Thanks, Darrel.

With regards to this being an acceptable court evidence - for one, I am pretty sure this will very much vary by country. For two, based on what I read and heard US courts accept plain text log files as an evidence, so all this digital cryptographic mumbo-jumbo is just an icing on the cake :) That being said I will be talking to the lawyers in due course.

More importantly though - I have always meant this service to be more of a prevention and deterrence measure rather than a litigation support tool. The goal was to create a central repository of time references that reliably and unambiguously prove who the original author of a specific work was. And then through this try and avoid the escalation of conflicts and things actually ending up in court.

Just to explain through an example. Say, someone's copied your work and started displaying it on a freshly created website. When sending a take-down notice to this person's ISP you could say "He copied ME!" or link, for example, to a Flickr page. To that ISP can always argue that the linked site was never designed to be the source of reliable time information, and that in theory it could've been gamed to fake the evidence. To prevent this sort of discussion from happening in the first place the time reference needs to come from a specialized source. The source that does just the time-stamping and that does it in a reliable and independent fashion.

This is what I have built. Whether it is going to be effective as a deterrence measure I simply do not know. I think it will, but there's only one way to find out.

i havent forgottnabout you ep im struggling with shady code on mac safari and ie bug on a page

Legal standings aside, it's a great looking site and a nice bit of technology. Congrats on getting it up and running!

Great to hear that, Darrel. Thanks a bunch.

Mike, I have implemented the part you were missing and testing it right now. I have also sent you the email with how to work around that issue in the meantime. Just check your email, ya? :)

Also you asked how to handle NDA'd items. Not sure if you saw my response, but there is basically an option for making a timestamp private. If it is searched for, it will show up as existing, but all its details will remain hidden from a public view. And later on once the work is released to the public the timestamp can be changed to allow public access as well.

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Last edited by epsilon (Mar 28 - 9:46 pm)

I am not sure what "rock-solid legal legitimacy" translates to. I suspect you do not mean that one would just copy the timestamp on a USB stick, hand it over to the judge and he would rule in your favor :)

I can obtain a legal opinion on the acceptability of timestamps as a court evidence, but it would still be up to the user of the service to bring it to the court and make a use of it.

As I said above, I view the deterrence as a secondary function. The primary function is to provide a reliable time reference for asserting the copyright claims. Specifically, for using in takedown notices in cases of blatant rip-offs.

I don't take it as one. I am quite curious myself to see to what degree this is going to work, if to work at all.

Hey epsilon this look s like a great idea!  I must admit I really want to post the logo I am currently working on on this site, however I am weary of doing so as it would open it up for easy access.  Because the logo is not final, I obviously do not want to register it, which ideally would legally protect me from copyright infringement.  So to tie this all together, a service such as yours would be very useful, as it would allow me to timestamp my work, providing some peace of mind, and allow me to post an unregistered logo on a site like this (without worrying about someone ripping me off).  I eagerly await your consultation with lawyers to see if this type of service would help in legal matters, as well as act simultaneously as a deterrent.  And your site is very well put together!  Great design, presentation of information, and functionality.  Keep up the great work!  If you don't mind me asking, how did you get your experience in website development?

Haha.  That's good to hear!  So what do you think about submitting my current WIP logo to logopond?  I know there is an inherent risk in posting it anywhere publicly, but I'd love to get some feedback on it.  Should I just say screw it and go for it?  I feel that at this point there is no protection for my work.  Unless I were to register it, which I'm obviously not going to do until it's final...  Thoughts?

Sounds good! I think I'll go ahead and go for it.  Here's a question: Can you update a logo that you've registered through the federal government without paying a fee?  Can you actually update a logo that you've registered period?  It would make sense if you could, but then again a lot of things that make sense, you can't do... 

Bump.

As of yesterday the beta has been opened up significantly. One still needs to have an invite to get in, but invites are now issued daily and to virtually everyone who requests them. I'd really love some feedback here with regards to the design, usability and its usefulness. Grab an invite, join in and let me know what you think of it.

Some further, interesting development is in works, and I guess it's not hard to guess what it is given what forum this post is on