"The Originator Profile Charter" was established.

On June 27, the “Originator Profile Collaboration Innovation Partnership(OP CIP)” (Chief Director: Jun Murai, Professor at Keio University) established the “Originator Profile Charter”, which defines the basic principles and the general ideas of operational system of “Originator Profile” (OP), a digital technology that clearly indicates to users the authenticity and reliability of content originators  on the Internet, and came into effect on July 1. OP CIP will now develop a concrete operational system based on the OP Charter.

The OP Charter was compiled after nearly six months of discussions by the “OP Charter Drafting Committee”, an expert panel established in November 2023 as an advisory body to Chief Director Murai. The Drafting Committee was made up of eight academic experts with detailed knowledge of issues such as the nature of the information space, technological trends and information policy, and was co-chaired by three professors: George Shishido (Professor at Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, The University of Tokyo), Masahiro Sogabe (Professor at Graduate School of Law, Kyoto University) and Tatsuhiko Yamamoto (Professor at Law School, Keio University). The OP Charter was approved by the Board of Directors and reported to the General Assembly on June 27.

The OP Charter consists of a preamble, Article 1 “Basic Principles of OP”, Article 2 “Basic Stance of Entities Transmitting Information Using OP”, Article 3 “Basic Concept of OP Operation”, Article 4 “Basic Stance of the OP Collaborative Innovation Partnership”, Article 5 “Ethics Committee”, and Article 6 “Review of the Charter”.

OP is a technology that allows users of the Internet to judge for themselves whether the name of the originator is being falsely represented, and whether the originator can be truly trusted, by adding identification information that is difficult to modify to content disseminated by news media, platform operators and companies in the digital space. In order to improve the health of the information sphere, this OP CIP will continue to work on proofs of concept (PoCs), and will also promote system design based on the OP Charter, aiming for early introduction and implementation.

Click here for the text of the OP Charter.

A Comment from Jun Murai, Professor at Keio University and Chief Director of the Originator Profile Collaborative Innovation Partnership

“The OP Charter Drafting Committee engaged in in-depth discussions from various perspectives on the ideal form of the information sphere and the role that OP should play within it. The OP Charter, which was created as a result of these discussions, sets out the basic principles that should be shared by all those involved in the field of OP, as well as the fundamental principles that should be observed. The interest and expectations of people in Japan and overseas regarding OP are growing day by day. In accordance with the spirit of the OP Charter, we will contribute to the creation of a healthy information sphere by achieving the social implementation of OP as soon as possible."