Provenance

What it is

Provenance is the recorded history of a piece of content: where it came from, what changed it, and who vouches for it. Version 2.4 of the C2PA specification, the most recent version it publishes, defines it for media as understanding the history of an asset as represented by the set of C2PA manifests for that asset and its ingredients. The manifest is commonly embedded in the asset itself, so the record travels with the file, though C2PA's own implementation guidance notes that asset metadata may be routinely removed or corrupted by legacy or non-C2PA capable platforms during distribution. It can also be held outside the file and matched back to the content by a soft binding such as an invisible watermark. What makes the record checkable is the signature on it together with the hash that binds it to the asset, not where it is kept.

Why it matters

Claims need the same property in a different form — not a signature on an image, but a durable link from a published sentence back to its evidence and to the person who approved it. Content moves between surfaces, gets quoted, summarised and re-hosted, and the trail is what keeps it checkable at the other end. Without it, verification restarts from zero every time a claim is repeated somewhere new. Knowledge Company keeps that link on the claim itself, which is why every term in this dictionary carries a source and a review date.