CommonsDB Feasibility Study: Laying the Groundwork for a Rights Registry

"Today, the first part of the CommonsDB Feasibility Study has been published, giving insights into the conceptual, legal and technical considerations for a system designed to enhance legal certainty around the reuse of digital content....

Key Findings

• Greater Confidence in Content Reuse: By providing verifiable rights information from trusted sources, CommonsDB will allow people to confidently identify and use Public Domain and openly licensed works. This will empower users to legally reuse and remix works, supporting creativity and innovation.
• Trust and Interoperability Through Open Standards: CommonsDB will ensure the authenticity of rights declarations by using International Standard Content Codes (ISCC) for decentralized content identification and Verifiable Credentials (VCs).
• More Reliable Attribution: CommonsDB will strengthen the relationship between digital assets and their associated rights information, enabling more reliable attribution for parties, such as cultural heritage institutions, that make collections available online.
• Scalability and Openness Achieved by Design: The prototype is being developed with federation as a core principle, envisioning a network of interconnected registries. All CommonsDB metadata will be public and available as open data.
• Low Risk of Copyright Infringement: In its standard operations, CommonsDB will present no significant risk of copyright infringement...."