Honest Claims

What a Proof Record proves

• That a specific file or URL was registered at a specific time.
• That the registered account had verified control of a channel at the time of registration, when a verified channel is shown.
• That the SHA-256 fingerprint of the content matches the one on the record.

What it does not prove

• That the content is true, original, or free of copyright claims.
• That the person registering it is who they say they are in real life, only that they controlled the verified channel at the time.
• That any legal authority, court, or regulator has reviewed or endorsed the record.
• For a link, what the page showed. A link record is a fingerprint of the link itself, so it cannot show what the link contained when it was registered, or that it contains the same thing now.

Anchoring

Records are batched into a Merkle tree and the root of that tree is submitted to the public OpenTimestamps calendar, which in turn commits to Bitcoin. The resulting proof is independently verifiable with any OpenTimestamps client. It does not require trusting Pudding.

Reports made with Protect your work

Protect your work points you to each platform's own report form and gives you words to paste. You decide whether to send anything, and you send it yourself. Pudding does not file, send or sign reports, does not review them, is not a party to any dispute that follows, and does not decide who created something.

The statements in a copyright notice are yours, and in the US some of them are made under penalty of perjury. Only send a report you believe is true. A Pudding record summary describes your record and nothing else, and no platform, court or other third party is obliged to accept it.

Shared responsibility

Pudding provides the registration and verification tools. Account owners are responsible for keeping their login credentials and channel access secure. Verification of a channel means control of that channel at that time, not a lifetime guarantee.