A Writer Looks at Blockchain

How This New Technology Can Stop Plagiarism

Photo by iStock

If you are at all paying attention, there has been a lot of chatter about something called Blockchain along with it’s cryptocurrency cousin, Bitcoin. So, what does it all mean and why do I care as a writer?

Here is why, but let’s get the basics down first.

What is Blockchain?- I’ll try not to get too techy here: The blockchain is what it sounds like in that there are digital blocks linked together by a digital chain. It is called a “distributed ledger” in that each of these blocks holds a listing of transactions from financial, legal, real-estate, and basically any kind of agreement that can be stored in the block. The transaction is not just on one block, but distributed between all the existing blocks, which could be a thousand. Each transaction is stored — identical — to every block, thereby making it impossible to change it.

Transparent and incorruptible

“The blockchain network lives in a state of consensus, one that automatically checks in with itself every ten minutes. Transparency data is embedded within the network as a whole, but by definition it is public. It cannot be corrupted altering any transaction data of information on the blockchain. It would take a huge amount of computing power to override the entire network,” Ian Khan, TEDx Speaker | Author | Technology Futurist

What does it mean for authors?

It all started very recently at the 2018 London Book Fair in an afternoon session. Josef Marc, CEO of blockchain publisher Publica, announced that the company had just gone live in the Google Play Store with author Sushi Juta’s Escape the Cubicle: Quit the Job You Hate. Marc created the world’s first #1 title on the “blockchain bestseller” list.

Also at the fair, The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) handed out its just-released white paper “Authors and the Blockchain: Towards a Creator Centered Business Model,” and heard from a panel of experts and early adopters.

What is blockchain for books?

Initially blockchain has attracted interest as a mechanism that underwrites digital currencies like Bitcoin. However, as the public investigates further, such as the publishing industry, is also…