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Table of Contents
- Motivation
- Related Work
- Copyright Ontology Creation Model
- The Rest of the Copyright Ontology
- References
The objective of this part of the Copyright Ontology is to model the different forms that a creation, the subject matter of copyright, can take along its life cycle.
The resulting model should be capable of modelling complex lifecycles like those presented in Table 1 and Table 2.
Table 1. Creation lifecycle sample: broadcast of a serial adapted from a literary work
A creator adapts the original literary work Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo”, to produce a serial. The resulting adaptation to a serial is realised as a script that is performed by some actors, including Gerard Depardieu, and recorded into a motion picture. This motion picture is finally broadcasted to users who can tune the resulting communication.
Table 2. Creation lifecycle sample: webcast of a composition recording
A composer writes down a music sheet for her new composition, which is published as sheet prints. Moreover, it is played in a studio to record a master which is later made available as a webcast.
An overview of the sample lifecycle in Table 1 is shown in Figure 1.
| Figure 1. Overview of the creation lifecycle sample in Table 1 |
And Figure 2 shows an overview of the sample lifecycle in Table 2.
| Figure 2. Overview of the creation lifecycle sample in Table 2 |
This section outlines existing attempts to model creation highlighting their limitations when trying to model complex scenarios like the one presented in Table 1.
The most referenced creation model is the one proposed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) called FRBR, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (IFLA Study Group on FRBR, 2013). This standard proposed a set of entities to model creations, which are shown in Figure 3 and detailed next:
- Work: a distinct intellectual or artistic creation. A work is an abstract entity; there is no single material object one can point to as the work. We recognise the work through individual realisations or expressions of the work, but the work itself exists only in the commonality of content between and among the various expressions of the work.
- Expression: the intellectual or artistic realisation of a Work in the form of alpha-numeric, musical, or choreographic notation, sound, image, object, movement, etc., or any combination of such forms.
- Manifestation: the physical embodiment of an Expression of a Work. It encompasses a wide range of materials, including manuscripts, books, periodicals, maps, posters, sound recordings, films, video recordings, CD-ROMs, multimedia kits, etc. It represents all the physical objects that bear the same characteristics, in respect to both intellectual content and physical form.
- Item: a single exemplar of a Manifestation that enables us to identify individual copies of a Manifestation separately.
| Figure 3. FRBR Creation Model |
The literary work introduced in Table 1 can be modelled using FRBR Work. Its adaptation to a serial is another FRBR Work, though there is no way in FRBR to represent a work as an adaptation of another one.
Then, the script corresponds to an FRBR Expression. However, the performance of the script by the actors is not an FRBR Manifestation because it is not a physical embodiment. In any case, it might be represented as another FRBR Expression though it is no mechanism in FRBR to relate two expressions. Consequently, there is no distinction between scripts and their performances and it is not possible to model that a particular performance depends on a specific script.
The performance recording into a motion picture can be modelled using FRBR Manifestation though its broadcast is not an FRBR Item. In any case, someone recording the broadcast might produce an FRBR Item.
Consequently, FRBR is not suitable to model complex value chains like the one in Table 1. The problem is that complex value chains seem to be the tendency as new ways to generate and distribute content proliferate. It is understandable that FRBR does not make these particular distinctions as it was originally intended as a conceptual model for bibliographic records. However, most of the available creation models are based on the FRBR model and inherit these limitations, as detailed in the next subsections.
Another relevant proposal, associated with current initiatives like the Copyright Hub or the Rights Data Integration project, is the Linked Content Coalition (LCC) Rights Reference Model (RRM) (Rust, 2013). It defines the concept Creation that is then particularised into:
- Work: A Creation which is a distinct, abstract Creation of the mind whose existence is revealed through one or more Manifestations.
- Manifestation: A perceivable Creation.
Moreover, LCC's RRM defines a link between two creations that indicates that one is an adaptation of the other.
Consequently, it is possible to model the literary work and its serial adaptation as LCC Works. Then, LCC Manifestation can model the script. However, no further concepts are provided to get into more in-depth detail when modelling the rest of the creation value chain. The only possibility is to model all (performance, motion picture and broadcast) as LCC Manifestation and thus no distinctions can be made.
A more detailed formalisation is the one provided by the ISO/IEC standard MPEG-21. One of the parts of this standard, concretely part 19, focuses on modelling media value chains using an ontology, the MPEG-21 Media Value Chain Ontology (MVCO) (Gauvin et al., 2010, Delgado & Rodriguez-Doncel, 2009).
The ontology formalises the following concepts, also shown in Figure 4:
- Work: A creation that retains intellectual or artistic attributes independently of its Manifestations.
- Adaptation: A Work that is derived from another Work.
- Manifestation: An object or event which is an expression of a Work
- Instance: An object or event which is an example of an Identified Manifestation (e.g. a File)
- Copy: A mechanical reproduction of analogue or digital representations of a given IP Entity. In the case of digital Copies, the result is virtually identical while in the case of analogue Copies the results can vary considerably in quality.
| Figure 4. MVCO Ontology Creation Model |
Though the model is more detailed than the previous ones, its expressivity is also limited in the sense that it makes no distinction between manifestations as objects, like a script, and as events, like a performance. The same happens with instances as objects or as events, so there is no way to distinguish between a motion picture and its broadcast.
The Creation Model proposed by the Copyright Ontology aims to overcome the limitations highlighted in the previous subsections. To do so, the starting point is to take into account how general or upper ontologies conceptualise the world around us, which certainly limits the different forms creations can take. Most general ontologies, like SUMO (Niles & Pease, 2001) or schema.org (Guha & Brickley, 2016), agree on the following basic distinctions about what is there in the world:
-
Abstract: something that cannot exist at a particular place and time without some physical encoding or embodiment.
- Examples: SUMO's Abstract or schema.org's Intangible.
-
Object: corresponds to the class of ordinary objects and includes digital objects.
- Examples: SUMO's Object or the combination of schema.org's Person, Organization, Place and CreativeWork.
-
Process: something that happens and has temporal parts or stages.
- Examples: SUMO's Process or the combination of schema.org's Action and Event.
To facilitate the adoption of the Copyright Ontology, it is rooted in the most used general ontology in the Web: schema.org. This is a generic vocabulary founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex. All the proposed concepts for the Creation Model are subconcepts of the corresponding generic ones in schema.org:
-
schema:Intangible
- Work: is a distinct intellectual or artistic creation. It includes literary and artistic works, music, pictures and motion pictures, but also computer programs or compilations, like databases.
-
schema:CreativeWork
- Manifestation: the materialisation of a work in a concrete medium, a tangible or digital object.
- Recording: the materialisation of a performance in a concrete medium, a tangible or digital object.
- Includes Sound Recording and Audiovisual Recording.
- Instance: the reproduction, copy, of a manifestation, a recording or another instance. It might have a physical support or not, like a digital object.
-
schema:Event
- Performance: the expression in time of a work. Performers or technical methods might be involved in the process.
- Improvisation: the expression in time of a work that has not been previously materialised in a manifestation.
- Communication: the transmission of a work among places at a given time. It is a process performed when the public is not present at the place and or time where the communication originates. It includes schema:BroadcastEvent, i.e. one to many, but also schema:OnDemandEvent, communications from a place and at a time individually chosen, like Internet streaming.
- Live Communication: the direct communication of a performance without a mediating non-ephemeral recording.
- Performance: the expression in time of a work. Performers or technical methods might be involved in the process.
The previous concepts are the building blocks of the Copyright Ontology Creation Model. However, to capture creation value chains, the model should also include how these different creation forms relate.
Figure 5 presents these relationships that capture the flux from Work, towards something that can be consumed by end users, e.g. an Instance, a Communication or a Performance. Despite Recordings or Manifestations might also be consumed, e.g. a painting.
| Figure 5. Copyright Ontology Creation Model (simplified version) |
With this model, it is possible to model the value chain scenario presented in Table 1, as shown in Figure 6.
| Figure 6. Overview of the creation lifecycle sample in Table 1 |
Or to model the value chain scenario presented in Table 2, as shown in Figure 7.
| Figure 7. Overview of the creation lifecycle sample in Table 2 |
In case of requiring an even higher level of detail, the whole set of Creation Model concepts can be taken into consideration when defining the relationships among them, thus including Improvisation and Live Communication, as shown in Figure 8.
| Figure 8. Copyright Ontology Creation Model (full version) |
The Creation Model part of the Copyright Ontology is implemented using the Resource Description Format (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). It is available in Turtle RDF serialization format:
- Copyright Ontology Creation Model: copyrightonto-creationmodel.ttl
The ontology can be downloaded from the previous link and converted to other RDF/OWL formats using services like Anything To Triples (Any23)
There is also an ontology documentation generated from the RDF/OWL using OntoSpy:
- Copyright Ontology Creation Model: documentation
It is also possible to get an overview of the ontology using visualisation services like WebVOWL:
- Copyright Ontology Creation Model overview
The Creation Model part of the Copyright Ontology can be then used to model creation value chains like the one presented in Figure 6.
This is the serialisation of that model using Turtle:
@prefix : <http://rhizomik.net/ontologies/copyrightonto/creationmodel-sample.ttl#> .
@prefix creation: <http://rhizomik.net/ontologies/copyrightonto-creationmodel.owl#> .
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
:literary_work
rdf:type creation:Work ;
.
:serial
rdf:type creation:Work ;
creation:isDerivationOf :literary_work ;
.
:script
rdf:type creation:Manifestation ;
creation:hasPerformance :performance ;
creation:isManifestationOf :serial ;
.
:performance
rdf:type creation:Performance ;
creation:hasRecording :motion_picture ;
.
:motion_picture
rdf:type creation:AudiovisualRecording ;
creation:hasCommunication :broadcast ;
.
:broadcast
rdf:type creation:Communication ;
.And this is the same model serialized using JSON-LD:
{
"@context": {
"cro": "http://rhizomik.net/ontologies/copyrightonto#",
"sample": "http://rhizomik.net/ontologies/copyrightonto/creationmodel-sample.ttl#"
},
"@graph": [
{
"@id": "sample:literary_work",
"@type": "creation:Work"
},
{
"@id": "sample:serial",
"@type": "creation:Work",
"creation:isDerivationOf": {
"@id": "sample:literary_work"
}
},
{
"@id": "sample:script",
"@type": "creation:Manifestation",
"creation:isManifestationOf": {
"@id": "sample:serial"
},
"creation:hasPerformance": {
"@id": "sample:performance"
}
},
{
"@id": "sample:performance",
"@type": "creation:Performance",
"creation:hasRecording": {
"@id": "sample:motion_picture"
}
},
{
"@id": "sample:motion_picture",
"@type": "creation:AudiovisualRecording",
"creation:hasCommunication": {
"@id": "sample:broadcast"
}
},
{
"@id": "sample:broadcast",
"@type": "creation:Communication"
}
]
}This part of the Copyright Ontology focuses just on the different forms that creations can take along their lifecycle. The transitions among them are governed by different rights in Copyright, as detailed in the Rights Model part of the Copyright Ontology. These rights govern the actions that participants in creation value chains can perform, which are detailed in the Actions Model part of the Copyright Ontology.
Delgado, J., & Rodriguez-Doncel, V. (2009). A Media Value Chain Ontology for MPEG-21. IEEE MultiMedia, 16(4), 44–51. https://doi.org/10.1109/MMUL.2009.78
Gauvin, M, Delgado, J., Rodriguez-Doncel, V., & Choi, M. (2009). Media Value Chain Ontology. Retrieved from https://dmag.ac.upc.edu/ontologies/mvco/
Guha, R. V., Brickley, D., & Macbeth, S. (2016). Schema.org: Evolution of Structured Data on the Web. Communications of the ACM, 59(2), 44–51. https://doi.org/10.1145/2844544
Hoekstra, R., Breuker, J., Bello, M. D., & Boer, A. (2007). The LKIF Core Ontology of Basic Legal Concepts. In P. Casanovas, M. A. Biasiotti, E. Francesconi, & M. T. Sagri (Eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Legal Ontologies and Artificial Intelligence Techniques (LOAIT 2007).
IFLA Study Group on FRBR (Ed.). (2013). Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, Final Report (Reprint 2013). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Saur. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110962451
Rust, G. (2013). The LCC Rights Reference Model v1.0. Linked Content Coalition. Retrieved from http://doi.org/10.1000/284
Niles, I., & Pease, A. (2001). Towards a standard upper ontology. In C. Welty & B. Smith (Eds.), FOIS ’01: Proceedings of the international conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (pp. 2-9). New York, NY, USA: ACM Press.