Amid growing government crackdowns on digital currencies and block reward mining, a Kazakhstan-based company has turned to blockchain technology for copyright and intellectual property (IP) protection.
Future NFT Technology Limited established its copyright protection platform in late 2023 to register residents’ IP rights. Astana Times reported that the platform had gathered significant steam, collecting hundreds of copyright registrations in less than 60 days.
Called the Central Asian Intellectual Property Registry (CARRIP), the platform allows users to upload details of their creations in various categories. Upon payment of a fee, creators receive a certificate that serves as proof of registration of the intellectual property.
Registered creations are stored in a publicly distributed ledger to ensure transparency and prove the time and date of registration. Users can grant approval to other entities to use their copyrights under specific parameters after meeting certain conditions, including the payment of fees.
“The idea of the creative economy is to monetize talents,” says CARRIP director Temirlan Tulegenov. “Kazakhstan has joined the international conventions and treaties in the field of intellectual property, but the intellectual property rights market requires adaptation to modern trends in the development of the creative economy.”
CARRIP could expand its services beyond Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) indicates that Central Asia is making significant progress in boosting growth in its creative industries.
Experts have pointed to blockchain-based copyright platforms as a real solution to boost growth in the creative industries. Given the copyright challenges facing generative AI systems, a cross-section of industry players have been looking at using blockchain to trace the provenance of data used in training the large language models (LLMs) .
Kazakhstan’s work with blockchain
Kazakhstan has endured a rocky relationship with blockchain since 2020, culminating in strict regulations against block reward miners. After China’s blanket ban on digital currencies, a whole group of miners migrated to Kazakhstan, attracted by cheap energy sources and a friendly attitude from the government.
However, the rosy times turned sour after the government launched a nationwide crackdown on service providers in the sector. Miners with block rewards were hit the hardest. Officials confirmed that the country earned $7 million in taxes from miners.
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