
Online content is referred to as any form of content in the form of digital data. This digital content can be stored on analog and digital storage devices in specific formats. It has various layouts, including broadcast, stream, and data which is stored in computer files.
If you look at it narrowly, digital content includes popular media types. Simultaneously, a broader approach considers any form of digital information such as GPS maps, weather forecasts, etc., as digital content.
The amount of digital content has increased exponentially as more and more people have access to the internet. Multiple social media applications generate millions of digital content each day; multiple video-on-demand streaming services have digital content that consists of billions of minutes worth of digital content.
Not all of the digital content available over the internet is accessible by everyone. Many shows, movies, songs, and other digital content forms are geo-restricted to millions of people. In today’s global age, accessing geo-restricted content is very easy with a specific internet tool known as Virtual Private Network.
With the help of a VPN provider such as NordVPN, you can easily access any form of digital content which is geographically restricted in your country. To get to know this VPN before making it your online freedom companion, read an in-depth NordVPN review that explains why you should get NordVPN for your online privacy and unblocking needs. Speaking of privacy, you should also stay updated with these latest cybersecurity trends as cybercriminals are more active than ever due to the current global pandemic situation.
Broadened access to the Internet has also led to the mass-publication of digital content through individuals in the form of ebooks, blog posts, and even Facebook posts. With such a lengthy history, keeping track of digital content’s origin and evolution can be troublesome. Therefore, six major tech and media giants have joined forces to develop an end-to-end and open standard group for achieving this task.
Six different influential technology and media companies have joined hands to form a union for Content Provenance and Authenticity, also known as C2PA. The purpose of this Joint Development Foundation union is to address the prevalence of disinformation, misinformation, and online content fraud by developing standards for certifying the source and history of digital content.
This alliance consists of Adobe, Arm, BBC, Intel, Microsoft, and Truepic. These members will work together to create common asset types and formats to allow publishers, creators, and consumers to trace the source and progression of a piece of media, including images, videos, audio, and documents. These types and formats will include defining what information is associated with each type of asset, how it is displayed and stored, and whether any tampering traces can be identified.
The C2PA’s open standard will allow platforms to preserve and read different digital content types. To spread trust across the internet, it is necessary to adopt open standards as any online platform can utilize them. C2PA is capturing the complete provenance experience from the device that captures the media to the consumer who is accessing it.
Cooperation with chipmakers, news organizations, and software and platform companies are critical to facilitate a complete provenance standard and drive widespread adoption across the content ecosystem.
The founding members of Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) and the Project Origin – a joint operation of Microsoft and BBC, are brought together due to the formation of C2PA. CAI is developing a tool to provide provenance and history for digital media that will give the creators a tool to claim ownership and allow consumers to evaluate the content’s trustworthiness. While CAI is busy doing all that, Project Origin has its hands full of news production and distribution.
To focus more on tackling disinformation in the digital news ecosystem, signals are being attached to a piece of content to demonstrate its integrity and make this information available to those using it. With the establishment of the C2PA, technical standards will be consolidated while these two entities continue to pursue adoption, prototyping, and enlightenment within their respective communities.
On February 21, 2021, C2PA announced several recent advances in content provenance, including Project Origin’s efforts to produce a pipeline for signaling, certification, and tracking the history of news content; the CAI’s first-ever exhibit of provenance for captured media online; and Truepic’s progress of the first native combination of hardware-secured photo capture smartphone technology.
Developing standards and technologies that can verify the source and provenance of any digital content is an essential part of addressing growing concerns with the administration and manufacture of news and information.
Companies interested in joining the C2PA can apply through membership@c2pa.org.
There’s no doubt that the authenticity and provenance of any form of digital content are essential for preventing the growth in digital media fraud. Many cybersecurity crimes involving any form of digital content happen because consumers cannot either identify the content’s legitimacy or find any traces of tampering in the content.
As the work done by C2PA progresses, hopefully, in the future, we will be able to keep complete track of our digital content and the digital footprints that we leave behind while surfing the web. You can still wipe out your digital footprints using these few steps to safeguard yourself and your online data from any cybersecurity threat.