# About Creator Credentials
## Motivation The Creator Credentials project introduces decentralised **digital identities to the media industries**, addressing a critical need for verifiable authenticity in digital publishing and distribution. The widespread availability and rapid dissemination of digital content present significant challenges for users attempting to verify the integrity, authenticity, and ownership of media assets. The lack of standardised attribution mechanisms contributes to the unchecked spread of misinformation, unauthorised use of copyrighted works, and the erosion of trust in online media. While **Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI)** frameworks offer potential solutions for improving content attribution and rights management, these technologies have historically remained **inaccessible to creative communities**. Existing SSI tools and applications are complex, require technical expertise, and impose high barriers to adoption. As a result, media organisations, creators, and rightsholders have lacked practical, easy-to-use solutions for securing their digital identities and ensuring **accountability** in an increasingly AI-driven landscape. ## **Goals** **Creator Credentials** has developed a **user-centric digital identity framework** tailored to the needs of creators, media professionals, and cultural institutions. The project simplifies the issuance and verification of **Verifiable Credentials (VCs)** and **Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs)**, ensuring that digital media attribution is both cryptographically secure and publicly accountable. The core components include: * **A credential issuance platform:** A software application that can be used by media organisations, membership associations, collective management organisations (CMOs) and trust services to issue Verifiable Credentials to creators and rightsholders – their members –, ensuring clear attribution and accountability. * **A wallet for creators and rightsholders:** The user application that provides a simple and secure wallet that allows creators and rightsholders to store, manage, and share their Verifiable Credentials. This ensures that their credentials are easily accessible and verifiable by third parties, such as media platforms, publishers, and other audiences, reinforcing trust and accountability in digital publishing. **Creator Credentials aims to establish a new role for public entities and organisations in digital media publishing.** By integrating digital identity solutions with existing media infrastructures, the project enables public institutions, professional associations, and cultural organisations to serve as trust anchors in the verification of creator credentials and content authenticity. This shift introduces a new paradigm for trust and accountability, ensuring that digital publishing ecosystems are transparent, verifiable, and resistant to manipulation. # Overview

Creator Credentials – Overview

## Description The overview illustrates the process of issuing and managing **Verifiable Credentials (VCs)** for creators and rightsholders within a structured trust framework. The system connects **issuers**, such as media organisations or collective management organisations (CMOs), with **creators**, who seek to verify and manage their digital identities. The process begins with both issuers and creators signing up and logging into the **Creator Credentials application**. Issuers authenticate themselves using **Qualified** or **Advanced Certificates (for eSeal)**, establishing their legitimacy as trusted entities. Additionally, issuers can verify their authority by **setting up did:web**, which serves as a decentralised identifier for issuing credentials. Creators, on the other hand, verify their identities through **self-verification methods**, including **domain verification (DNS TXT records), social media account verification, and email verification**. These self-verification options provide increasing levels of **trust and authentication**, with decentralised identity standards such as **did:key** reinforcing security. Once both parties are verified, a **handshake process** facilitates mutual identification between the creator and the issuer. The creator then selects a **sector-specific credential template**, which defines the type of **Verifiable Credential** they need. The issuer can **issue, manage, and, if necessary, revoke** these credentials. The credentials can be **issued to creators**, allowing them to manage and share their verifiable claims with third parties. The system ensures **transparency, security, and interoperability** by integrating decentralised identity frameworks and cryptographic verification. This approach empowers creators with **self-sovereign identity management**, while issuers establish **institutional trust**, ensuring that media attributions and rights declarations are verifiable across the digital ecosystem. # Issuers, Holders, and Verifiers
## Credential issuers In the context of the cultural and creative industries, any organisation or institution could potentially be an issuer of verifiable credentials and act as a trust service for attribution or assertions. Let’s have a look at a few examples of potential credential issuers: * A **membership organisation** could issue VCs to their members; * A **CMO** (collective management organisation or collecting society) or **PRO** (Performance Rights Organisation) could issue VCs to creators they represent; * A **publisher** or media organisation could attest attribution of authors, photographers, and freelancers; * **Digital distributors** are trusted and established intermediaries that usually represent a large number of rightsholders. They could act as trust service. * Any trusted media organisation or publicly known entity could issue VCs. ## Credential holders Verifiable credentials have the potential to provide sufficient identification about the holders as the parties making content declarations, such as: * Creators, i.e., writers, bloggers, photographers, journalists, musicians, etc.; * Rightsholders, i.e., publishers, labels, intermediaries, retailers.
CreatorsRightsholdersIntermediaries
ImagePhotographersStock photo platforms, publishers, photo licensing agenciesNews agencies
AudioBands, songwriters, podcastersRecord labels, music publishers, studiosMusic distributors, CMOs
TextAuthors, journalists, bloggersPublishers (academic, trade, educational, audiobook, news), literary AgenciesNews and ebook distributors; libraries
VideoVloggersTV and video producers and broadcastersVideo distributors
## Credential verifiers We see many use cases where parties might want to verify content, claims, and attribution. Verifiers of VCs could be: * Any user who wishes to authenticate the content declaration; * A platform, such as an Online Content-Sharing Service Provider (OCSSP); * Retailers and shops that require domain-specific identity confirmation or want to verify claims to content or attribution. # Use cases in digital media

Use Cases for VCs in Media Sectors

Verifiable creator credentials can increase trust and transparency in the cultural and creative industries. Here are some examples of how VCs could be used: * Verifying the identity and credentials of freelancers or contractors working for a media organisation (**freelancer verification**); * Establishing the identity and reliability of sources used in news publications, particularly when anonymity is required (**source verification**); * Providing proof of ownership or authorship of copyrighted works, such as articles, videos, or music, including the ability to state whether the content was created by a human creator or generated by an artificial intelligence model (**copyright verification**); * Demonstrating the creator's or rightsholder's authority to provide metadata or licence information for digital work (**metadata verification**); * Confirming that a media organisation has the permission to use or distribute specific content, such as photographs or video footage (**content licensing**); * Verifying that a user or entity has acquired a licence for use of digital media content from a rightsholder (**licensing receipt**); * Supporting digital rights management (DRM) and granting access to digital media content, supplementary material, stories, or multimedia assets (**access control**). # Key features and benefits Verifiable Credentials (VCs) introduce a fundamentally new approach to digital authentication, ensuring security, interoperability, and trust in online environments. Creator Credentials extend these principles to the cultural and creative industries, enabling creators and rightsholders to maintain full control over their digital identities and claims. Here are the essential attributes that make Creator Credentials a game-changer for attribution, rights management, and digital authenticity: 1. Creator Credentials are **self-sovereign**, which means that creators and rightsholders have primary ownership and control over their credentials. They can choose where to host, when to use, and how to share them, including controlling access levels and revoking access if needed. 2. Creator Credentials are **portable**, which means that once issued the holder can transfer credentials between different systems and platforms without loss of information or functionality. They can also be used with various applications or services as required. 3. Creator Credentials are **interoperable**, which means that credentials issued by one system can be recognised and accepted by other systems, even if they are built on different technologies or operated by different organisations. Third party applications can independently verify these credentials. 4. Creator Credentials can also be **restricted in duration**. This means they support the ability to set expiration dates for verifiable credentials, defining a time limit on how long a verifiable credential is valid. Limited validity can be useful for credentials that expire, such as professional licence or certifications. 5. Creator Credentials are **revocable**, which means that they can be revoked or cancelled in cases of expiration or other reasons. This is important for maintaining the integrity of the credential system and ensuring that only valid and accurate information is being shared. The revocation can be initiated by the issuer of the credential or by the individual or entity who holds the credential. It can be enforced by the systems that recognise and accept the credential. 6. Creator Credentials are **cryptographically verifiable**, which is essential for the proper attribution of rights, permissions, and restrictions, ensuring transparency and accountability. 7. Creator Credentials are **resilient**. Using them in the context of ISCC declarations, even in cases of content alteration, manipulation, or removal of watermarks or metadata, Creator Credentials can still be derived from the content and its associated ISCC code. 8. Creator Credentials are **publicly accessible**, allowing for verification within the context of any public content declaration or claim. 9. Creator Credentials are **immutable and trustworthy**, meaning they cannot be altered without detection or notice. 10. Creator Credentials are **timestamped** to ensure cryptographic verifiability and transparency and to provide information about who made a declaration and when it was made, both for humans and machines. # Publicly accessible VCs Creator credentials – which are [verifiable credentials (VCs) according to the recommendation of the W3C](https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model/) in technical terms – can be considered as digital endorsements that are issued by trusted parties and verifiable by anyone based on public key cryptography. They can include information about an individual's identity, qualifications, or other attributes, and can be presented to third parties to prove these claims. Typically, VCs are hosted by the credential holders in dedicated SSI wallets, which are under the control of the individual or entity that holds the VC. In situations where credentials are requested, the holder can present the VC to the verifier, signing via the envelope to create a non-repudiable and verifiable consent receipt to the data sharing event. The verifier can use an own wallet to cryptographically verify the VC. It is important to understand that in most SSI models the so-called presentation and verification of VCs happens live and peer-to-peer using SSI wallet software, via a mutually authenticated channel. If content creators or rightsholders are making claims about digital media content that is being widely published and shared online or on-chain, it would be impractical for them to provide individual presentations to peers. To enable automated or asymmetric verification of credentials, VCs must be publicly accessible and machine readable by asymmetrical means and public and live exchanges. # Creator Credentials, ISNI and ORCID Creator Credentials, ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier), and ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier) all serve as identification systems for natural persons, but they differ significantly in functionality, verification, and use cases. ## **SSI and Control** Unlike ISNI and ORCID, which are centrally issued and managed by designated organisations, Creator Credentials operate on the principles of self-sovereign identity. This means that creators and rightsholders have full control over their credentials, choosing where to store them, how to share them, and when to revoke them. ## **Verification and Authentication** Creator Credentials provide cryptographic verification, allowing creators to prove their identity by presenting their VCs. In contrast, ISNI and ORCID are unique identifiers without built-in cryptographic verification of control. * **ISNI** focuses on **name disambiguation**, helping libraries, publishers, and media organisations differentiate between individuals with similar names. However, it does not verify identity claims. * **ORCID** is widely used in **academia and research** to link authors to their published works, but verification is manual and often dependent on institutions. ## **Attribution and Control** Creator Credentials are designed to work within digital content ecosystems, particularly in the cultural and creative industries. They enhance trust, transparency, and attribution in digital media by allowing creators to control their credentials, securely prove control over their identifier in a machine-readable way. Creator Credentials allow creators to securely link their identity and rights to their works, ensuring proper attribution and authenticity. This is particularly important in the era of AI-generated content and misinformation, where proving authorship is essential. # The Application

Landing page

## **For Creators: Establish and Manage Your Digital Identity** Creators can sign up and verify themselves through domain verification (DNS), proving ownership over their digital presence. Additionally, they can connect with trusted credential issuers to receive Verifiable Credentials (VCs) from recognised media stakeholders, further strengthening their digital identity. VCs are hosted and managed in their secure wallet. These credentials remain portable, cryptographically verifiable, and interoperable, allowing creators to share them with platforms, publishers, and other third parties. ## **For Issuers: Enable Trust and Authentication in Digital Media** Media organisations, creator associations, Collective Management Organizations (CMOs), and other industry entities can act as issuers and trust services for creators and rightsholders, issuing Verifiable Credentials (VCs) that provide secure, verifiable proof of attribution and (pseudonymous) rightsholder identites. Issuers establish their own authority by verifying themselves through domain verification (DNS) or setting up did:web for decentralised identity authentication. To further enhance trust, they can integrate Qualified Certificates (QCerts for eSeal) to prove their legitimacy as a fully verified and trustworthy legal entity. As a verified issuer, they can issue VCs to creators and rightsholders, providing secure, machine-readable author attributions that reinforce credibility, transparency, and accountability in digital content. Creator organisations and Collective Management Organisations (CMOs) can e.g. issue VCs to their members, empowering them to establish trust in their claims and content declarations. By bridging the gap between creators and trusted digital identity services, Creator Credentials ensures a transparent, verifiable, and accountable media ecosystem. The app is based on the ISO standard for decentralised content identification (ISCC), W3C recommendations for decentralised identifiers (DIDs), and verifiable credentials (VCs). It is aligned with European regulations on digital identity (eIDAS), data privacy, and copyright, ensuring that all credentials issued and verified adhere to industry regulations and safeguard self-sovereign control over user data. It will facilitate the onboarding process, mutual authentication, and verification of credential issuers and creators. The app will support the creation and issuance of a variety of credential types and subjects, tailored to the specific needs of the various media sectors. ## Enter the construction site Feel free to have a look at the visual interface of the Creator Credentials app: {% embed url="" %} CreatorCredentials.app {% endembed %} Be aware that the application is still in development. Not all things be fully functional, but you can certainly click through the application and get a better idea what you can do either as a creator or as a trust service (credentials issuer).