Central to Not Forgotten’s value proposition is creating redundant methods that will enable future generations to discover and access your Video. While your children and grandchildren may not have a hard time locating your Video, their descendants and other people who may want to learn about you in the future may have to do a bit more sleuthing. Today that work would be done using genealogy tools or library archive searches. Below are descriptions of the tools we use to make this process easier for people who want to watch your Video generations from now.
1. GEDCOM File:
a. GEDCOM is an acronym for "GEnealogical Data COMmunications." The GEDCOM standard is a data format used to record genealogical information.
b. After you’ve created your Video, Not Forgotten will give you the opportunity to enter certain genealogical information about your family into the primary Not Forgotten Website. Entering this information is optional, but doing so will greatly improve the chances that people looking for information about you will be able to connect with your video 50, 150, or even 300 years from now. Your GEDCOM file will contain a link to your Video URL as well as the location of your Video in the Long-Term Storage Vault. If you elect to enter your genealogical information, Not Forgotten will generate and supply you with your GEDCOM file and its unique identifier which links information about your family tree to the virtual and physical locations of your Video.
c. Customers who have already established a GEDCOM file through a service like ancestry.com can add the Video URL to that file. During your lifetime, you are free to change your mind at any time if you would like to remove your GEDCOM from Not Forgotten’s records by going to the Settings portion of the primary Website.
2. Personal Archive Record in WorldCat:
a. As an official “special library” of OCLC (our OCLC symbol is: IEFDP), Not Forgotten will create a WorldCat record to the MARC 21 standard for videos for which our customers have purchased either a 150 year or a 300 year target storage Term. (These videos are referred to herein as “MARC-Eligible Videos”.) OCLC has been storing and protecting library information as a non-profit, member-driven library cooperative since 1967. Not Forgotten will register our entire collection of MARC-Eligible Videos in the WorldCat knowledge base and will supply eligible customers with a link to the WorldCat unique record for their videos.
b. This WorldCat record will link information about you to the virtual and physical locations of your MARC-Eligible Videos. Each MARC-Eligible Video will have its own MARC record created using OCLC cataloguing tools, protocols, and metadata standards. People who search for your name in WorldCat in the future will be able to discover the location of your Video archives.
3. A Blockchain “Smart Contract”:
a. Customers who purchase a 150 year or 300 year target storage Term will receive a third means of discoverability: a personal “smart contract” for your Video stored on the Ethereum blockchain.
b. A blockchain is a distributed ledger stored in multiple locations, so this means that if you have purchased the 150 year or 300 year target storage Term, your “smart contract” data will be stored by those Ethereum nodes. A “smart contract” is a computer protocol intended to digitally facilitate, verify, or enforce the conditions or performance of a contract. These transactions are discoverable, trackable and irreversible. If you create a “smart contract” on the blockchain, it will be stored and run in a decentralized manner.
c. If you have purchased the 150 year or 300 year target storage Term, the record of your Video’s physical and virtual location will be linked or “contracted” to the records of your Gedcom and Worldcat entries (where applicable) and recorded in a “smart contract”. You will be supplied with your blockchain smart contract transaction number which can be searched for and located by future generations on the blockchain, in turn allowing future generations to locate your Video.
d. Each year during the Term, your “smart contract” will undergo a “renewal event” on the blockchain. You and your dependents can subscribe to this annual event, passing it down from generation to generation (since it is an annual event, and simple to subscribe to, it will keep your Video location “alive” and easily searchable for generations). When your transaction is created we will email instructions to allow you to subscribe to your smart contract renewal events.
