The correct answer is Establishing the source and authenticity of software components.

Checking pedigree and provenance is primarily about proving who produced a component and that the binary or library has not been tampered with. Provenance records provide cryptographic hashes signatures build metadata and authorship information that let OakPay confirm that a dependency actually came from the claimed source and that it is the expected artifact.

Maintaining provenance supports trust decisions before release because it reduces the risk of supply chain compromise or insertion of malicious code. Techniques include signed artifacts reproducible builds and recorded build metadata which together establish authenticity and integrity for third party libraries.

Recording changes across the build and development lifecycle is related but not the primary goal. That activity focuses on change management and audit trails rather than proving the origin and integrity of a delivered component.

Binary Authorization is a policy enforcement mechanism used to allow or deny running artifacts in a deployment environment. It complements provenance checks but it is not the same as establishing the source and authenticity of components.

Detecting unauthorized distribution or copyright infringement is a legal and distribution concern that provenance data may help investigate. The main purpose of pedigree and provenance checks is to verify origin and integrity rather than to determine copyright status or distribution violations.

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