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The best way to sign a contract online with international signers is to go with DocuSign or Adobe Sign being the witness to the contract signing.

if the contract is about granting licence for a video, than the video must be referenced unambiguously within the contract. And this is where the problems arise.

Unfortunately, electronic signature providers do not offer functionality of placing videos inside the contract. They do not offer anything, but the most simple text documents and images. basically, if it can't be printed, you can't place it in the contract. That includes zip files.

How do you make a contract including video license permission then? Adding a link of the video is a terrible idea, because web is dynamic, and the content to which the video is pointing may easily change over time.

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2 Answers 2

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If you are concerned with a digital thing being verifiable as exactly the same at some later time you ought to use a hash.

A hash function takes some input bits like say a digital video and produces output bits often represented as hexadecimals. For any particular input it will always have the same output, but it is not reasonable for more than one input to have the same output.

All modern computers have standard software to do this and I'm sure many websites offer it as a free service.

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  • It is not likely for more than one input to have the same output, but the actual likelihood depends on the hash algorithm involved. 'Reasonableness' is not relevant at all. If you find two inputs that have the same output, then you've simply found something very unlikely.
    – Brandin
    Commented Feb 8, 2018 at 8:28
  • A hash is used to verify that two things are the same. But one bit flipped in the video would result in a different hash without changing the essence of the video. A better way is Dale's idea.
    – workoverflow
    Commented Feb 8, 2018 at 10:53
  • @Brandin the point is that it is very difficult to create a video (or other data) tailored to give a pre-determined hash. So any party interested in claiming that the video object of the contract is a different one would have to spend a lot of time and money checking billions of variations to provide the "alternate" video. That said, I would supplement the hash with a description of the video (including naming the actors, location, date of filming, total length) and even some screenshots of it. Or even the video in a physical read-only support with the signature of the parties of the contract.
    – SJuan76
    Commented Feb 8, 2018 at 10:57
  • @workoverflow Obviously, if the OP edits/changes the format of the video, the hash won't match. The idea of the hash is for the OP to safely store the "original" video; if someone challenges his rights he produces both the contract (with the hash) and the original video to make the check, even if the copies that the OP distributes do not match that hash.
    – SJuan76
    Commented Feb 8, 2018 at 11:00
  • @SJuan76 Right, I was thinking on the other side of the contract. Protecting and IP is not a contract. However, a hash of the video is related to an exact file. that file should be converted & stored by a third party that ensures that there are no added data crafted to intentionally cause a collision with other video.
    – workoverflow
    Commented Feb 8, 2018 at 11:09
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Describe the video in the contract. Put the video in a GitHub (or similar) repository and link to that.

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  • Just to point out. GitHub is not immune to copyright claims. Content there can be easily removed by a DMCA. In fact, I don't think anything online is immune to copyright takedown.
    – sanjihan
    Commented Feb 8, 2018 at 15:06
  • @sanjihan you need to research how DMCA takedowns actually work.
    – Dale M ♦
    Commented Feb 8, 2018 at 20:02
  • if for some reason you can't file a counter DMCA in 24 hours (or how many they give you), your content remains to be put down. Am i correct? I can see many possible exploits here.. but I am a paranoid dude
    – sanjihan
    Commented Feb 8, 2018 at 20:05
  • @sanjihan no, the host has 24 hours to remove it, you can take as long as you like to put in the counter notice.
    – Dale M ♦
    Commented Feb 8, 2018 at 20:09
  • okay thanks. That makes things more bearable.
    – sanjihan
    Commented Feb 8, 2018 at 20:11

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