Enhancing electronic contracts with semantics: the case of multimedia content distribution

Abstract

Multimedia content can be digitally distributed to end users or in B2B transactions. While B2C distribution has been extensively carried out by digital platforms governed by digital licenses, B2B multimedia content exchange has received less attention. The digital licenses for end users have been expressed either in proprietary formats or in standard Rights Expression Languages and they can be seen as the electronic replacement of distribution contracts and end user licenses. However RELs fail to replace the rest of the contracts agreed along the complete Intellectual Property value chain. To represent their corresponding electronic counterpart licenses, an schema based on the Media Value Chain Ontology is presented here. It has been conceived to deal with a broader set of parties, to handle typical clauses found in the audiovisual market contracts, and to govern every transaction performed on IP objects. Contract clauses are modelled as deontic logic propositions, and an event-based system is described to allow a DRM system the execution of the contract.