The Future of Attribution In The Digital World?

This morning, Automattic Inc., announced that Kinsey Wilson would become president of its flagship commercial venture, the WordPress.com publishing platform.

Poynter magazine interviewed Kinsey Wilson and Matt Mullenweg, and in that interview the following was posed:

Question:

Dicker also mentioned a partnership with WordPress and his blockchain tech company. Will you be working on those fronts, establishing ties and workability with blockchain platforms that have sprung up with cryptocurrencies?

Reply:

It’s an exciting space and one we’re watching closely. It’s premature to say whether there are partnership opportunities, but I’m sure we’ll be talking.

And here is Jarrod Dicker, explaining his blockchain company, Po.et

Po.et is an open-source blockchain Ledger to classify, identify, and monitor content throughout its entire life cycle

The blurb on his site says:

Own Your Content: Using Po.et, you can generate immutable and timestamped titles for your creative works and register your assets to the Po.et network. Because the network is decentralized and secured by the blockchain, the metadata attribution remains safe, verifiable and immutable.

I get it. Every piece of digital content is time-stamped when it appears, so when it appears subsequently on another site, whatever the platform, the original content creator preserves his or her intellectual property rights.

It’s an interesting concept and one that might go a long way to solving the problem that has beset content creators of all kinds – a problem that is inherent in digital content – namely that every copy is in all respects, an original.