Safe Creative: A Good Start to Protecting Works
By Jonathan Bailey • Feb 11th, 2009 • Category: Articles, Products
As I mentioned yesterday, it has come en vogue for programmers to create simple plagiarism checkers that feed queries to Google or another search engine. The other tool commonly created is non-repudiation service, such as Numly, MyFreeCopyright, etc. that register works in their database to provide verification of ownership and time created. However, as with the new plagiarism checkers, they rarely meet or add anything to well-established and trusted services, such as the ones above.
Though non-repudiation services are never substitutes for formal registration with the U.S. Copyright Office, they can provide a stop-gap between USCO registrations and some verification in the court of public opinion. They can also help transmit license and other information, making them a potentially useful service.
Now, we have another entrant into the non-repudiation field, this one entitled Safe Creative. Though, on the service, it provides a pretty standard set of features, time and date stamp, downloading of content, etc., the service hopes that its additional features might make it a compelling alternative to competing services and that its price tag of free makes it the number one choice for creators on the Web.
But can it stand up to the established services? The answer seems to be a resounding yes.
How it Works
Safe Creative works on the same principles as virtually all other non-repudiation services. Users register for an account on the site and then set it up with their personal information.
Users can then upload the works that they wish to register. Doing so requires them to provide the title of the work, the content of the work, either as a file upload or pasted text, select the work type, select public or private registration, indicate whether they are the author, the rights holder or both, and then select a license for the work. Authors also have the option of providing an excerpt for the work, tagging it and designating an alias for it.
Once the author has uploaded the work, they are then provided with a series of buttons and badges that they can use on the work and a URL that links to the registration online (sample).
One way that Safe Creative stands out from the other sites and services is that it does not merely fingerprint the data, but actually stores the files. Whether you upload text, images, audio or video, the site actually stores the content (up to 400 mb), making available for download if that option is selected. Where other services have relied on investigators to check a fingerprint to verify the validity of a file, Safe Creative lets those interested view the file for themselves.
All of this is fairly straightforward but what makes Safe Creative unique is a series of “add on” features that it hopes will make the service more compelling, powerful and easy to use.
The Good
Beyond the standard set of features that let users upload, stamp and license their work, Safe Creative tries to expand its service offerings in a number of ways, including the following:
- Barcodes: With each registration, Safe Creative provides a series of barcodes and labels that can be applied to the work. Though Numly has done this for years, what makes Safe Creative unique is that it provides various kinds of barcodes, including a numerical one (human readable), a regular line barcode and a data matrix one (example above). Also interesting is that Safe Creative provides the labels in 72, 150 and 300 DPI, making them viable for works posted on the Web, printed at home and printed professionally.
- Bulk Register Feature: If you wish to register multiple works at the same time, such as all of the images in a gallery, you can use the bulk register feature. This will allow you to create a registration template and then upload many files at once to save time. You can also save the template for use later.
- Bookmarklet: Under “Tools” in the account area, there is an IE and Firefox-compatible bookmarklet that lets users automatically register content on the Web. You can use it with any text that you select or, if you are a WordPress or Blogger user, it can pull the content straight from your post creation page, adding the title and other information in for you.
- Advanced API: Though no applications use it yet and the features appear to be in early testing, Safe Creative has laid the groundwork for a robust API, giving all users both shared and private keys. This could easily pave the way for Safe Creative integration into various applications and platforms.
- Pre-Registration: Finally, the site allows you to upload a work and then make modifications to it for the next 24 hours. Though any changes, obviously, also alter the timestamp, it’s a great way to fix any errors that you see in your post after submission and don’t want to appear in your final record.
But as impressive as these features are, the service also has its drawbacks and limitations. Unfortunately, some of them may hinder the effectiveness of the site as a non-repudiation service.
Some Problems
Before one jumps to Safe Creative and begins using the service, there are a few issues that need to be weighed before trusting it blindly as a service.
- Based in Spain: Though this is not a drawback in and of itself, the site is registered and hosted in Spain. Since the effectiveness of any such service in court would depend heavily on the creators of the site testifying to the validity of the information, for U.S. residents, having the service creators so far away could pose a large challenge in that unlikely event. Obviously though, this would be a benefit for anyone in Spain or elsewhere close by.
- No WordPress/MovableType Plugin: Though the bookmarklet reads from the WordPress write page and the API should, theoretically, make it possible to create such a plugin, one does not exist right now and there is no automated system for pulling from a feed, as with MyFreeCopyright. As such, the system is hardly “set and forget” but something that you have to remember to do with every post. This limits its usefulness by virtually ensuring that some works will not be registered timely.
- Bugs and Glitches: As I’ve gone through the service, I’ve seen a variety of minor issues with usability. Some visual bugs caused tabs and headers in the site to break, a confusing navigation system kept dropping me onto the home page of the site and help is pretty scarce at the moment. Though you can easily overcome most of these problems with a little work, it makes the service more difficult to use and seem less professional than one would like.
It is also worth noting that the bulk import feature is somewhat limited by the fact that it only accepts file. While photographers and podcasters will likely not have an issue, there is no way, at this time, to easily import a WordPress database or a collection of content posted solely on the Web. If you do not have your content in a collection of files on your PC, you pretty much have to do the works one at a time through the ordinary process (though the bookmarklet can help some).
Though none of these problems are what I would consider “deal breakers”, they do show that the service is far from flawless and does have a ways to go before it becomes the perfect solution.
Comparisons to Other Services
Compared to other services in the field, Safe Creative fares pretty well.
The most obvious comparison is with Numly, as the features seem to be most on parity. In that regard, Safe Creative actually seems to hold something of an advantage as it provides more bar code options and is completely free for unlimited use, where Numly requires a monthly fee for more advanced accounts. However, Numly is based within the U.S., allows users to designate a licensee (thus enabling them to register each copy of a work) and has offered a WordPress plugin in the past and is likely to do so again soon (though it is currently defunct).
MyFreeCopyright, on the other hand, holds a slight edge on simplicity. Due to its integration with RSS, the site makes it easier for bloggers to get content into the system (though there is often a delay in the material appearing) but offers fewer features in terms of registration services. There are no labels, no pre-registration (Numly provides no pre-registration either) and a more limited set of licenses available (MFC is CC and “All Rights Reserved” only).
All in all, Safe Creative stacks up pretty well against the competition, providing a free, albeit somewhat more limited, alternative to Numly. However, it lacks some of the critical features that were introduced by MyFreeCopyright, but those problems can and likely will be fixed by programmers as they take advantage of the API to create the plugins and extensions that are needed.
Though Safe Creative does provide a lot to get excited about, it is far from the perfect non-repudiation service. However, with a few simple fixes and improvements, it could become something that is pretty close.
Conclusions
In the end, Safe Creative is a solid choice for a non-repudiation service. Though bloggers will probably be better off with MyFreeCopyright for the moment, it makes sense to keep an eye open for plugins for Safe Creative. If done correctly, Safe Creative not only could provide a solution more effective than MyFreeCopyright, registering works as they are created rather than once a day, but with added features.
Ideally, I think it would be interesting if a plugin for Safe Creative took advantage of the pre-registration feature of Safe Creative to register posts in the draft stage, updating them until they were registered. That way, if there were a dispute over an unplublished post, say one involving a multiple-author blog, the service could be used to verify ownership.
All in all though, it is a solid service and it would be nice to see programmers and others take advantage of the API to create some new tools.
In the end, The Safe Creative available today is really just the beginning. How useful it becomes is going to depend upon what others decide to do with it.
Here’s hoping that there are some crafty programmers that are going to do some very exciting things.
 |
Protect Your Work. Subscribe to Plagiarism Today via Email or RSS. |
Jonathan Bailey is The Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today, which he founded in 2005 as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field. He is also a consultant to Webmasters and companies to help them devise practical content protection strategies and develop good copyright policies.
Email this author | All posts by Jonathan Bailey
give me a little time to familiarize myself with the service and its API and if I find it possible, i might create a plugin for WP. I can't promise anything though, due to lack of free time, but if find the service interesting enough to give it a try
If the search engines provided this kind of service…after all, the engines will index your site, anyway…then copyright infringement would become nearly a moot point online, at least for text content. Without search engine coverage, text-based splogs may as well not exist.
I think this application is a good idea. I have many friends who profess themselves to be artists in one way or another. The frequent comment I hear from them is that copyright is more money than they can spend. Up and coming artists want protection, but they don't really need statutory damages. This software strikes a nice balance between the strengths of federal registration with its first-in-time proof capabilities and the ease of use of Creative Commons.
That would be great, what little I read it seemed like a pretty straightforward API but, if ithis were something you could do and were interested in, I would be grateful for the effort in creating it.
Thanks for having a look!
While I agree that SEs would be best equipped for this task, it doesn't seem likely that they are going to invest the time and resources to make it happen. Look at the Web Archive (archve.org). They are a well funded academic project and the best they can do is get most of the Web's content archived within about six months of it going up. Not good enough for this.
Would it be nice? Sure, but I wouldn't hold my breath for Google or Yahoo to step up, it would not make them any money and would cost them a great deal…
I would still encourage your friend to register their works at least every three months or so, but I agree completely that something like this can provide a stop gap and some verification when registration is impractical or costly. I especially like how the licensing system protects both the creator and the licensor, making it so that there can be no misunderstandings later.
Well, I decided to create that WP plugin. My only issue is that so far I could take a look only on the Python and Java API which wouldn't be an issue if WP would be coded in one of these languages. Apparently even though there is a link to the PHP API, the page(s) which that link sends me to are not showing up as code but parsed by the server, thus i can't start to work cos I lack a PHP connector.
Even though I wish to do that plugin, translating from another language is too time consuming for me at the moment.
I'll send you later an email with some additional thoughts.
Hi Jonathan, thanks a lot for the review, specially for pointing out the problems we need to solve. I'm Mario Pena, community and business developer at Safe Creative.
I'd like to comment that regarding being based in Spain, we have also plans to in a not too far away future, have offices in the US. We are now starting to present ourselves in Chile and other Latin American countries as a prior step tu foster our presence in the US. We are in touch with some VC's and of course, any suggetion and collaboration will be wellcome a this point.
Regards de plugin I'll send information to methode ASAP (public thanks from here). We actually had a plugin for wordpress but wasn't as easy to use as we wanted it to be and since we deployed the new API, not to long ago, haven't started with this. We will develop a RSS authomatic pre registration in the shor term, I hope.
About the bugs, yes, we are aware of many of them and right now we are preparing the complete new version of the web that will bring a lot of advantages and new features. Will have a real good usabilty. For the current version we have been primarily trying the concept of free online registry and strong authorship claim proof construction. And think is working just right.
We also have now a certificate for content users that states the license of a work at this given time. This might give confidence when somebody wants to use the work of another author.
We are working real hard also to foster online registry stadardization, with a semantic web approach. So in the future new very important advantages will appear.
Of course, any question or comment, don't hesitate to ask me. I'll be more than willing to help and listen to you all.
Best regards
Public thanks from me for the PHP API and for saving me the time of translating from Python.
Regarding the semantic approach, could you please think in a slightly different way than the guys from the Creative Commons? Since am a developer and my clients are not, the first thing they do is to do markup validation at W3C and if I put CC licenses in a page, that will surely fail the standard validation; and that's not good. Maybe using standardized attributes is a way better thing than creating new HTML element attribute like CC did.
Again, thanks for the API. I will start the work asap.
Hi methode, just have sent this suggestion to the rest of the team
Glad to hear it, this sounds great!
First off, thank you for getting in touch with me. I'm looking forward to working with you and helping to improve this service any way I can.
I'm glad to hear that you are interested in opening an office in the U.S. Though I realize that it is a rare situation where someone from your company would need to be deposed and it couldn't be done via phone, it is a concern copyright holders would have. In court, the service is only as useful as the testimony behind it. I'll drop you a line via email in a bit to see if there is anything I can do to help along these lines.
I'm glad to hear that you're working on the bugs and definitely keep me posted on what you do. I'll be eager to hear.
I wasn't aware of the certificate for users. Is this something that is available now and, if so, how do I test it? This didn't come up as I was going through the motions…
Thank you for all that you do and I'll be in touch shortly!
Hi – after reading this very well written review, i decided to give the service a try.
Unfortunately, i have these two remarks :
- the Captchas on registration were hardly readable and i had to try 3 times
- secondly, when i finally managed to register, the service seemed to freeze as i had finished uploading my first work ( I'm on Safari 3 )
is this a bug you know of ?
We know of a bug using single content registration with file more than 8MB large and are working to solve it. Right now we suggest to use the bulk register to upload large files up to 400MB. Can you try this and if not working contact me at mpena (at) safecreative.org? We are also going to check th captcha issue with Safari. Thanks for giving a try!
Hi Jonathan, yes, please don't hesitate to contact me at mpena(at)safecreative.org. Will be a pleasure to inform and comment with you. About the certificate for users you might check it, for instance, here on one of my registries http://www.safecreative.org/work/0902102545413 . At the bottom there's a work certificate you can download to have a proof of the license of the work at this time. If you download the work you can use it with confidence you'll be able to proof that it had a CC by-sa license attached.
I did notice the problem with the CAPTCHAs too but didn't struggle nearly as much. I might have gotten lucky though. I'm usually the one that gets the bad draw…
As far as the Safari issue, I didn't notice any issues but I didn't do a large upload either. I was using Safari 3 and everything seemed to go well, but that isn't a guarantee that there isn't a bug there.
Just a heads up, the CAPTCHA is a bit hard overall. It's not a Safari issue per se. It might just mean that there's a need for a new CAPTCHA system…
I did notice the problem with the CAPTCHAs too but didn't struggle nearly as much. I might have gotten lucky though. I'm usually the one that gets the bad draw…
As far as the Safari issue, I didn't notice any issues but I didn't do a large upload either. I was using Safari 3 and everything seemed to go well, but that isn't a guarantee that there isn't a bug there.
Just a heads up, the CAPTCHA is a bit hard overall. It's not a Safari issue per se. It might just mean that there's a need for a new CAPTCHA system…
We know of a bug using single content registration with file more than 8MB large and are working to solve it. Right now we suggest to use the bulk register to upload large files up to 400MB. Can you try this and if not working contact me at mpena (at) safecreative.org? We are also going to check th captcha issue with Safari. Thanks for giving a try!
Hi Jonathan, yes, please don't hesitate to contact me at mpena(at)safecreative.org. Will be a pleasure to inform and comment with you. About the certificate for users you might check it, for instance, here on one of my registries http://www.safecreative.org/work/0902102545413 . At the bottom there's a work certificate you can download to have a proof of the license of the work at this time. If you download the work you can use it with confidence you'll be able to proof that it had a CC by-sa license attached.
I did notice the problem with the CAPTCHAs too but didn't struggle nearly as much. I might have gotten lucky though. I'm usually the one that gets the bad draw…
As far as the Safari issue, I didn't notice any issues but I didn't do a large upload either. I was using Safari 3 and everything seemed to go well, but that isn't a guarantee that there isn't a bug there.
Just a heads up, the CAPTCHA is a bit hard overall. It's not a Safari issue per se. It might just mean that there's a need for a new CAPTCHA system…