CommonsDB: A Foundation for Transparent Digital Rights Information
Funded by the European Commission, the CommonsDB initiative is building a prototype registry of Public Domain and openly licensed works.
The copyright status of digital content shared online is often unclear, hindering its reuse. To address this issue, the CommonsDB initiative, funded by the European Commission, is building a prototype registry of Public Domain and openly licensed works. To enhance legal certainty for digital content reuse, the registry will employ decentralized identifiers for consistent content and rights recognition. Today, Paul Keller (Open Future) and Sebastian Posth (Liccium) share their thoughts on CommonsDB's rationale and purpose.
What problem does CommonsDB aim to solve?
Paul: Today, when digital content is shared online, it is often unclear who owns the rights, whether it is in the Public Domain or openly licensed. This poses significant challenges for legal content usage. Crucial metadata, including copyright status, is frequently lost when content is copied, shared, or modified. CommonsDB addresses this by embedding rights information within the content itself, ensuring its accessibility regardless of distribution.
How does CommonsDB ensure that rights information stays attached to digital content?
Sebastian: CommonsDB follows a three-step process. First, the system generates a content-derived identifier directly from the digital file itself. Second, rights information, such as copyright status or license type, is linked to this identifier. Third, the identifier and its associated rights information are registered in a publicly accessible database, enabling anyone to retrieve this information with only the file and its identifier. In fact, someone who finds the file without any associated rights information can re-generate the ISCC code and based on that retrieve the rights information.
That sounds like magic, how does it work?
Sebastian: CommonsDB uses the International Standard Content Code (ISCC) as its identifier. ISCC is a content-derived, decentralized content identifier and novel ISO standard (ISO 24138). It enables the system to uniquely and consistently recognise digital content across different formats, even if minor modifications occur. This means that two users with the same file can generate the same ISCC independently. It also allows for the detection of similar or slightly modified versions of a file and does not rely on a central authority to assign or verify it. Binding rights metadata to the ISCC ensures that this information remains attached to content even as it moves across the internet.
What role does the federated registry play in CommonsDB?
Sebastian: Instead of creating a single, centralized database, CommonsDB is designed as a federated registry of metadata records. This means multiple institutions can run their own registries while remaining interoperable. Public institutions, content platforms, or rights organizations can participate without relying on a single entity to store all the data. Content users and platforms can reliably and verifiably look up rights information connected to the ISCC codes. The federated approach ensures greater transparency and reduces reliance on a single organization to maintain the digital infrastructure and copyright management.
What are some additional use cases for this technology?
Paul: CommonsDB has several potential applications beyond identifying Public Domain and openly licensed works. The same technical approach can be used to register any kind of information related to digital files. One possible use case is to use the registry to record information related to AI training. With growing concerns about AI models using copyrighted content without permission from creators and other rights holders, the same approach could be used to build a public opt-out registry where creators declare their work off-limits for AI training. This is something we will explore with rights holders and AI model developers in one of the use cases that are part of this project.
Another use case is connecting the registry we are building to user-generated content platforms. Platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Facebook all use automated content recognition tools to filter out uploads that infringe copyright. But they are also required under EU law to ensure that non-infringing content is not blocked by these systems. To do this, these platforms have internal registries that allow them to identify works that are in the Public Domain. As part of this project, we want to see if it is possible to connect the registry we are building to these internal databases. This would make the information about Public Domain works held by these platforms more widely available.
It was this very idea that led us to develop CommonsDB (Editor's note: see this 2021 white paper by Paul Keller and Felix Reda) and inspired the European Parliament and the European Commission to provide funding for our project.
Ultimately, we hope to demonstrate that CommonsDB, by providing an open and interoperable registry system, can lay the foundation for more transparent rights information in the digital world.
When can we see and test CommonsDB?
Paul: We hope to have a first version with core functionality operational by the summer of this year. If you want to be among the first to know when we have a working prototype available, please subscribe to our newsletter.