Secure and reliable blockchain-based eBook transaction system for self-published eBook trading

As eBook readers have expanded on the market, various online eBook markets have arisen as well. Currently, the online eBook market consists of at least publishers and online platform providers and authors, and these actors inevitably incur intermediate costs between them. In this paper, we introduce a blockchain-based eBook market system that enables self-published eBook trading and direct payments from readers to authors without any trusted party; because authors publish themselves and readers purchase directly from authors, neither actor incurs any intermediate costs. However, because of this trustless environment, the validity, ownership and intellectual property of digital contents cannot be verified and protected, and the safety of purchase transactions cannot be ensured. To address these shortcomings, we propose a secure and reliable eBook transaction system that satisfies the following security requirements: (1) verification of the ownership of each eBook, (2) confidentiality of eBook contents, (3) authorization of a right to read a book, (4) authentication of a legitimate purchaser, (5) verification of the validity and integrity of eBook contents, (6) safety of direct purchase transactions, and (7) preventing eBook piracy and illegal distribution. We provide practical cryptographic protocols for the proposed system and analyze the security and simulated performance of the proposed schemes.