The objective of this chapter is to organize and structure the knowledge acquired during the specification. As it has been presented in the previous chapter, the copyright domain is a very complex one and conceptualising it is a very challenging task. In order to facilitate this, the conceptualisation process has been divided in three parts. Each part concentrates on a portion of the problem and tries to build a conceptual model for just that part.
However, each part is not independent from the rest, there are many interrelations among the parts. The conceptualisation starts from building a model for the more primitive part, the Creation Model. This model is the basis for building the conceptual models of the rest of the parts. The following step is to build the Rights Model, and then the Action Model is built on the roots of the two previous ones.
These three models constitute the conceptualisation for the fundamental part of the copyright domain. They are the basis for the contributed copyright ontology.
The core concepts of the ontology are those that formalise the notion of creation. Creation can be viewed from three points of view, which constitute the main points of view in almost any ontological approach. For more details see the Upper Ontologies section:
As we can see in Figure, these three points of view on creation can be then detailed into the different forms a creation can take. These copyright specific concepts are related through the different actions that can be performed on creations and produce new creation forms from previous ones. We will detail them when we build the action model. However, we are going to give some direct relations between creation forms together with the forms definitions. These direct relations are established by the commented actions and they just summarise the result of their application. For instance, there is the isDerivationOf relation between works, which results from a Derive action.
The concrete concepts in the creation model are detailed next.
A Work is a distinct intellectual or artistic creation. It is original in the sense that it is not a copy of a previous work, as it is explained in the Originality section. Therefore, although a work is original, it might by a derivation of a previous work, i.e. it is a derived work. In other words, a work is recognised as the socially shared concept that captures the characteristics that allow the identification of the original creation among all its manifestations.
There are some internationally recognised identification schemes for works:
Work relations are detailed in Table.
| Name | Domain | Range | Cardinality | Properties | Inverse |
| hasDerivation | Work | Work | 0..N | Transitive | isDerivationOf |
| isDerivationOf | Work | Work | 0..N | Transitive | hasDerivation |
Examples of works are: "Mozart's The Magic Flute", "Victor Hugo's Les Misérables", etc.
A Manifestation is the materialisation of a work in a concrete medium, i.e. a tangible or digital object.
There are some internationally recognised identification schemes for manifestations:
Manifestation relations are detailed in Table.
| Name | Domain | Range | Cardinality | Properties | Inverse |
| isManifestationOf | Manifestation | Work | 1 | Functional | hasManifestation |
| hasManifestation | Work | Manifestation | 0..N | Inverse functional | isManifestationOf |
Examples of manifestations are: "the printed scores of The Magic Flute", "the editions of Les Misérables", etc.
A Performance is the expression in time of a work. Performers or technical methods might be involved in the process. In some cases there might not be any previous manifestation of the work, an Improvisation. Copyright just regulates the performances and improvisations done before and audience, i.e. public performances.
Performance relations are detailed in Table.
| Name | Domain | Range | Cardinality | Properties | Inverse |
| isPerformanceOf | Performance | Manifestation | 1 | Functional | hasPerformance |
| hasPerformance | Manifestation | Performance | 0..N | Inverse functional | isPerformanceOf |
Improvisation relations are detailed in Table.
| Name | Domain | Range | Cardinality | Properties | Inverse |
| isImprovisationOf | Performance | Work | 1 | Functional | hasImprovisation |
| hasImprovisation | Work | Performance | 0..N | Inverse functional | isImprovisationOf |
Examples of performances are: "a scenic play of The Magic Flute opera", "a screen play of any of Les Misérables films", etc.
It is the materialisation of a performance in a concrete medium, a tangible or digital object.
There are some internationally recognised identification schemes for fixations:
Fixation relations are detailed in Table.
| Name | Domain | Range | Cardinality | Properties | Inverse |
| isFixationOf | Fixation | Performance | 1 | Functional | hasFixation |
| hasFixation | Performance | Fixation | 0..N | Inverse functional | isFixationOf |
Examples of fixations are: "a sound recording of The Magic Flute opera", "any motion picture of Les Misérables", etc.
It is the reproduction, or copy, of a manifestation, a fixation or another instance, an object.
There are some internationally recognised identification schemes for instances:
Instance relations are detailed in Table.
| Name | Domain | Range | Cardinality | Properties | Inverse |
| isInstanceOf | Instance | Manifestation or Fixation |
1 | Functional | hasInstance |
| hasInstance | Manifestation or Fixation |
Instance | 0..N | Inverse functional | isInstanceOf |
Examples of instances are: "a CD of The Magic Flute", "a DVD of Les Misérables", etc.
A Communication is 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 broadcasts, i.e. one to many, but also communications from a place and at a time individually chosen. The Communication can be the transmission of a previous Fixation, i.e. a RecordedCommunication, or the live transmission of a Performance, i.e. a LiveCommunication.
The relations that are specific to RecordedCommunication are detailed in Table.
RecordedCommunication relations
| Name | Domain | Range | Cardinality | Properties | Inverse |
| isCommunicationOf | RecordedCommunication | Fixation | 1 | Functional | hasCommunication |
| hasCommunication | Fixation | RecordedCommunication | 0..N | Inverse functional | isCommunicationOf |
Those specific to LiveCommunication are detailed in Table.
| Name | Domain | Range | Cardinality | Properties | Inverse |
| isCommunicationOf | LifeCommunication | Performance | 1 | Functional | hasRetransmission |
| hasCommunication | Performance | LifeCommunication | 0..N | Inverse functional | isRetransmissionOf |
Examples of communications are: "a radio broadcast of a sound recording of The Magic Flute", "an Internet streaming of the film Les Misérables", etc.
For instance, if we consider the creation "Les Misérables", we can observe it from these three perspectives taking different forms. From the Object view, we can see the original manuscript by Victor Hugo as a Manifestation; there are other manifestations of posterior adaptations, like a script for a film or theatre representation. Then, there is the Fixation of the film and Instances like a DVD copy of the film fixation or a book reproducing a manifestation. From the Process perspective, the theatre representation or the film projection in a cinema are Performances. Its broadcasting is a Communication. All the previous have in common what is socially identified as the Victor Hugo's Work. This is from the abstract perspective and it represents what we grasp as common in the different manifestations, performances, fixations and instances, i.e. what allows us saying that they are from the same Work.
The creation types that compose the INDECS creation model [Rust00]. Their interrelations are detailed in Figure:
In the MPEG-21 document vision document [ISO04], the creation model is defined by:
The RDD specification [ISO04b] defines the following terms, and it is shown in Figure:
From the legal point of view, the WIPO recommendations have been followed and the copyright notions it defines at the international level have been incorporated into our ontological framework. Figure shows the included rights hierarchy starting from Copyright. There are the economic rights plus the moral rights, as promoted by the WIPO, and the copyright related rights.
The more important rights in the DRM context are the economic rights as they are related to productive and commercial aspects of copyright. Each of these rights regulates an abstract set of actions:
These rights are conceded to the author or promoter of the creation by the mere action of bringing the work into existence. From this initial situation, it is possible to transfer, or at least license, the economic rights to third parties. This is combined with the act of consumption of end-users and motivates value chains to arise.
On the other hand, moral rights are always held by the creator and cannot be commercially exploited. They are not present in all legal systems. However, WIPO treaties are promoting some of them in order to improve worldwide copyright law harmonisation:
Finally, there are the rights of other persons also involved in the exploitation of works. Performers, producers and broadcasters make a significant contribution in order to make works reach end-users. Their contribution is also protected by some rights related to copyright, the Related Rights or Neighbouring Rights:
End-users do not hold any right. They just consume creations, i.e. they use them, and uses are not covered by copyright. However, this does not mean that end users can do whatever they want, they should not realise actions that require copyright. Moreover, they might be subject to special conditions under which they have acquired the permission to use a creation, e.g. a film that can only be viewed a fixed number of times and thus is cheaper than a DVD reproduction. This kind of conditions is not regulated by copyright, it is established by the usage agreements among end-users and content providers. This kind of agreements is the kind of expressions captured by common rights expression languages as it is explained in the DRM and the Law section. On the other hand, the contributed copyright ontology is general enough to be able to model copyright related actions and also end-users actions like those established in content provision agreements.
However, there are some aspects of end-users activity that are regulated by copyright. End-users have some special permissions that grant them the possibility to perform some actions otherwise forbidden by copyright, although this does not mean that the user must pay a compensation if they are exercises, e.g. levies on digital recording equipment and media. These exceptions to copyright should be considered as end-user privileges and not rights. However, some of them are referred to as rights, e.g. the right to quote. Moreover, they are modelled as rights in this conceptualisation in order to build a more homogeneous model as it is explained in the Action Model section. The end-users rights are:
As it has been already shown, the ontological framework considers creation in its different forms and copyright rights. Trying to go to the more primitive elements in this framework, we can see that rights define actions packages that they regulate. Moreover, the different forms a creation can take are organised in a creation life cycle that is performed by these same actions, at least in the part that is governed by copyright. Figure situates these actions in the creation life cycle.
First of all, two actions that take original creations into existence can be identified:
These actions are generalisations of the kinds of actions governed by the different copyright economic rights:
There are also generic actions for the other copyright rights. For the related rights the actions are the same than for the economic rights, as the rights of performers, producers and broadcasters are also economic rights limited to their contributions. For the moral rights there are:
Finally there are the actions performed by end-users that are subject to copyright exceptions and have been modelled as rights. All these actions are specific kinds of the actions governed by the economic rights that exceptionally are not subject to them:
From this life cycle many value chains can be built but, in order to do that, we must also consider the Transfer and Use actions. The former is the basic action to model the flux of rights through the value chain, even if it is a real transfer or a temporary one, i.e. a license. The latter models any kind of consumption of a creation in one of its object or process forms.
The end-user consumption actions can be referred to generically using the generic use action. However, some specialisations are given below depending on the kind of creation form they consume. It can be seen that creations that are objects are generically bought (or rented or lent) and those that are processes are generically accessed:
Finally, in order to complete the action model, we have also included negotiation actions: Offer, Agree and Counteroffer. These actions are necessary to construct the value chains. They can model the negotiation processes necessary in order to achieve the agreements that finally establish the value-chain shape. The agreements include transfers of rights but also usage licenses for actions governed by copyrights or not, i.e. end-user creations consumption actions.
The previously introduced pool of primitive actions can be combined in order to build different value chains in the copyright domain. Figure shows how we can build a model for the value chain of serials adapted from literary works. The ovals represent the different roles involved, which perform the actions they are linked to.
First of all, the creator adapts the original literary work, e.g. Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo", in order to produce a serial. The resulting adaptation is realised as a script that is performed by some actors, e.g. Gerard Depardieu, and recorded into a motion picture. This motion picture is finally broadcasted to users who can tune the resulting communication. This is just the skeleton of the value chain. In order to give a more detailed model each step in the value chain can be modelled as an event for the corresponding action.
Actions are not isolated entities, they are related to a bunch of entities that take part or are affected by the action. Moreover, there are space-time coordinates that situate actions. In order to capture all these details and facilitate their modelling, they are modelled as verbs and the ontology incorporates concepts from the linguistics field related to the classification of verbs and how they are related to other linguistic components.
These relations are called thematic roles or case roles [Sowa00, Dick91] and are generically classified into initiator, resource, goal and essence. In Figure, it is shown at the top the generic case roles and at right the kinds of verbs they are related to. These kinds of verbs define verbs facets, not disjoint classes of verbs, and concretise the general thematic roles as shown in each row. Therefore, the same verb can present one or more of these facets. For instance, the play verb can show the action, temporal and spatial facets in a particular sentence.
The general case roles are:
There are 23 specific case roles:
Figure shows an example of an action modelled as a verb. In this case it is a creation action where a manifestations is realised. At the centre there is the box representing the verb. Its type is defined in bold, it is a Manifest. Case roles relate the action verb to its participants and context, they are shown as arrows from the verb to the participants. Participants are also represented by boxes. The agent participant is represented by a box containing its identifier. For theme participant, it is specified its type, it is a Work, and its identifier. The same is done for the result participant. In this case it is a Manifestation and a universal identifier for manifestations is used. Finally, the verb is contextualised in time by a pointInTime participant that specifies the concrete time at which the action took place.
As it can be noted, types are shown in bold and resource identifiers in normal text. The type is only specified when it is relevant in the context of the copyright ontology. On the other hand, identifiers are usually provided. However, there are unidentified resources when an identifier is not required, i.e. anonymous resources, or a local one might be used, i.e. there is not universal identification scheme at hand.
This kind of verb models based on the concepts and relations from the copyright ontology constitute the basic building blocks of the contributed "Rights Expression Language". The next sections give more detail about each one of the previous actions and how they can be modelled as verbs using the case roles and other concepts in the ontology. Moreover, the are axioms and rules that capture the dynamic knowledge associated to the actions. It is also important to note that, in order to perform these actions, the involved agents must hold the necessary rights or licenses. In the Implementation chapter it is shown how the copyright ontology facilitates checking this.
In the previous Figure there was an example of manifest action, i.e. when the author produces a manifestation of a work. Table details the involved case roles for the Manifest verb.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Work | 1 |
| result | Manifestation | 1 |
| pointInTime | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, Country, etc. | 1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
There are one or more agents. In the case of employed authors and works made for hire, the employer, and not the employee, is considered the author of the work and thus becomes the rights holder. That is why the range of agent is a person, natural or legal. Therefore, agent is the person considered to be the author of the work from the legal point of view. Each manifest event has, from the legal point of view, just one theme, one result and one pointInTime. It is also necessary to state a location, which will determine the legal system that will govern copyright.
If this action brings into existence the first manifestation of a work, the manifest event implies that the creator becomes the holder of all the copyright rights on the creation. Multiple creators are also allowed in order to cope with works realised in collaboration as specified in the Kinds of Works section. All this is modelled by Manifest-Rule in Table. In order to check that this is the first manifestation of the work, the rule tests if there is not a statement asserting that there is a manifestation of the work yet. All rules are written down using a common first order logic notation, which is described in the Knowledge Representation chapter.
Manifest-Rule: assign author rights
| (∀v:Manifest) ((∃mr:MoralRights)(∃er:EconomicRights) ((∀p:Person)(∀m':Manifestation)(∀w:Work)(∀m:Manifestation)(∀t:Time) (¬isManifestationOf(m',w)∧agent(v,p)∧theme(v,w)∧result(v,m)∧ pointInTime(v,t)∧location(v,l) → agent(mr,p)∧agent(er,p)∧essence(mr,w)∧essence(er,m)∧ start(mr,t)∧start(er,t)∧location(mr,l)∧location(er,l)∧isManifestationOf(m,w))) |
Figure shows the situation resulting from applying this rule due to the manifest action in Figure.
As it can be noted from the previous Figure, MoralRights and EconomicRights are also modelled as verbs, with an agent, start and essence case roles. This is so because, as it has been said in the Rights Model section, rights are modelled as a package of governed actions and they are hierarchically structured. In order to make that a given right, hold by a given party, on a given creation, from a given date, etc. packages the concrete actions that this concrete right governs, it is also modelled as a verb. As it will be shown in the Implementation chapter, this modelling decision would facilitate to check if a given concrete action is granted by a concrete right. This check would be reduced to prove that the rights subsumes, i.e. "packages" or includes, the concrete action.
Another consequence of this approach is that the generic essence case role is used to relate the right to the Manifestation or Work. The generic case role is used in order to make the right situation expression subsume concrete actions that are granted by the right in which the essence of the right can appear as the theme, i.e. the essential unchanged participant of the action, or the patient, i.e. the essential changed participant of the action. The case roles for MoralRights are detailed in Table, and those for EconomicRights in Table.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person | 1..N |
| essence | Work | 1 |
| start | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| duration | e.g. author life + 70 years | 1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, Country, etc. | 1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person | 1..N |
| essence | Manifestation | 1 |
| start | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| duration | e.g. author life + 70 years | 1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, Country, etc. | 1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
For more concrete rights, the essence is the corresponding creation form as specified in the Rights Model section.
This action directly produces a Performance from a Work without a previous Manifestation. As it has been shown in the specification, not all legal systems consider that the resulting performance is subject to copyright. Moreover, there is the additional difficulty to demonstrate authorship if there is not material evidence. Despite these limitations, the conceptual model captures improvisations. Table shows the case roles that are associated to the Improvise verb.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Work | 1 |
| result | Performance | 1 |
| pointInTime | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
Therefore, taking into account the related case roles, it is possible to model Improvise as shown in Figure. The required rule to associate the rights to the author of an improvisation is like the Manifest-Rule in Table but it look for Improvise instances instead of Manifest ones.
Another consequence of improvisations is that there is no universal identifier for performances and that it is very difficult to get a work identifier for the underlying work, e.g. a ISWC. For instance, in order to get a ISWC for a musical work, it is necessary to provide the score and the lyrics of the song if applicable, which are the previous manifestations of the song performance.
This correspond to the act changing a work protected by copyright in order to generate a new work. The resulting derivations are themselves works protected by copyright. Derive is thus also a rights generation action, i.e. it causes new rights to arise as a new Work is generated and materialised in its first Manifestation, which results from the Derive action.
The action is required to produce the first Manifestation of the Work in order to have legal implications. If there is not a Manifestation, the derivation takes part just in the field of ideas, which are not regulated by copyright as it has been explained in the Specification chapter. The new Work is pointed by an aim case role and the Manifestation by a result case role. Table shows all them for the Derive verb.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Work | 1 |
| aim | Work | 1 |
| result | Manifestation | 1 |
| pointInTime | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
The Derive action is then quite similar to Manifest. However, there are two Works involved. The one that is the theme of the verb was there before the Derive and serves as the source of the transformation. The aim one is new an it is derived from the previous one and this should be marked in the rights situation arising from the derivation. It is modelled by Manifest-Rule in Table.
Derive-Rule: assign author rights
| (∀v:Derive) ((∃mr:MoralRights)(∃er:EconomicRights) ((∀p:Person)(∀w:Work)(∀w':Work)(∀m:Manifestation)(∀t:Time) (w≠w')∧agent(v,p)∧theme(v,w)∧result(v,m)∧aim(v,w')∧pointInTime(v,t)∧location(v,l) → agent(mr,p)∧agent(er,p)∧essence(mr,w')∧essence(er,m)∧start(mr,t)∧start(er,t)∧ location(mr,l)∧location(er,l)∧isManifestationOf(m,w')∧isDerivationOf(w',w))) |
The previous rule generates a chain of relations that models the corresponding chain of derivations. It is important to keep this chain because from the legal point of view it is required, prior to any derivation, that the author of the derivation follows this chain in order to get the authorisations from the owner of the copyright of the original work through all derived works until the current derivation.
There are two common kinds of derivation of copyrighted works, adapt and translate.
To Translate means to express a work in a language other than that of the original version. Therefore, it is possible to just chain the language characteristic from the original Work to the new one.
To Adapt is generally understood as the modification of a Work from one type of Work to another, for example adapting a novel so as to make a motion picture, or the modification of a Work so as to make it suitable for different conditions of exploitation, for example adapting an instructional textbook originally prepared for higher education into an instructional textbook intended for students at a lower level. Therefore, Adapt is a more general kind of actions that Translate as many content characteristics can change.
This corresponds to the action of public performance. To perform a work means to recite, render, play, dance, or act it, either directly or by means of any device or process or, in the case of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to show its images in any sequence or to make the sounds accompanying it audible.
It is important to note that the performance is considered public when it takes place at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is involved. Therefore, it will not be considered public when it is performed in a strictly domestic domain.
Due to this requirement, the case roles for the perform verb include the restriction of the kind of location to PublicPlace, as it is shown in Table. Public places are a kind of places as understood in the Copyright Ontology, i.e. they include physical locations but also Internet locations like URLs. The special characteristic of this places is that they are accessible to the public.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Manifestation | 1 |
| result | Performance | 1 |
| pointInTime | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| location | PublicPlace | 1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
On the other hand, the agent case roles continues to be restricted to Person, Natural or Legal. This is due to the fact that a musician playing an instrument may be the agent of a Perform, but a film exhibition company that plays a film in one of its theatres is also the agent of a Perform. Concrete Perform events can be then modelled, as it is shown in Figure.
Generically, a work is considered fixed when it is stored on some medium in which it can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated. For example, a song is considered fixed when it is written down on paper. The paper is the medium on which the song can be perceived, reproduced and communicated.
It is not necessary that the medium be such that a human can perceive the work, as long as the work can be perceived by a machine. Thus, the song is also fixed the moment the author records it onto a cassette tape. Similarly, a computer program is fixed when stored on a computer hard drive.
From the legal point of view, the fixations that are governed are those that store performances of works. The more important kinds of fixations are sound recordings and motion pictures. Consequently, the theme of a Record is a Performance as it is shown in Table. However, it is not necessarily a public performance. For instance, it can be a studio performance, which is governed by copyright because this fixation is intended for commercial exploitation. Finally, it is necessary to assert that the Fixation isFixationOf the Performance.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Performance | 1 |
| result | Fixation | 1 |
| pointInTime | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
Record actions can be modelled using theses building blocks as shown in Figure.
This action is formally known as Reproduce. However, it is commonly referred to as Copy and this term is the one that is going to be used in the ontology in order to improve its usability. Copies have been traditionally the basic medium for Work commercialisation. They are produced from a Manifestation, from a Fixation of a Performance or from another Instance. Therefore, these are the theme of the Copy verb as it is shown in Table.
The result is an Instance that is the item employed for the physical commercialisation of works, i.e. when a physical item is used as the vehicle to make the Work arrive to its consumers. For example, the making of copies of a protected work is the act performed by a publisher who wishes to distribute copies of a text-based work to the public, whether in the form of printed copies or digital media such as CD-ROMs.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Manifestation OR Fixation OR Instance | 1 |
| result | Instance | 1 |
| pointInTime | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
Copy actions are modelled using these restrictions on the related case roles as shown in Figure.
Once Instances of a Work have been produced, they are distributed to the public. Therefore, there is a recipient of the Instance, which is the theme of the Distribute action, see Table. There is also the duration case roles, which is used to model the duration of the transfer of ownership that is implicit in the Distribute action if it is not permanent.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Instance | 1 |
| recipient | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| pointInTime | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 1 |
| duration | e.g. ISO8601 | 0..1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
Distribute actions can be modelled using theses building blocks as shown in Figure.
Moreover, Distribute is concretised into Sell, Rent and Lend. In the first case, the ownership of the corresponding physical support is transferred permanently, i.e. the distribute action is a sale. Therefore, there is not a duration case role associated to the Distribute verb.
As it has been explained in the Distribution Right section, the right of distribution is usually subject to exhaustion upon first sale or other transfer of ownership of a particular copy. This means that, there are are not Distribute actions that have a previously distributed Instance as theme. This is captured by the Distribute-Constraint in Table.
Distribute-Constraint: first sale exhaustion
|
(∀v:Sell)(∀i:Instance)(theme(v,i) → ¬(∃v':Sell)(theme(v',i)∧v≠v')) |
If the ownership transfer is temporal, the Distribute action is concretised into Rent, if there is a significant economic compensation, or Lend, if the compensation is not significant. The duration case roles specifies the temporal span of the ownership transfer. The compensation is associated to the corresponding verb using and additional case role called condition. This case role introduces something that must be satisfied in order to enable the main verb. On the other hand, the distinction between a Rent and a Lend must be determined at modelling time because to determine if a compensation should be considered significant or not lies outside of the scope of this work.
Figure shows an example of a Rent action with an associated Transfer action that serves as a compensation. In this case, it is an economic compensation because it specifies a Transfer of an amount money in a specified currency, the theme, between the recipient and the agent of the original Distribute action.
Some copyright laws include a right to control importation of copies as a means of preventing erosion of the principle of territoriality of copyright. In order to model this kind of controls, the origin case role can be specified in order to clarify the source territory of the Instance. This information can be deduced from the location where the Copy took place. Therefore, an importation control for distribution can be easily formalised.
This verb includes any communication to the public of the originals or copies of works, including wire or wireless means and "the making available to the public of works in a way that the members of the public may access the work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them". The quoted expression covers, in particular, on-demand interactive communication through the Internet. On the contrary to Perform, this action just covers all communication to the public not present at the place where the communication originates.
The required case roles in order to model this verb include result, which relates the verb to the resulting Communication, and the medium case role, which relates the communication medium to the verb. The communication medium can be used as a mean to determine the intended recipients of the communication, e.g. if the communication medium is the World Wide Web, the intended audience is the whole WWW. This is true even if there are some access control mechanism as long as the may be open for any WWW user after fulfilling the access requirements, e.g. a pre-payment is required. Another more specific communication medium might be the network of a concrete cable television operator.
However, in most cases, the communication medium in not enough in order to determine what is the intended audience of a communication. In this case, it is possible to use the recipient case role in order to specify a Collective. Collectives are special concepts that are modelled as defined or enumerated classes. More details about this issue are left to the Implementation chapter.
It is important to note that this kind of verbs have a process nature, i.e. they are not temporally associated to a point in time, like most of the previous action verbs. On the contrary, they are associated to a time span where the process takes place. This time span is associated to the verb through two case roles, start and duration.
Finally, the origin case role is used in order to specify the location from which the Communication is originated from the legal point of view. This case role is usually required when the communication crosses relevant administrative boundaries, e.g. a satellite communication between different countries. For an overview of the Communicate case roles see Table.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Fixation OR Performance |
1 |
| result | Communication | 1 |
| medium | CommunicationMedium | 1 |
| recipient | Collective | 0..1 |
| start | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| duration | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 1 |
| origin | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 0..1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
From these case roles, it is possible to model concrete Communicate actions as the one shown in Figure.
For practical uses, Communicate is too generic. Usually speaking, when communication acts are referred to, the terms used are Broadcast and MakeAvailable.
When a work is broadcasted, it is made available to a collective through a communication medium. There are two kinds of broadcasting depending on the communication medium. In the first one the medium is the air. A wireless signal is emitted into the air, which can be received by any person, within range of the signal, who possesses the equipment (radio or television receiver) necessary to convert the signal into sounds or sounds and images. In the second one the medium is a cable. A signal is diffused and only persons who possess the required equipment linked to the cables used to diffuse the signal can receive it.
Therefore, for Broadcast, the generic CommunicationMedium concept can be concretised into WireMedium and WirelessMedium. This two concepts can be then detailed further into concrete wire mediums, e.g. coaxial cable or optical fiber, or wireless mediums, e.g. GSM or Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11, and even concrete networks. On the other hand, the result case role range is concretised to BroadcastCommunication.The case roles for Broadcast are detailed in Table.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Fixation OR Performance |
1 |
| result | BroadcastCommunication | 1 |
| medium |
BroadcastMedium (wired or wireless) | 1 |
| recipient | Collective | 0..1 |
| start | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| duration | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 1 |
| origin | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 0..1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
This is a special kind of Communicate where the theme is just Performance, which is directly broadcasted without any intermediate Fixation. The only change respect to Communicate is in the theme case role, which now refers to Performance as it is shown in Table.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Performance | 1 |
| result | Communication | 1 |
| medium | CommunicationMedium | 1 |
| recipient | Collective | 0..1 |
| start | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| duration | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 1 |
| origin | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 0..1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
This is a special kind of Communicate where the theme is just Fixation, i.e a recording of a previous Performance. The only change respect to Communicate is in the theme case role, which now refers to Fixation as it is shown in Table.
Recording Communicate case roles
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Fixation | 1 |
| result | Communication | 1 |
| medium | CommunicationMedium | 1 |
| recipient | Collective | 0..1 |
| start | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| duration | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 1 |
| origin | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 0..1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
Traditionally communication actions related to the communication right were quite passive from the point of view of the communication consumer. The communicator decided when a concrete work was broadcasted and the consumers had just to the option to get or not access to the communication medium in order to consume the content. Consumers did not have any alternative to time-shift content consumption without the intervention of recording mediums.
However, communication mediums that allow user interaction have appeared, among which the Internet is the more important one nowadays. The consequence is a particular kind of communication where members of the public access works from a place and at a time individually chosen by them. This kind of communication is called to MakeAvailable in the copyright context.
The result of such a communication is then an InteractiveCommunication. Moreover, one particularity when modelling a MakeAvailable is that the duration of the process might be greater than the duration of the content that is being made available. Therefore, when a consumer accesses the content, it is not forced to get access to the time point in the content time line that corresponds to the time point from the beginning of the Communication. The consumer can then choose its own content time line. Moreover, the medium is a InteractiveMedium, which might be wired or not although at this level this distinctions are quite blur, e.g. the Internet.
Finally, there are not MakeAvailable actions that have a Performance as theme, as it is the case with live broadcasts. The theme for MakeAvailble is just restricted to Fixation. This is not possible because a Performance cannot be time-shifted and converted into an InteractiveCommunication without an intermediate Fixation. The case roles for MakeAvailable are detailed in Table.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Fixation | 1 |
| result | InteractiveCommunication | 1 |
| medium | InteractiveMedium | 0..1 |
| recipient | Collective | 0..1 |
| start | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| duration | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 1 |
| origin | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 0..1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
These are the only differences respect to Broadcast. The important difference between MakeAvailable and Broadcast arises at consumption time, when the consumer accesses a communication. More details about this aspect are given in the Usage Actions section.
These are the verbs related to the consumption of copyrighted content.
This is the action that consumes the communication of a MakeAvailable, i.e. an InteractiveCommunication. Consequently, it is an interactive action from the point of view of the consumer, who is able to determine the time line of the content. Usually, the content is consumed from its beginning and from the time point when the content is accessed. Moreover, the user is usually free to pause, resume, forward and rewind the content. However, all these issues are specific to the technological means used to make the content available, e.g. internet video on-demand streamers. It is important to note that this same features can be enjoyed with non-interactive communications but a recording system at the consumers place is then required.
The Access verb is defined by the case roles shown in Table. It is important to highlight that the theme is restricted to InteractiveCommunication, i.e. the result of a MakeAvailable communication action. On the other hand, a part from the pointInTime when the Access takes place, it is possible to define an intended duration for the Access. Finally, it is also common to enjoy interactivity at the level of the characteristics of the accessed content. For instance, the consumer can choose the resolution of a video, the audio signal bit rate encoding of a song, etc. This is specified by the manner case role that defines some ContentCharacteristics of the accessed content, which are detailed in the Domain Specific Ontologies section.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | InteractiveCommunication | 1 |
| pointInTime | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| start | e.g. ISO8601 | 0..1 |
| duration | e.g. ISO8601 | 0..1 |
| medium | InteractiveMedium | 0..1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 1 |
| manner | ContentCharacteristic e.g bit rate, resolution, etc. | 0..N |
| ... | ... | ... |
Figure shows an example of a concrete Access action.
This is the action that consumes the communication of a Broadcast. Consequently, it is a non-interactive action from the point of view of the consumer. The user just tunes the medium where the content is broadcasted from an appropriate location. The theme is thus a BroadcastCommunication. For the rest of the case roles it is like an Access, as it is shown in Table.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | BroadcastCommunication | 1 |
| start | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| duration | e.g. ISO8601 | 0..1 |
| medium |
BroadcastMedium (wired or wireless) | 1 |
| location | e.g. ISO3166, URL, etc. | 1 |
| manner | ContentCharacteristic e.g bit rate, resolution, etc. | 0..N |
| ... | ... | ... |
This is the action corresponding to the consumption of a Perform in a PublicPlace. The theme is a Performance which result from a Perform that is held in the same PublicPlace. Therefore, there is a time sharing between the Attend and the corresponding Perform. The complete case roles are detailed in Table.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Performance | 1 |
| pointInTime | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| location | PublicPlace | 1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
This action is the counterpart of the Sell action. It is not required as it just reverses the corresponding Sell. It is included here in order to clarify this point.
These are the verbs related to actions related to the commercialisation and negotiation of commercial terms of copyrighted content.
The Transfer action is a very generic one that corresponds to one of the verb patterns in the left side of the Case Roles Table. It is used to model the economic interchanges inherent to a commercial system, specially monetary transfers required as compensations for rights and usage licenses of copyrighted content. Additionally, many copyright legal framework grant the possibility to transfer any of the economic rights in addition to the possibility to license specific actions. This means that the original holder of the right transfers it to another person or entity, which becomes then the right holder. Therefore, rights can be also the theme of a Transfer.
The basic Transfer is based on the case roles shown in Table.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Thing | 1 |
| recipient | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| ... | ... | ... |
An example of Transfer is shown in Figure in the next section. This basic Transfer can be then extended with other case roles in order to model many different compensation methods, e.g. fee flat, prepay, royalties, fee per use, fee per interval, fee metered or fee per use prepay. Moreover, more than one Transfer can be used in order to model complex compensation methods.
In order to cope with content negotiation processes, the Copyright Ontology includes some negotiation specific concepts, although in a very limited way as this is not the purpose of the ontology. The negotiation process that is modelled is based on an initial Offer, followed by zero or more Counteroffers and, at the end, an eventual Agreement if the negotiation is not abandoned before.
The offer defines the concrete agent that performs the action and in some cases the experiencer as a generic class that includes the intended audience of the offer, thus the potential person that may Counteroffer and Agree on the terms of Offer. The more general range for experiencer is LegalPerson, i.e. when the intended audience is any legal person. The theme specifies what is offered, generically anything. The case roles for Offer are detailed in Table.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Thing | 1 |
| recipient | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| pointInTime | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| start | e.g. ISO8601 | 0..1 |
| duration | e.g. ISO8601 | 0..1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
Figure shows an example of a concrete Offer action together with the associated offered theme and the required condition, a Transfer .
A Counteroffer follows a previous Offer or Counteroffer. They are similar to Offer, the agent points to the counterofferer, some members of the original Offer intended audience or of the original offerers. In addition, the previous Offer or Counteroffer in the negotiation chain, i.e. the one for which the current one is a Counteroffer, is pointed by the origin case role. The case roles for Counteroffer are detailed in Table.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Thing | 1 |
| recipient | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| pointInTime | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| start | e.g. ISO8601 | 0..1 |
| duration | e.g. ISO8601 | 0..1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
An Agree signals the end of a successful negotiation process and it enables that its theme may be fulfilled, i.e. it is possible to do what is agreed. An Agree is identical to the last Counteroffer in the negotiation chain, or identical to the initial Offer if it has not been negotiated but directly accepted. The only difference is that it does not contain an experiencer case role. Instead, all the parties that hold the agreement are Agree agents. The case roles for Agree are detailed in Table.
| Case role | Range | Cardinality |
| agent | Person (Natural or Legal) | 1..N |
| theme | Thing | 1 |
| pointInTime | e.g. ISO8601 | 1 |
| ... | ... | ... |
These are the verbs related to actions governed by moral rights.
The Attribute action corresponds to the right of the author to claim authorship of one of its Works. The author is the agent and experiencer of the action and the theme is the Work. Moreover, there are some circumstances that may require that a third party attributes the Work to the Author. In this case the agent is a third party, i.e. a Person different from the author. Examples of circumstances that require third party attribution are when a Quote is performed or when it is the condition of an Agree, e.g. Creative Commons Attribution License.
Due to the integrity moral right, the author of a work can exercise a OpposeToChange action. This action allows the author to oppose to a concrete change to the Work, which is specified by a Derive action, or more concretely an Adapt or a Translate. The author is the agent and the theme is the Derive action that the author opposes to.
This act corresponds to the Manifest action. In some legal systems the author has the moral right to block that a Work gets public and therefore it cannot be manifested from the legal point of view. The author is the agent and the theme is the Work that is disclosed.
Once a Work has been manifested, in some legal systems the author has the right to retire it from the public scene. This action is performed by the Withdraw action. The author is the agent and the patient is the Work that is retired.
Certain end-user acts normally restricted by copyright may, in circumstances specified in the law, can be done without the authorization of the copyright owner. These exceptions to copyright should be considered as end-user privileges and not rights. The following actions are special cases for some of the previously defined ones. Under their special conditions, they can be performed without authorisation, i.e. an Agree that enables them. However, this does not mean that they are free, in some cases a economic compensation might be required or is implicit, e.g. there might be levies on digital recording equipment and media.
A Quote is a limited extent Copy action of a source protected Work, which is clearly mentioned so it has a condition case role that points to a Attribute action for the quotation to the author of the Work. The theme of the Quote is a piece of limited size of the quoted Work. Pieces are related to the Work through a isPartOf relation and determining that they are of limited size lies outside the scope of the Copyright Ontology.
An EducationalAct is any Copy, Communicate or Perform action that has a Educational or Research purpose as the range of its aim case role.
An Inform action is like an EducationalAct but a purpose that is Informative is its aim.
An OfficialAct is any copyright governed action that categorised this way.
This is like any other Copy action with the particularity that it has an aim case role that points to a Private purpose. The Instance resulting from the action cannot be the theme of any other economic rights action or usage action with an agent different from the one that realises the Copy or any other agent outside its family or friends groups.
A Parody action is like an EducationalAct or Inform but it has a Parody or Caricature purpose as the range of its aim case role.
It is like any other Copy action with the particularity that its aim case role has a Temporal purpose as range.
This is the action by which the Work underlying a Manifestation, Performance, Fixation, Communication or Instance is recognised. Any agent performs this action, the theme is a Manifestation, Performance, Fixation, Communication or Instance and the result is a Work.
Some concepts that are external to the copyright conceptual model have been employed so far. Some of them come from external upper ontologies and were used in order to establish the conceptual base in the Creation Model section. Other come from domain specific ontologies or have been just defined in the context of the Copyright Ontology.
To conclude, the contributed copyright ontology is enriched with general concepts for time, space, tools, parthood, etc. They are taken from upper level ontologies, which define general concepts. For the moment, we have considered some upper ontologies, detailed in the Upper Ontologies section: IEEE SUMO [Niles01], DOLCE [Gangemi02] and LRI-Core [Breuker04]. Our intention is to make general concepts from upper ontologies interchangeable and make alignment of the copyright ontology to all these top ontologies possible.
The following subsection point out some connections from the Copyright Ontology to these upper ontologies. This relations are quite rough as there might be many incompatibilities among the upper ontology concepts a given Copyright Ontology concept is mapped to.
It has been used in the Copyright Ontology as the place to hang the Work concept and defined as something that cannot exist at a particular place and time without some physical encoding or embodiment. It is similar to "Mental Concept" or "Non-agentive Social Object" in DOLCE. In the context of LRI-Core, it can be related to "Mental Concept" and, in the context of IEEE SUMO, to "Abstract".
It corresponds roughly to the class of ordinary objects and it is related in the Copyright Ontology to Manifestation, Fixation and Instance. This concept can be related to the "Physical-Endurant" concept in DOLCE, i.e. a continuant that has spatial qualities. It can be also associated to "Physical-Object" in LRI-Core and "Object" in IEEE SUMO.
It is something that happens and has temporal parts or stages. Process is used in the Copyright Ontology as the place holder to hang Performance and Communication. It can be related to the "Physical-Perdurant" concept in DOLCE, i.e. an occurrent that has spatial qualities. Moreover, it can be connected to "Physical-Process" in LRI-Core and "Process" in IEEE SUMO.
In the context of the Copyright Ontology, this concept stands for legal person. It can be related to more general concepts like "Social Agent" in DOLCE or "Agent" in IEEE SUMO.
This is a fundamental relation from the ontological point of view. It is used to specify compound works, i.e. compilations. It can be connected to the "part_of" relation in LRI-Core or to the "part-of" a-temporal parthood relation in DOLCE.
Some specific concepts that lay outside the scope of the copyright ontology have been reused from external domain ontologies. A short list of them follows. They are very specific so the Implementation chapter contains more details about how they have been connected to the implementation of the Copyright Ontology.
On the other hand, there are other concepts that are used in the previous copyright conceptual model but are very hard to reuse from other ontologies. This difficulty is due in some cases to the excessive detail of the corresponding ontologies or to the lack of ontologies for these concepts. They are just named in the context of the Copyright Ontology but no more detailed definitions are provided.
