Secure and reliable blockchain-based eBook transaction system for self-published eBook trading

Abstract

As eBook readers have expanded on the market, various online eBook markets have arisen as well. Currently, the online eBook market consists of at least publishers and online platform providers and authors, and these actors inevitably incur intermediate costs between them. In this paper, we introduce a blockchain-based eBook market system that enables self-published eBook trading and direct payments from readers to authors without any trusted party; because authors publish themselves and readers purchase directly from authors, neither actor incurs any intermediate costs. However, because of this trustless environment, the validity, ownership and intellectual property of digital contents cannot be verified and protected, and the safety of purchase transactions cannot be ensured. To address these shortcomings, we propose a secure and reliable eBook transaction system that satisfies the following security requirements: (1) verification of the ownership of each eBook, (2) confidentiality of eBook contents, (3) authorization of a right to read a book, (4) authentication of a legitimate purchaser, (5) verification of the validity and integrity of eBook contents, (6) safety of direct purchase transactions, and (7) preventing eBook piracy and illegal distribution. We provide practical cryptographic protocols for the proposed system and analyze the security and simulated performance of the proposed schemes.

A semi-centralized blockchain system with multi-chain for auditing communications of Wide Area Protection System

“…The idea of blockchain was proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto for the bitcoin system in 2008 [ 28 ], and the concept of blockchain first appeared in 2015. Blockchain has many advantages such as decentralization, transparency, tamper-proof, traceability, irrevocability and verifiability [ 29 ]. Blockchain is a virtual chain of chronologically ordered blocks.…”

Why do we digitize books instead of knowledge?

“…Self-publishing is becoming a new standard in the publishing industry, which is testified by over a million of self-published books in 2017 [20]. Authors need to create interesting contents in order to please the audience faced with a wide range of offers.…”

Blockchain-Based Multimedia Content Protection: Review and Open Challenges

“…Chi et al [38] introduce a secure and reliable blockchain-based real time eBook market system that allows users to publish themselves and receive direct payments from readers without any trusted party involvement. The proposed trading platform uses blockchain for protecting copyright of paid content and securely managing direct payments.…”

“…The majority of the schemes [36][37][38]40,42,[46][47][48][49]51,52] utilize hybrid transactions, which imply on-chain recording of data in a private or publicly accessible blockchain service, such as the content's metadata, copyright owners' or users' information, watermark or fingerprint of the user (in an encrypted form), DRM license and content obligation, among others, and off-chain mechanisms, such as generation and storage of copyrighted content, extraction of copyright information from the content or traceability protocol. The on-chain transactions are performed to achieve transparency, security, immutability and auditability, and are considered best for cryptocurrency transfers in a completely decentralized manner.…”