ISCC – ISO 24138

The problem

ISBNs and DOIs identify publications, not files. Neither can tell you whether the thing circulating on a network – re-encoded, resized, recompressed – is your work.

The solution

The International Standard Content Code is a decentralised identifier derived from the media itself, across text, image, audio and video. It survives transformation and clusters near-identical files, which makes it usable for provenance, for machine-readable rights assertions, and for identifying content inside AI training corpora.

What is distinctive

A standard rather than a product. Published as ISO 24138:2024, it can sit underneath everyone's systems instead of competing with them.

Evidence

• Published as ISO 24138:2024 in May 2024 (ISO/TC 46/SC 11).
• Introduced to the US market via NISO and presented at WIPO.
• No adoption figures are published; treat this as infrastructure to watch rather than as proven practice.

Compiled from public sources, August 2026. Not yet reviewed by the organisation.