Contxto – We live in an era where it’s commonplace to “copy-paste” anything online without paying or crediting authors. It’s easy enough to do—but comes at a hard price for content creators. But Chilean Sharp Shark is honing in on perpetrators using blockchain tech and fresh funds.
Yesterday (21), the startup announced it raised a seed round with NEM Ventures, the venture arm of the NEM ecosystem, a blockchain enterprise platform. The value of the investment wasn’t disclosed.
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That’s one sharp tool, Sharp Shark
The startup, co-founded by Sasha Ivanova and Valeriia Panina, created a tool that not only validates a person’s ownership of their work but also detects if a third party has violated that intellectual property.
For example, if a marine biologist just published a groundbreaking paper, she’ll want to protect her hard work.
Through Sharp Shark’s anti-plagiarism engine, a certificate is generated that validates the originality of the paper and her authorship. Afterward, she can now continue working, attending lectures, saving whales, whatever.
Meanwhile, Sharp Shark’s system is continuously monitoring the internet to ensure that nobody else is using her work. If some brazen PhD student takes data from her paper and jogs it down on an article as his own, Sharp Shark can tell and notify the original author.
Our marine biologist can then decide what to do. She can either let it go, or start a dispute resolution process with the website that published the stolen work.
- Related article: Sharp Shark wins La Conexión Conference for intellectual property blockchain solution
It’s this particular feature that will see improvements thanks to the startup’s seed round.
“The funds are destined for developing [the] dispute resolution feature and the author’s content aftermarket,” Sharp Shark co-Founder and CEO Sasha Ivanova told Contxto.
“The idea is that any media can resell their content (texts, photos) to other media with blockchain.”
Blockchain versus piracy
As someone who’s previously worked as an Editor, Ivanova can attest to how media companies lose traffic because of pirated content.
But she and the Sharp Shark team believe that copyright protection in the long-term will be blockchain-based. Correspondingly, they’re building towards that future with their upcoming aftermarket feature: a service that helps media monetize.
“For example, Contxto has a unique article. Some media want to republish it, but they cannot because of copyright. Now they need to contact editorial,” explained Ivanova.
She was right, that is our usual modus operandi.
“[But] with blockchain, the right for this intellectual property, can be acquired in just three clicks, automatically. In this manner, we will reduce the quantity of junk and pirate content, and help genuine media to have an important source of income,” concluded the Executive.
Fewer emails to answer and more traffic? Sharp Shark knows the media’s sweet spots alright.
Related articles: Tech and startups from Chile!
-ML
