Overview of licensing platforms based on distributed ledger technology

Abstract

The licensing of creative work is of broad and current interest. The European Commission proposes that when uploading a licensed digital work, the uploader should be checked by the system that one has the necessary rights. Technically this law is difficult to implement, as images with different intentions are shared, and even small changes like watermarks make it difficult to reveal similarities. The characteristics of distributed ledger technology could provide excellent support for the licensing and management of the rights of use. In this work, non-technical and technical criteria are defined to achieve an overview of the state-of-the-art solutions in the field of blockchain-based licensing platforms. Based on the criteria, different licensing platforms are reviewed, and the results are presented in a comparison matrix.