DLN:CC Beta - Rights statement linkage

[Dave Martin]

Re Beta 1.0.3 (DB version 2.2.3) Build Apr 26 2018 15:55:31

 

Stakeholder’s rights are currently linked to a subject and I would query that.

 

A subject is, say, an artefact, and in possibly the majority of cases, there’s no copyright in the object/artefact/subject, the copyright is in the work which documents it.

 

If, say, Organisation A has a Greek sculpture on public display, and they commission a 3-D scan, and organisation ‘B’ has a photogrammetry/RTI campaign, and organisation ‘C’ takes a series of close-up images to document some specific details. Organisation A is linked to the subject as, say, its curator – but has no automatic rights to any representations of it. Organisation ‘A’ may well, though, have rights to the 3-D scan they commissioned. Organisation ‘B’ will probably have rights to their photogrammetry/RTI, and organisation ‘C’ will probably have rights to their documentary photographs.

 

As the linkage is currently to the subject, then in the above case there may be three competing and possibly contradictory rights linkages, one from each organisation, and there would be no way to differentiate which set of images etc. was covered by which rights statements.

 

Whilst there may (more rarely?) be a rights linkage between a stakeholder and a subject or artefact, I would suggest that as the rights really apply to a set of images or similar, it would be better to allow a rights statement to be associated with, say, an acquisition project rather than with the subject – that way it avoids possibility for competing/contradictory rights claims on a subject.

Dave

[cdschroer]

Hi Dave - and thanks for the detailed notes!

Actually you can link rights to both the subject AND to the images of the subject.  I admit it isn't as clear in the interface as it should be, and we are fixing that.

The idea is that the subject may still be in copyright, and that's an important thing to know.  So subjects can have rights statements, including noting whether it is in copyright.  For our imaging work, we generally care more about the rights in the images, and we can do that too.  But even if my organization has the rights in the images, if they are images of an artwork that is in copyright, we would want to record that.

Also remember that you don't have to use all of the fields and associations that are there. So, if you don't want to note a rights statement about a subject you don't have to.  

Another important note about rights statements is that they are a high level way of noting what kind of rights are intended, but they aren't an actual license.  So for material that is in copyright, you need to be able to say who is the copyright holder, and what is the general license (if there is one)  This also lets people know where to go if they need to get a license for something different.

We were just discussing this mechanism this week, as we are planning major updates for the tools. We want to make it possible to set up the rights at the project level, so that all the imaging sets that are part of that project automatically get those rights.  Then if you need to do something different for a specific set of images for say an RTI - you could override that.  We are also looking at how to make this more clear in the interface, so you can see the rights (and other attributes) and where they are coming from.  In other words, are you getting those rights from the project, or are they local to this particular RTI (or photogrammetry) set.

And this brings me to a new concept we will be introducing: Image Bundles.  An Image Bundle is all of the images that will be processed together of the same subject (remember that a subject can be a scene, not necessarily a single object).  An Image Bundle can be a single-set image bundle, or a multi-set image bundle. That is determined based on the technology. So RTI image bundles are single set, and Photogrammetry image bundles are multi-set.  We will get rid of "groups of image sets" (it's still in the data model - but the interface will be much cleaner)  We are adding single-set image bundles for documentary image sets.

And finally - related to your prior comments, we will be adding an image set type, that is user defined.  So, if you have a Documentary photos technology type, you can create subtypes for HDR, or stratigraphy, or small finds, or whatever is useful to you in organizing and finding and labeling your image sets.  

Thank you so much for taking a deep look at the tools, and for taking the time to write up your experience, questions and suggestions.  We have been using the tools more and more, and also presenting them to others, and have run into some of the same issues. Some of them are harder to solve than others, though we feel the whole system is getting better.

Cheers!

Carla

[Dave Martin]

Hi Carla,

 

Thanks very much for all the info, especially on Rights, and on Image Bundles.

 

I’m glad to contribute a little bit back to the work CHI does; and from experience developing and leading development teams, and owning projects for deployment to users across all inhabited continents, I know how when a beta is exposed for scrutiny just merely having different pairs of eyes can raise questions, some of which are valid, others may be down to misunderstanding or differing expectation!

 

Cheers

Dave

[Dave Martin]

p.s. is there any other format for beta comments that would be better? is there a tracker you would like them submitting to?

Dave