Blockchain Copyrighter Binded Raises $950K
Blockchain copyright platform Binded has raised an additional $950,000 from investors, bringing the company’s total capital raised to $1.5 million. Investors in the round include Mistletoe, Asahi Shimbun, Vectr Ventures, M&Y Growth Partners, Tokyo Founders Fund and Social Starts.
“Japan is one of the largest creators of copyrights. We’re excited to have partners that can help us better understand and serve the Japanese market in the future.” said Binded co-founder and CEO Nathan Lands. “Today the tools to protect creative works are outdated and poorly suited for modern technology. We are going to change that.”
The company will use the new round of funding to hire, build new integrations, and add the ability to register copyrights with the US Copyright Office.
Formerly known as Blockai, the company has rebranded as “Binded” in an effort to emphasize its objective to create a legally binding record. The company provides a blockchain-powered copyright platform that enables photographers to protect the copyright of their images. Once users create an image, they have a permanent record that they own the copyright. Then the image is monitored for copyright infringement. If the platform find an infringement, it will give users actions to take.
Creators of digital content who want to use the company’s service can upload images to their private copyright vault. For every image uploaded, a unique fingerprint is created and saved permanently on the bitcoin blockchain. The creator receives a copyright certificate with proof of creation.
Headquartered in San Francisco, the company claims that 10 million copyright records have been formed through the service since its launch in March, 2016. The service is completely free, and Binded says that in the future it will monetize by creating value for customers and then keeping a “fair piece” of that value.
“Copyright is an essential part of our world economy, yet no one has built a modern technology company to make copyright useful on the web,” said Lands. “Creativity is one of the few things that cannot be replaced by modern technology and in the future it will be even more important that people can make a living using their creativity. Today it’s incredibly difficult to identify the copyright owner of a file on the web. Binded will change that.”
For now, uploading an image to the platform does not count as an official government registration of copyright in the US. Lands says that’s something he hopes will be added to the service in the future.
