Creative Commons

Technology Summit
2008
06
18

Digital
Copyright
Registry
Landscape

Mike
Linksvayer
Creative
Commons
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Image by *saipal · Licensed under CC BY · http://flickr.com/photos/saipal/257641202/
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 “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

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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.

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Why talk about digital copyright registries
now?

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 I AM NOT A

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Original photo by Brooke Novak · Licensed under CC BY · http://flickr.com/photos/brookenovak/337889974/
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http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=29755
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Original photo by EffervescentEva · Licensed under CC BY · http://flickr.com/photos/evaclicks/2273068693/
 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
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 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

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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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

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

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 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

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 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”)

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 The Web is “the” registry

What does your “registry” add to the web?

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 One view
● License
– http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
● Attribution
– Author: Mike Linksvayer
– Link: http://creativecommons.org

● Questions?
– ml@creativecommons.org

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Image by helmet13 · Licensed under CC BY · http://flickr.com/photos/22281745@N04/2148374633/