Blockchain technology solution found for vexed wordsmiths

HANGZHOU — Writers publishing their work online can easily be hurt by piracy — and it is hard to safeguard their legal rights due to difficulties in collecting evidence. But an internet court in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang province now has a solution.

Thanks to blockchain technology, the integral process of work circulating in cyberspace can be extracted for writers to use as evidence in court.

Writers used to resort to screenshots and downloaded content to use as evidence, which was hard to gain legal recognition as the process was not credible enough, according to Wang Jiangqiao, a judge at the Hangzhou Court of the Internet.

On the other hand, notarial procedures and hiring of professional lawyers pushed up the costs of seeking justice, he said.

But blockchain guarantees that data cannot be tampered with, due to its decentralized and open distributed ledger technology. Therefore, all digital footprints stored in the judicial blockchain system — authorship, time of creation, content and evidence of infringement — have legal effect, Wang said.

Hangzhou is home to many, if not most, online writers in China.

A total of 107 famous online writers have signed contracts to create works in a “writers’ village” in the city’s Binjiang district.

China has set up three internet courts in Hangzhou, Beijing and Guangzhou to handle internetrelated cases.

The country’s 800 million internet users and booming online business have led to a rising number of internet-related disputes.