=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1383/paper14
|storemode=property
|title=Semantic Web Technologies for User Generated Content and Digital Distribution Copyright Management
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1383/paper14.pdf
|volume=Vol-1383
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/semweb/GarciaS14
}}
==Semantic Web Technologies for User Generated Content and Digital Distribution Copyright Management==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1383/paper14.pdf
Semantic Web Technologies for
User Generated Content and Digital Distribution
Copyright Management
Roberto García, Universitat de Lleida, Spain
Nick Sincaglia, NueMeta LLC, USA
This talk proposal is about part of the work carried out in the context of the EU project MediaMixer. This
project aim was to promote adoption of semantic technologies by the media industry. The proposal was
based on a workflow enhanced by semantic technologies, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. MediaMixer project workflow enhanced with semantic technologies
The first part of the workflow is about automatic fragmentation of media assets to facilitate their reuse
and repurposing, using the Media Fragments URI specification. These fragments are then semantically
annotated during the second step of the workflow (using automatic, semiautomatic and manual
approaches). Annotations are based on semantic data and existing vocabularies and ontologies. Finally,
rights information is also attached to fragments. This information is also based on semantic technologies
and the Copyright Ontology.
The talk would focus on the last part of the workflow, more specifically on what has been achieved to
facilitate copyright management through two real application scenarios.
The first one involved NueMeta LLC, an USA-based technical development and service provider that
helps media companies design and develop digital asset management and royalty reporting systems, and
Sony DADC, part of the Sony Group and mainly dealing with digital music distribution.
The second scenario is about extending an existing commercial tool by NueMeta LLC to facilitate digital
distribution of music based on basic cloud-based infrastructures like Google Spreadsheets and Amazon
file storage.
SONY DADC UGC COPYRIGHT MANAGEMENT SCENARIO
UGC is content created by users and shared through platforms like YouTube. Usually, it is the mix of
content really generated by the user, like a wedding recording, combined with content owned by others,
for instance the couple’s favourite song by Adele.
To preserve rights holders rights on copyrighted pieces of content used without permission, UGC
platforms provide content identification services so owners can register their content and be warned when
it is reused. Though the first reaction might be to just block content reusing copyrighted media without
authorisation, UGC platforms have generated a new revenue stream by sharing part of the advertisement
revenue generated by content views if it is kept in the platform.
This is becoming an important revenue stream for owners of hits in UGC. However, this requires a big
mind change in media management. To foster media remixing and viral reuse of content, content owners
should move away from content protection measures like DRM that might prevent their content from
being remixed. They should, however, focus on technological measures that facilitate reuse while
tracking it and then managing copyright, not just at the end-user level but through the whole value chain
of mixes and remixes.
The application for Sony DADC features semantic technologies for copyright management based on
copyright law and thus provide the modelling tools to capture copyright statements from sources ranging
from digital operations to talent contracts. Moreover, thanks to the reasoning features these technologies
provide, these semantic models can be then used to support intelligent decision support at the scale of a
media repository and its associated copyright statements.
For instance, it is possible to help deciding the reaction to detecting that a song by Green Day is being
reused in YouTube. Should it be monetized and streamed together with advertisements or simply
blocked? Semantic technologies allow going beyond just choosing to monetize based on the limited
information available at the digital operations stage. The objective is to avoid the legal troubles that might
arise from ignoring, at that particular decision point, the fact that the talent contract with Green Day states
“we do not want our creations mixed with war images”. More details are available from a publicly
available demo1, which is not based on real data but illustrates the developed application.
DIYSTRIBUTION DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION TOOL SCENARIO
The DIYstribution tool, developed by NueMeta LLC, is a commercial tool that targets small to medium
size content suppliers, and even individuals. The tool constitutes a really affordable option for digitally
distributing the media this small players supply. The tool main component is a workflow building and
execution application that collects all the metadata about the contents to be distributed from Google
Spreadsheets and distributes the actual content among different storage solutions like Google Drive,
Amazon S3 or FTP/S services.
The existing workflow execution component is being extended using semantic technologies to make it
capable of dealing with a wider range of sources of information about the copyright status of the content
being distributed. Currently, the component generates metadata based on DDEX, the music industry
standard for digital data exchange and uses it to drive its operations. As a result of the integration of
semantic technologies, DDEX data is first mapped to semantic data based on the Copyright Ontology.
Then, it becomes easier to integrate it with other sources of information about copyright and to develop
more sophisticate decision support scenarios that benefit from the copyright domain knowledge captured
by the ontology.
This is currently work in progress and much more will be possible to report and demo by the time of the
presentation.
1
MediaMixer UGC Copyright Management Demo, http://rhizomik.net/mediamixer