Re: Author, content and data authentication

Good idea. Im in.
Charles Waweru

> On 10 Jan 2026, at 20:15, John Erickson <olyerickson@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Indeed. The IP Protection Problem (tm) as stated is essentially the opening argument made for the DOI, back in the 1990s. Some of us were there, 30 years ago this month, that snowy day in VA when the argument was made and the essence of the DOI was proposed by Christopher Burns and the AAP…
> 
> On Sat, Jan 10, 2026 at 3:08 PM Andy Turner <A.G.D.Turner@leeds.ac.uk <mailto:A.G.D.Turner@leeds.ac.uk>> wrote:
> Eyup!
> 
> The work of the Research Data Alliance (https://www.rd-alliance.org/ <https://www.rd-alliance.org/>) is along these lines, e.g. http://www.doi.org/10.15497/FDAA09D5-5ED0-403D-B97A-2675E1EBE786 <http://www.doi.org/10.15497/FDAA09D5-5ED0-403D-B97A-2675E1EBE786>.
> 
> HTH
> 
> Andy
> 
> From: Milton Ponson <rwiciamsd@gmail.com <mailto:rwiciamsd@gmail.com>>
> Sent: Friday, January 09, 2026 20:40
> To: public-lod <public-lod@w3.org <mailto:public-lod@w3.org>>; public-cogai <public-cogai@w3.org <mailto:public-cogai@w3.org>>; W3C AIKR CG <public-aikr@w3.org <mailto:public-aikr@w3.org>>; public-s-agent-comm@w3.org <mailto:public-s-agent-comm@w3.org> <public-s-agent-comm@w3.org <mailto:public-s-agent-comm@w3.org>>
> Subject: Author, content and data authentication
> 
> CAUTION: External Message. Use caution opening links and attachments.
> 
> After reading dozens of articles,  reports and commentaries on the current deteriorating state of scientific, academic publishing, caused by the use of artificial intelligence,  paper mills and the increasing overload of peer reviewers, I was wondering if current available technologies could be customized to solve (parts of) the problem.
> 
> I printed the full page of W3C proposed and current standards and found three main angles to tackle this problem.
> 
> Digital IDs for authors and documents, credentialing and enhanced documents (in casu ePubs) with semantic tagging.
> 
> But the current crisis with intellectual property issues, non-human works, authenticity of content, and verifiable data in scientific publications,  text based publishing, images, audiovisual works, online news and streaming media, including social media and text based messaging (email, SMS etc.) caused by the utilization of artificial intelligence calls for a universal approach for author, content and data authentication.
> 
> For scientific publishing and online repositories and libraries this is the most urgent, but the entertainment industry, news and digital print publishing also stand to benefit greatly by introducing such a general, universal approach.
> 
> When content is submitted,  the question of authorship is obvious, but in scientific publishing the authentication of research data is equally important.
> Most quality scientific publishers provide online publishing of articles plus additional files, e.g. research data, but without proper authentication. 
> And articles produced by paper mills regularly include names of alleged co-authors or non-existent references.
> 
> When content is submitted for review, e.g an article for scientific publication, a news item online, a post of text or audiovisual content or a link to a live event for streaming content,  author and form of content generation should be made explicit,  the latter indicating if, and what artificial intelligence based tools were used to produce which aspects of the content, and in case of data the ownership,  origin and authenticity of the data.
> 
> Because artificial intelligence is blamed for creating low quality content, of which authorship, origin and authenticity are often questionable,  such a universal scheme could serve,  if adopted to separate quality content from so-called "slop" improving the training data quality of large language models, among others.
> 
> Adding credentials,  authenticator tags,  digital watermarks, digital fingerprints to content for authorship,  content generation details and data authentication could resolve a lot of problems.
> 
> And with the current arms race between traditional search engines and AI plugged in browsers or AI browsers centering exactly on the quality of searched and presented results to users, an Author, content and data authentication set of standards could result in an improved use of the current Internet and lead to in the extreme case quarantining, more preferable ignoring, and even promoting the reduction of the production of poor quality AI generated content for use on the Internet.
> 
> I am wondering if we could in the W3 constellation assume the task of proposing such a framework and create the appropriate standards in collaboration with other actors involved in the Internet ecosystem and related industry sectors.
> 
> Milton Ponson
> Rainbow Warriors Core Foundation
> CIAMSD Institute-ICT4D Program
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