Pilot testbed for verifiable proof of origin and integrity of digital works

This project aims to pilot, at European scale, a platform-independent and third-party verifiable approach to proof of origin and integrity of digital works and digital assets.

It addresses the growing gap between EU regulatory requirements (AI Act, copyright, TDM rights reservation) and the lack of interoperable technical evidence infrastructures that can be checked by third parties without depending on the issuing party.

The technical basis already exists and is public: the AURA open specification v1.2.1 (Apache 2.0, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22071523), an independent verifier (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22069698), and a complete worked example verifiable offline without any proprietary component.

What remains to be done is not the specification, but its confrontation with real corpora and real institutional constraints. The project is positioned as a public-interest, non-commercial initiative.

Expected outcomes:

– a documented pilot on a real corpus, with measured costs and observed limits,

– feedback on interoperability with existing sector identifiers,

– operational recommendations for standardisation and deployment.

Scope boundaries: this work establishes technical facts (integrity, declared issuer, declared issuance time, rights reservation signals). It does not determine ownership, authorship or legal entitlement, and does not by itself satisfy any regulatory obligation.

We are looking for partners in research, public institutions, cultural heritage, technical infrastructure and standardisation.