Media Value Chain Ontology
Abstract
The Media Value Chain Ontology (MVCO) is an ontology for formalizing the representation of the Media Value Chain. It couples naturally with the MPEG-21 multimedia framework, and its standardization as Part 19 of this ISO/IEC standard is underway (at the editing time of this document).
Although hooked on the broader framework of the MPEG-21 standard, the MVCO ontology is complete and useful on its way. The MVCO is quite a relative small ontology, (less than 60 classes and 20 properties), simple to understand and accompanied by a forthcoming
Java API.
It has been coded as an OWL Ontology.
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This section describes the status of this document at the time of its
publication. Other documents may supersede this document.
This document is a non normative document, describing the MVCO Ontology. This document cannot be considered a closed version.
The MVCO represents the Intellectual Property (IP) along the Value Chain. There are different kinds of objects of the Intellectual Property (we call them IP Entities) and different actions that are performed on them, what defines the different roles that users can play regarding these IP Entities. These elements, along the permissions to execute the actions, constitute the essence of the MVCO. The most important IP Entities, Actions and User roles are introduced here (the list is not exhaustive):
IP Entities: Work, Adaptation, Manifestation, Instance, Copy, Product
User roles: Creator, Adaptor, Instantiator, Producer, Distributor, EndUser
Actions: CreateWork, MakeAdaptation, MakeManifestation, MakeInstance, MakeCopy, Produce, Distribute, EndUserAction
The origin of any IP Value Chain necessarily consists of the creation and subsequent manifestation of the original IP Entity referred to as Work, the rights over which are exclusively of the Work's author. This original IP Entity is subject to be used to create new dependent IP Entities leading to what is referred to as a value chain. Rights for the exploitation of IP Entities can be transferred along this value chain. Examples:
| Music domain | Still image domain | Video Domain |
| Work | A song | A photo | A video |
| Manifestation | The score | A JPEG file | An AVI file |
| Instance | First Fixation (e.g. studio record) | The JPEG, possibly at a different resolution, size etc. | The video file, possibly in other format, resolution etc. |
| Product | A marketable CD | The photo in a catalogue to be sold | Distributable video |
Users, IP Entities and Actions are related as follows:
All entities subject to Intellectual Property are said to be IP Entities. The origin of an IP based value chain is the IP Entity "Work" and the end of the chain is the Product, these having as intermediate IP Entities Adaptation, Manifestation, Instance and corresponding Copies, as can be seen in Figure 1. They are defined as follows:
- Work. A creation that retains intellectual or artistic attributes independently of its Manifestations.
- Adaptation. A Work that is derived from another Work
- Manifestation. An object or event which is an expression of a Work
- Instance. An object or event which is an example of an Identified Manifestation (e.g. a File)
- Copy. A mechanical reproduction of analogue or digital representations of a given IP Entity. In the case of digital Copies the result is virtually identical while in the case of analogue Copies the results can vary considerably in quality.
- Product. A Content Item that adds value to IP Entities by including them with an appropriate Licence for the purpose of publishing.
Further specialization is given so each term can be more refined: For example, "Manifestation" can be either of an Adaptation or of a Work thus giving rise to the concepts "Adaptation-Manifestation" or "Work-Manifestation"
The concept of User, sometimes referred as Agent, includes individuals, consumers, communities, organisations, corporations, consortia, governments or any other agent acting in the Value Chain.
The relationship between a User and a particular IP Entity type is specified through the concept of Role. The actions that a User takes on a given IP Entity determine the Role of that User with respect to the IP Entity in question. Thus, any given User may take on any number of Roles within a given Value Chain.
- Creator. A User who generates a Work and makes its first Manifestation, also referred to as author.
- Adaptor. A User who produces an Adaptation.
- Instantiator. A User who produces an Instance.
- Producer. A User that makes Products.
- Distributor. A User who distributes a Product. Note: Any Service transferring Products along the value chain can be considered to be a Distributor.
- EndUser. A User in a Value-Chain who ultimately consumes content.
This set of core Roles can be extended to include further specialisations. For example, from Distributor, two specialized Roles could be distinguished: ContentAggregator who may operate in a B2B oriented model, and ContentProviders operating in a B2C oriented model. Both roles would be specializations of the generic Distributor Role and their definition would be wholly consistent with the MVCO Core model.
Actions are the process of doing something over IP Entities. Actions can be applied over the IP Entities themselves or over their representations including both analogue and digital.
The result of some Actions may imply the creation of another IP Entity (for example, a MakeAdaptation Action generates a new IP Entity of the kind Adaptation) while others do not as in the case of Render.
Each action can be exercised over only one kind of IP Entity, and it can only be performed by one Role. The User who performs an Action has to be the rights owner of the IP Entity. Further Permissions may be required by virtue of the Creator's moral rights.
The main actions are listed below:
- CreateWork. The action of creating a Work.
- MakeAdaptation. The action of making an Adaptation. (Note: Adapt and MakeAdaptation are not equivalent. The result of MakeAdaptation has an IP Entity (Adaptation) as a result, while Adapt represents a transient change of the Resource.
- MakeManifestation. The Action of making a Manifestation.
- MakeInstance. The Action of making an Instance from a Manifestation.
- MakeCopy. The Function by which Device A Stores Content in Device B, preserving the original Content in Device A. Similar to MechanicalCopy.
- Produce. The Function of making Products
- Distribute. The Right to sell, rent and lend.
- PublicCommunication. The action of publicly displaying/performing, e.g. live performance, radio, television, internet. A specialization of PublicCommunication with special interest is Broadcast (The Function that Delivers Content to a Device in a point-to-multipoint modality).
- Synchronise. Concurrent performance/display of two distinct Works or Adaptation Instances each for a different sense e.g. text and audio or video and song. Synchronization implies the simultaneous rendition of two IP Entities requiring the additional Permission of the Creator.
- EndUserAction. The Action performed by an EndUser
Transfers of Rights are represented in Permissions. A Permission relates an IP Entity with the transmitted right, the original rights owner and the new rights owner. A Permission may require the prior satisfaction of the conditions. Requirements in Permissions are expressed as Facts, which are simply defined as positive propositions with a binary truth value. A prohibition is thus expressed as the negation of a particular Fact.
Copyright exceptions. Some rights can be invoked if certain conditions are met. For example, complete quotes are allowed for scientific purposes. The MVCO Ontology provides mechanisms for specifying such copyright exceptions, although the exceptions themselves are not specified. Permissions from one User to another are not needed to invoke a CopyrightException, CopyrightExceptions are given based on the existence of the corresponding CopyrightExceptionFact.
6 MVCO at a Glance
owl:versionInfo : 0.2
rdfs:comment : MVCO. Media Value Chain Ontology, part of ISO/IEC 21000-19, issued in the 86th MPEG Meeting
Total Number of Classes: 55 (Defined: 55, Imported: 0)
Total Number of Datatype Properties: 5 (Defined: 5, Imported: 0)
Total Number of Object Properties: 15 (Defined: 15, Imported: 0)
Total Number of Annotation Properties: 2 (Defined: 2, Imported: 0)
Ontology classification: OWL DL (expressivity SIF(D))
Namespaces:
| mvco | http://purl.oclc.org/NET/mvco# |
An index of MVCO terms, by class (categories or types), by
property and by individuals. All the terms are hyperlinked to their detailed description for quick reference.
The MVCO Ontology is flexible can be used in many different ways.
The main practical feature of the ontology is its ability to manage a set of individuals representing a real scenario. For example, for an individual called Bob to Create a Work (MyWork), three individuals are created in the ontology: one for Bob, one for MyWork and one for the mere Action.
Note that the storage for the Action includes two "variables", of the Work another two "variables" and none is necessary for Bob. For Alice to create an adaptation from it, three new individuals will be required (one for Alice, one for the MyAdapt Adaptation and one for the mere fact:
However this Action will not be a legal one, unless a Permission has been created by Bob:
The Permission (an individual of the Permission class) will relate to an individual of the Action class (it is in fact a virtual Action because it has not been actually executed).
The Semantic Web foresees and encourages interoperation between different semantic models.
The MVCO Ontology can be extended as any other ontology by adding new derived terms, by adding new relations, etc.
The MVCO can also be used in conjunction with other ontologies, provided that a matching of some key terms is adequate. In this section some examples follow showing these possible alignments.
Alignment with MPEG-21 REL Rights
MPEG-21 REL defines 14 rights in its
Multimedia Extension (whose namespace prefix is usually denoted mx). An alignment of terms could be done as follows:
Alignment with Creative Commons
Creative Commons provides a RDF representation of the well known CreativeCommons licenses.
This description includes 16 classes and 10 properties, and for each of them, according to their definition a possible mapping is given here.
Alignment with the Music Ontology
The
Music Ontology (MO) is an attempt to link all the information about musical artists, albums and tracks in the Music world. From its revision 1.11 in March 2007, the MO includes the music creation workflow. The next tables show the possible equivalences regarding Users:
While the next table shows the relations about IPEntities.
Some actions can also be mapped:
