality, those processes can be expensive and not worth when compared to the value of the intelectual property itself.

This kind of approach, to be interesting and not too complex.
But, when we move into the real world, things can get more complicated, because without KYC you cannot connect with anyone.

For example, imagine that I put a photo signed by me on the internet. So someone comes and copies my photo and sells it as theirs. How could I prosecute this person?

1. Generate a pair of public/private keys for some asymmetric encryption scheme.
2. Embed the public keys into your digitalized work of art.
3. Put the digitalized work of art (including the embedded keys) onto a popular blockchain.

Aaaaand you essentially get NFTs :-)

Alternatively if you don't want to put it onto a blockchain, you can

1. Generate a pair of public/private keys for some asymmetric encryption scheme.
2. Embed the public keys into your digitalized work of art using steganography
3. Distribute your digitalized work of art.

When someone asks you to prove that the work of art is yours, extract the steganographically hidden public keys and show that you own the private key without revealing it, e.g. by signing a message with your private key and letting everyone check the signed message using the public key.

However when your work of art is not on the blockchain, after you prove once that you own the work of art, everyone will know how the public key is hidden, so someone might remove your public key and replace it with his own public key and claim to own the work of art. Someone could do that with an NFT too, but at least people would be able to see which NFT has been put on the chain first, which means that it is original and the later one is a copy.

Regarding KYCs, they are bad indeed, but you don't really need to KYC your identity in order to create an NFT.

We can already link our online identity thanks to the use of asymmetric cryptography, actually. If you take a look at the Meta thread where people stake their addresses, that is exactly what they do, they register a Bitcoin address, so in the future it becomes extremely easy for people to verify or not whether a post, a document, a paper or a drawing was made by the same person who stake the address.
As it stands for now, the staking of Bitcoin addresses are mostly effective for signing messages, but they can also be implemented in other media.
The real challenge comed when people is expected to keep their private keys safe.

sadly, Even if it became a widespread method to verify one's identity, regulators would still ask for KYC when first summiting the public key.

If we completely want to avoid having KYC or anything that has to do with it, then it's more better that we start to learn on how to use the blockchain technology and bitcoin, this will determine on how we go by the privacy and security measures to what we want and how to achieve having it, for anyone who is experienced in bitcoin and digital technology, they will always get to know on the necessary steps on how to achieve thw avoidance of anything that leads to KYC.

That's all 

Blockchain.

I have been thinking about some projects that could be interesting for Bitcoin, and for our Bitcointalk community, but I often run into the problem: KYC

Most of us agree that KYC is not very good and avoids services that involve it, especially if Bitcoin is present.

With that in mind, I would like to know your opinion:
Do you think there are ways to prove copyright and identities, inside and outside the online world, without KYC?