Smart Licenses

Today, digital content licensing is a complex issue mostly dealt with by specialized lawyers. The idea behind Smart Licenses is to have a small, approachable, and practical set of basic licensing rules that help users without pro-level legal knowledge to create licenses that correspond with their intentions with little effort. Simple, clear and standardized rights profiles will remove barriers and make it easier to distribute, license and sell content to end-users and trading partners.

Rights owners will be able to announce basic metadata, rights and license information globally on a blockchain in a secure and reliable, open and transparent, automated and machine-readable way. Confidential or privacy sensitive information will remain off-chain or be encrypted.

Smart licenses will support deals and transactions without the need for time-consuming negotiations with multiple interested parties individually and pave the way for micro-licensing. They will enable all trading partners to interact with the highest possible autonomy, while being able to rely on uncompromised, consistent, up-to-date and globally accessible metadata and license information.

The authenticity of the rights and license information is provided through a machine-verifiable proof of origin. Linking rights profiles and ISCC codes on a blockchain will create a transparent chain for provenance verification.