This document discusses the Public Domain Calculator project, which aims to determine the public domain status of creative works by country based on copyright laws. It notes that different institutions use different ontologies to represent metadata, making integration complicated. The project founders learned that knowledge representation depends on many contextual factors and is not static. They aim to grow the project by integrating with databases like Wikidata and developing new semantic technologies and "killer applications" to make the complex data more accessible and useful to end users.

1. Public Domain Calculator
Marco Montanari
Pierre Chrzanowski
Primavera DeFilippi

2. Index
• What is the Public Domain Calculator?
• What did we learn doing it?
• Where are we going with it?

3. What is PDCalc?

4. Mankind has spread its knowledge all over the world without
considering how in time technology (and lawyers) could have changed
the interactions and the use and reuse of art and content

5. Institutions are collecting Metadata in
semantic form...
And many more to come...

6. ... Everyone with its own ontology
• Europeana => custom ontology
• BNF => custom ontology (with coverage of artists’ lifes)
• CulturaItalia => Erlangen-CRM based ontology (why??)
• Smithsonian => Europeana
• OpenCultuurData => custom ontology


7. Copyright law makes everything complicated (and is complicated)

8. Every country has a different graph (very complex)

9. With very specific questions

11. All in all there are a LOT of questions

12. A graph made of graphs made
of....
Ok we need to stop. After 3 levels of abstraction it is almost impossible to manage
complexity with the tools we have now

17. What did we learn?
Let’s state even the obvious

18. Having a Hammer does not make everything
a nail
• Semantic technologies are fascinating
• They are not the panacea
• Perfect for knowledge representation
• Not perfect for operation representation
• Yet, operations are a form of knowledge
• Yet, representing operations as semantic elements is complicated
• Yet, there is an interesting task ontology
• Yet unifying the representation of something practical is complicated

19. Knowledge representation is not unique
• The representation itself depends on
• Historical moment
• Cultural background
• Complexity of the field
• Common knowledge
• Political context
• Social context
• Perceived and real relevance
• Aim of the representation

20. Knowledge representation is not final
• We need tools to easily reflect the changing knowledge
• As well as the fact that the knowledge itself changed

21. Oh, the Tools...
• Working with Semantic technologies can be
complex
• Lots of Java stuff, some Python works, something in
JavaScript
• Lots too experimental, something too enterprisey
• WE NEED MODERN KILLER APPLICATIONS!

22. Where are we going?
And which way is the future?

23. PDCalc
• Major archives are starting to get interested
• The project will grow and evolve
• We are starting to discuss the value of the information we calculate
• It is not easy, but it can be very interesting
• Integration with major SPARQL backends
• WikiData, DBPedia, ...

24. Semantic technologies
• Estabilshed as high end complex infrastructure
• Data integration in (illuminated) Public Administrations
• Where is the end user? 
• Custom tools
• Custom queries
• Custom taxonomies

25. Culture
• Semantic tech is the «technological form» of the sharing economy
• An endpoint gains value sharing its resource elements and taking shared
resource elements
• We need to decide where the Commons end and where Private data
starts
• This decision is probably the most complicated in the world

26. Need for developers  Need for tools
• DBPedia, WikiData can be the starting point
• We need to create new tools to leverage semantic data
• We need to create new tools to create new semantic data
• We need to keep our feet on the ground and remember that
Technology is just a pretext for the bigger prize

27. WE NEED KILLER APPLICATIONS

28. GigaPixel

29. StoryMap

30. WE NEED KILLER APPLICATIONS

31. Thanks
@ingmmo
marco.montanari@gmail.com
sirmmo.blogspot.com, …
sirmmo
http://it.linkedin.com/in/montanarim/
https://www.facebook.com/marco.montanari
marco.montanari