Presentation for the special session "Lightweight rights modeling and linked data publication for online cultural heritage - DCMI2018" at the DCMI2018 conference. http://dublincore.org/conference/2018/abstracts/#a2

1. Lightweight rights modeling and linked data
publication for online cultural heritage
DCMI Conference 2018
Antoine Isaac, Mark Matienzo, Michael Steidl
With slides from Emily Gore, Julia Fallon, Karen Estlund,
Richard Urban

2. Agenda (roughly)
10:30 - 11:00 The need for standards for interoperable rights about digital material online
Going under the hood: lightweight modeling and publication of
rights expressions
11:00 - 11:30 coffee break
11:30 - 12:00 Going under the hood, c'ed
Widening the scope: how does this fit with other efforts to provide
(semi-)controlled rights-related statements
12:00 - 12:30 Widening the scope: Expressing licenses by ODRL and RightsML
beyond online CH digital library assets
Steering Committee Annual Meeting 2018

3. The need for standards for
interoperable rights about
digital material online

4. Content
'A cultural heritage sector where it is
simple for everyone to understand what
they can do with the cultural heritage
work they discover'

5. RightsStatements.org provides a set of standardized rights
statements that can be used to communicate the copyright and re-
use status of digital objects to the public, making it easier to share
content.
Our rights statements are supported by major aggregation platforms
such as the Digital Public Library of America and Europeana. The
rights statements have been designed with both human users and
machine users (such as search engines) in mind and make use of
semantic web technology.
Rightsstatements.org in a nutshell

6. Content

7. Organization in 2018
Consortium members
Statements
Working Group
Technical
Working
Group
Experts from
the community

8. Why is this needed?
Cultural Heritage aggregation projects have huge problems to identify
communicate rights and conditions for re-use
In 2014, for 8.1M records, DPLA metadata had:
- 87,610 unique values in the rights metadata fields
- 12.5% records missing rights statements
In early 2017, DPLA metadata still had more words in the rights fields than
in any other field

9. Why is this needed?

10. Can I re-use it?

11. Can I re-use it?

12. Standardization efforts
https://pro.europeana.eu/resources/standardization-tools/europeana-licensing-framework

13. Standardization efforts
Assessment of the problem and existing efforts:
- http://firstmonday.org/article/view/1282/1202
- http://www.loc.gov/standards/sourcelist/access-restriction.html
- https://www.niso.org/publications/niso-rp-22-2015-access-and-license-indicators
And of course Creative Commons offer a set of licenses and public domain marks
- CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, Public Domain Mark, etc.
Creative Commons licenses and Public Domain mark are not enough for CH content. A lot is still in
copyright, even though it may be somehow usable, e.g. for education or non-commercial use.

14. Scope
We do not seek to express all possible rights and licenses.
Rather, we want to provide interoperable summaries of re-use conditions - and a starting point
for users to understand and filter the material made available to them.

15. How about you?
What sort of rights/value do you have in your DL?
How clear/standard/interoperable are they?
Any other question so far?

16. Introducing 3 Categories of Rights Statements
Statements for works that are
not in copyright
Statements for works where the
copyright status is unclear
Statements for works that are in
copyright
Cf. white paper “Recommendations for Standardized International Rights Statements”

17. Rights statements for in copyright objects:
This Rights Statement indicates that the Item labeled with this Rights Statement
is in copyright
This Rights Statement indicates that the underlying work of the Item labeled
with this Rights Statement has been identified as an ‘Orphan Work’ under the
terms of the EU Orphan Works Directive.
This Rights Statement indicates that the Item labeled with this Rights Statement
has been identified as in copyright, but its rights-holder(s) either cannot be
identified or cannot be located.
This Rights Statement indicates that the Item labeled with this Rights Statement
is in copyright but that educational use is allowed without the need to obtain
additional permission.
This Rights Statement indicates that the Item labeled with this Rights Statement
is in copyright but that non-commercial use is allowed without the need to
obtain additional permission.

18. Statements for objects that are not in copyright:
This Rights Statement indicates that the Work is in the Public Domain, but the
organization that has published the Work is contractually required to allow only
non-commercial use by third parties.
This Rights Statement indicates that the underlying Work is in the Public
Domain, but that there are known restrictions imposed by laws other than
copyright and/or related rights on the use of the Item by third parties.
This Rights Statement indicates that the underlying Work is in the Public
Domain, but the organization that has published the Item is contractually
required to restrict certain forms of use by third parties.
This Rights Statement indicates that the Item is in the Public Domain under the
laws of the United States, but that a determination was not made as to its
copyright status under the copyright laws of other countries.

19. Other rights statements
This Rights Statement indicates that the data provider has not evaluated the
copyright and related rights status of the Item.
This Rights Statement indicates that the organization that has made the Item
available has reviewed the copyright and related rights status of the Item, but
was unable to determine the copyright status of the Item.
This Rights Statement indicates that the data provider believes that no
copyright or related rights are known to exist for the Item, but that a conclusive
determination could not be made.

20. Content
In 2018, 28 million digital objects labelled
through RightsStatements.org in
Europeana and DPLA

21. Progress towards adoption beyond
consortium members and their partners
Mentions of rightsstatements.org in recommendations for content publishers:
- in IIIF: https://iiif.io/api/image/2.1/#rights-and-licensing-properties
- in MARC: http://www.loc.gov/marc/mac/2018/2018-dp11.html
- In Wikimedia projects:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Get_involved/
Feedback_requests/First_licensing_consultation
Good guidelines are needed, which encourage to connect with standards for expressing rights
and re-use across the board

22. Still a long way to go
Let's have a look and assess rights for some Europeana objects
- https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/record/2048223/578356.html
- https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/record/9200283/BibliographicResource_3000061843387.html
- https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/record/9200283/BibliographicResource_3000061843270.html
Any other question so far?

23. Going under the hood:
lightweight modeling and
publication of rights
expressions

24. Technical Design Guiding Principles
● Accurately Reflect Statements
● Linked Data Best Practices
● Extensibility
● Ease of Implementation
● Interoperability and multilinguality
Cf. white paper “Requirements for the Technical Infrastructure for Standardized International Rights Statements”

25. Data Model
https://github.com/rightsstatements/data-model

26. SKOS

27. Class for Rights Statements
<InC-NC/1.0/> a dcterms:RightsStatement, skos:Concept ;
There's been a lot of discussion on statements vs licenses vs documents vs concepts
Our decision still allows quite some interoperability with other frameworks for rights
A statement about the intellectual property rights
(IPR) held in or over a Resource, a legal document
giving official permission to do something with a
resource, or a statement about access rights.
A SKOS concept can be viewed as an idea or
notion; a unit of thought.

28. Expressing Statements in Data Model
Short name of RS Name of Rights Statement (linked to statement text)
URL of Rights Statement
One sentence description of the Rights Statement. This will not be displayed as part of the Rights Statement. Intended for use in documents or on websites describing the Rights
Statements.
Text of the Rights Statement Notices:
● One or more notices related to the Rights Statement
Disclaimer regarding this being a Rights Statement and not a legally operative License summary.
Generic selection criteria for the Rights Statement. Short text that describes when this Rights Statement should be used, aimed primarily at data providers. This text will not be
displayed as parts of the Rights Statement.
Extra metadata For some statements it is possible to provide additional metadata that
triggers the display of optional information at the text of the Rights
Statement (and above the notices). If this is the case this will be noted
here. Specific behavior is indicated by keywords in bold as described by
RFC2119.

29. Expressing Statements in Data Model
skos:Concept
dcterms:RightsStatement
dcterms:description

30. Statements vs. Vocabulary
<1.0/> a skos:ConceptScheme ;
dcterms:title "RightsStatements.org Standardized International Rights
Statements"@en ;
dcterms:creator <irswg> ;
dc:identifier "rscs" ;
owl:versionInfo "1.0" .
NB: this is a point in favor of a SKOS-based model

31. Vocabulary Alignment
NB: this is a point in favor of a SKOS-based model

32. Vocabulary Re-Use

33. URI Design

34. URI Structure: http://rightsstatements.org/[...]

35. Additional Metadata
on some Statements

36. Additional Metadata

37. Website Implementation

38. Machine readable & human readable
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
HTML (language-
specific)
RDF

39. Human Readable - HTML 5 w/RDF(a)
Example:
http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-CR/1.0/
Pattern:
http://rightsstatements.org/page/$id/$version/

40. Human Readable - HTML 5 w/RDF(a)

41. Multiple Languages
http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-CR/1.0/
?language=es

42. Machine Readable - Turtle
Example:
http://rightsstatements.org/data/NoC-CR/1.0.ttl
Pattern:
http://rightsstatements.org/data/$id/$version.ttl

43. Machine Readable - JSON-LD
Example:
http://rightsstatements.org/data/NoC-CR/1.0.json
Pattern:
http://rightsstatements.org/data/$id/$version.json

44. Implementations in Object Metadata

45. Using RightsStatements Resources
Include in Record Resource Type Example
MUST Vocabulary Concept http://rightsstatements.org/
vocab/NoC-CR/1.0/
MAY Human Readable
Representation
http://rightsstatements.org/page/
NoC-CR/1.0/?
language=nl&relatedURL=http://
example.com/x

46. Object Available at DPLA
<http://dp.la/api/items/fc69709e798f9ad881cf302953ad4c83> a ore:Aggregation ;
edm:aggregatedCHO <http://dp.la/api/items/fc69709e798f9ad881cf302953ad4c83#sourceResource> ;
edm:rights <http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/> .
<http://dp.la/api/items/fc69709e798f9ad881cf302953ad4c83#sourceResource> a
dpla:SourceResource ;
dc:rights "Access to the Internet Archive's Collections is granted for scholarship and
research purposes only. Some of the content available through the Archive may be governed by
local, national, and/or international laws and regulations, and your use of such content is
solely at your own risk" ;
dc:creator "Boston Redevelopment Authority" ;
dc:title "Educational institution study" .

47. Object Available at Europeana
Statement with additional metadata
<http://data.europeana.eu/provider/9200332/BibliographicResource_3000123583360>
a ore:Aggregation ;
edm:aggregatedCHO <http://data.europeana.edu/item/9200332/
BibliographicResource_3000123583360> ;
edm:provider "The European Library"@en ;
edm:rights [
odrl:inheritFrom <http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/> ;
cc:deprecatedOn "2029-11-17" ;
odrs:copyrightStatement <http://rightssttements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?
date=2029-11-17>
] .

48. What do you think of this?
Should we have done otherwise on some points?
Do you feel like having a look to our open modeling issues? They're open for
everyone to look at :-)
Do you feel looking at other modeling frameworks first?
More details at http://rightsstatements.org/en/documentation/technical-white-paper/

49. Widening the scope: how does
this fit with other frameworks
for expressing rights (with
similar Web-based principles)

50. ccREL
Object properties
<http://lessig.org/blog/> xhtml:license <http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/>;
cc:attributionName "Lawrence Lessig" ;
cc:attributionURL <http://lessig.org/> .
License properties
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>
cc:permits cc:Reproduction ;
cc:permits cc:Distribution ;
cc:permits cc:DerivativeWorks ;
cc:requires cc:Attribution ;
cc:requires cc:ShareAlike ;
cc:requires cc:Notice .
https://www.w3.org/Submission/ccREL/

51. ODRS
https://schema.theodi.org/odrs/

52. ODRL
NB: more up-to-date (but complete) diagram at
https://www.w3.org/TR/odrl-model/

53. Rights statements vs licenses vs documents
dcterms:LicenseDocument is a subclass of dcterms:RightsStatement and thus
instances of this class will naturally fit as statements from our perspective
odrs:License is a subclass of dcterms:LicenseDocument and thus of dcterms:RightsStatement
cc:License is a subclass of dcterms:LicenseDocument
odrl:Policy does not have formal semantic relationships with abovementioned
classes, but instances of cc:License have been described as instances of odrl:Policy in the ODRL
documentation and they can appear as objects of dcterms:rights statements about assets being
licensed (which then formally makes them instances of the dcterms:RightsStatement class).

54. Recipes for re-using ODRL and ODRS for
object-level rights statements

55. What do you think of this?
Should we have done otherwise on some points?
Are we missing anything?
Do you feel like having a look to our open modeling issues? They're open for
everyone to look at :-)
More details at http://rightsstatements.org/en/documentation/technical-white-paper/

56. Widening the scope: how
does this fit with other
efforts to provide
(semi-)controlled rights-
related statements

57. Reminder: Vocabulary Alignment
NB: this is a point in favor of a SKOS-based model

58. Relevant related efforts
PREMIS
Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Q47530706
NISO: https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/access-and-license-indicators
Traditional Knowledge licenses and labels: http://localcontexts.org/tk-labels/

59. Acknowledgments
Technical Working Group (past and present):
● Plaban Kumar Bhowmik, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
● Valentine Charles (Europeana)
● Esmé Cowles (Princeton University)
● Karen Estlund (Penn State University Libraries)
● Gretchen Gueguen (DPLA)
● Antoine Isaac (Europeana)
● Tom Johnson (University of Washington Information School)
● Mark Matienzo (Stanford University Libraries)
● Patrick Peiffer (Bibliothèque Nationale de Luxembourg)
● Richard J. Urban (Corning Museum of Glass)
● Maarten Zeinstra (Kennisland)
Implementation Team:
● Felix Ostrowski
● Adrian Pohl
(graphthinking GmbH)

60. Thank you!
Antoine Isaac
antoine.isaac@europeana.eu
@antoine_isaac