CC Tech Summit: Digital Copyright Registry Landscape

Slide 1: Creative Commons Technology Summit 2008 06 18 Digital Copyright Registry Landscape Mike Linksvayer Creative Commons 1 Image by *saipal · Licensed under CC BY · http://flickr.com/photos/saipal/257641202/

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Slide 5: “We believe in the Net, not a centralized, Soviet-style information bank controlled by a single organization.” Creative Commons FAQ December 16, 2002 http://web.archive.org/web/20021216155836/http://www.creativecommons.org/faq#faq_entry_3482 5

Slide 6: Q: Is Creative Commons building a database of licensed content? A: Absolutely not. We believe in the Net, not a centralized, Soviet-style information bank controlled by a single organization. We are building tools so that the semantic web can identify and sort licensed works in a distributed, decentralized manner. We are not in the business of collecting content, or building databases of content. 6

Slide 7: Why talk about digital copyright registries now? 7

Slide 8: I AM NOT A 8 Original photo by Brooke Novak · Licensed under CC BY · http://flickr.com/photos/brookenovak/337889974/

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Slide 10: 10 http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=29755

Slide 11: 11 Original photo by EffervescentEva · Licensed under CC BY · http://flickr.com/photos/evaclicks/2273068693/

Slide 12: Why? (unordered) Orphans + [de]centralization + Need for provenance + Registry-like functionality is an aspiration/framing for CC technology + A gaggle of startups: explicit and accidental, for and non-profit = Folks want to know what CC will do in this space 12

Slide 13: Outline 1. What makes a copyright registry? 2. What makes a digital copyright registry? 3. Registry demand 4. Registry supply 5. Registry approaches 6. Challenges 7. Registry (as and for) Commons 13

Slide 14: For most of the history of copyright law in the U.S., registration was a necessary precondition to securing a copyright. 14

Slide 15: The aim of this traditional U.S. system was efficiency and clarity: registration (and the requirement to mark copyrighted work) made it relatively easy to identify a copyright holder to secure permission to use the copyrighted work in ways limited by copyright law. 15

Slide 16: In 1978, U.S. copyright became automatic. The U.S. Continues to maintain a copyright registry. Because the registry is not mandatory, it is not a useful tool for identifying copyright owners. 16

Slide 17: In 2005 the U.S. Copyright Office received 531,720 registrations and recorded receipts from registration of $17,829,429. In 2007 electronic filing went into beta. 17

Slide 18: What makes a digital copyright registry? Digital interfaces for copyright holders and users (of course) Not necessarily defined or primarily motivated by “registration” Scale Global 18

Slide 19: Registry Demand ● UGC upload filtering ● License management ● User media organization ● Collective rights management ● Cultural heritage ● Finding where content is posted ● Timestamping (by copyright holders and users) 19

Slide 20: Supply: Build it and they will register ● RegisteredCommons (here) ● SafeCreative (here) ● Numly ● DulyNoted ● Probably others 20

Slide 21: Supply: Manage a domain / existing database ● Collecting societies ● Cultural heritage institutions ● MusicBrainz (here) ● OpenLibrary (here) 21

Slide 22: Supply: Internal need or needed to provide other service ● Surely every big web/media company? ● NoAnk Media (here) 22

Slide 23: Supply: ~Side effect of service ● Attributor (here) ● Jamendo (here) ● Last.fm ● Flickr ● YouTube 23

Slide 24: Registry Approaches: Cataloging works ● User action/Attention ● Crawl ● Existing catalog curation by intermediary ● Explicit registration by copyright holder Penance for saying “crowdsource” ̶ read “Commercialization of Wikis” http://evan.prodromou.name/Talks/SXSW07 24

Slide 25: Registry Approaches: Using the catalog ● Marked work with reference to registry ● Content derived identifier lookup to registry ● Search registry (many variants) ● Processes naturally built on top of registry 25

Slide 26: Challenges ● Identifying works ● Identifying owners ● Namespace monopolists ● Making it webby ● Benefit>cost (for effort above what the web provides anyway) ● Who pays? ● Scams ● METACRAP! 26

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Slide 28: Commons ● Interoperable/SemWeb ● Registries as open services ● Registries with knowledge of public licenses 28

Slide 29: Beyond copyright Issues of provenance are of particular relevance to copyright licensing on the web, but the decentralized web presents trust of agents and data as a general problem. A commons registry could evolve to address these problems beyond the scope of copyright 29

Slide 30: Beyond copyright In line with CC relationship to the SemWeb and the shared interest of many in the CC community in addressing issues of commerce, privacy, trust, and transparency in a decentralized architecture (captured to some extent in ideas like “VRM”) 30

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Slide 32: The Web is “the” registry What does your “registry” add to the web? 32

Slide 33: One view ● License – http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ ● Attribution – Author: Mike Linksvayer – Link: http://creativecommons.org ● Questions? – ml@creativecommons.org 33 Image by helmet13 · Licensed under CC BY · http://flickr.com/photos/22281745@N04/2148374633/