ARDITO has a clear objective:

Fill the gap in the digital content value network (CVN) and connect online contents to rights information, by building a complementary digital rights data network (RDN).

Did you know that 85% of all actors in the creative industries sector are small and medium sized businesses (SMEs), many of which are employing fewer than ten people?

​

What do we do?

We are developing tools and market-driven services to support creators and Small and Medium-Sized businesses (SMEs) in the creative content sector, to find new business ideas through monetising the re-use of their content.

​

How do we do it?

We want to implement more fully existing components of a Rights Data Network (RDN) through optimising a range of content identification technologies and integrating them into the Copyright Hub ecosystem.

​

Background to the project

Over the past 20 years there has been an unprecedented explosion in the volume and types of digital creative content: from eBooks, music streaming and games, to online news and entertainment hubs and video-on-demand platforms. Everything is digital today throughout this extraordinary ‘value network’ from the production process, the products, the supply chains, through to the way in which digital products and services are made available to end users.

 

However there is a dark lacuna when it comes to the digital ‘rights data network’ to support the value chain. Everything is digital when it comes to creative content, but not the actual functioning of the rights supply chains needed to power, and enable such re-use. When users wish to re-use content, it is very hard to find information on who to ask for permission, which licenses are available, and on which terms and conditions.

​

This is where the ARDITO project comes into play. The vision of the project is that any user should be able easily to access such rights information. To fulfil this objective, we need a Rights Data Network (RDN), a network of connected e-infrastructures to automate the exchange of information about rights between owners and users.

​

We do not start from scratch. The Linked Content Coalition initiative has defined the technical framework. The RDI Project has demonstrated unequivocally how such a Rights Data Network could implement the LCC framework; and the Copyright Hub has provided a first implementation of how this works in practice. The time to go live with actual services in the market place is now.

 

A group of SMEs, well established in different creative sectors (books, audiovisual and images), a research centre and the Copyright Hub Foundation got together to promote the ARDITO idea to accelerate the development of the Rights Data Network, through
 

• Optimising a range of content identification technologies (watermarks, content recognition, DOIs) for use in the RDN,

• Integrating them into the Copyright Hub ecosystem, and

• Developing new services, ready to bring to the market.
   

These services are varied but share the same vision: to be an access point to the Rights Data Network across different content types, offered to different markets while supporting and growing the SME sector.

​

The ARDITO project has a total duration of 18 months, and kicked off in February 2017. The project is structured into five work packages with clear deliverables (details can be found on our website):

 

WP1: Project management and coordination
WP2: Identification technologies
WP3: Integration, interoperability and use cases
WP4: Outreach and clusters
WP5: Dissemination

​