[open-science] Annotating Open Images with licence and authorship to prevent copyfraud

[Peter Murray-Rust]

Thanks,
It's useful to know that others are thinking this way. If I understand your
example it is to put metadata into the image where machines might detect
it. My suggestion is complementary - to make a permanent visual indication
of the licence - visual watermarking. There is nothing particular novel
(certainly not technical) but I think it needs advocacy.

The problem with metadata inside the file is that only machines can see it
and it is also fragile - easily removed either deliberately or by
copy/paste and otehr format conversions.




On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 2:13 PM, Song, Stephen <stephen.song at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Peter,
>
> On 6 August 2013 08:06, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> This is a suggestion for a very simple but effective tool/service to
>> address copyfraud (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud) in images
>> (especially, but not specifically, in STEM). I and others (e.g. Wikimedia)
>> have suffered from having  CC-BY images "copyrighted" by a third party (
>> http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2012/06/13/springergate-springer-replies/and earlier). If the images were indelibly stamped with licences and
>> authorship copyfraud would be very much harder. I suspect this would also
>> be welcomed by authors themsleves as it promotes their authorship.
>>
>> At hack4ac http://hack4ac.com/ I suggested a simple project/service to
>> add Open licence and author information into images. This was later entered
>> as a developer challenge at repository Fringe (
>> http://rfringe13.blogs.edina.ac.uk/2013/08/04/developer-challenge-the-results/). Independently Chris Gutteridge took the idea and created an ePrints
>> plugin (and did it better than my code!) - our teams both won prizes. I
>> also talked with Open publishers including Mark Hahnel (Figshare) and Brian
>> Hole and they were interested in seeing the idea developed further,
>> possibly including implementing it.
>>
>> Neither ChrisG or our team (Cesare Bellini and me) are going to take this
>> further ourselves but the response was sufficiently positive to see if
>> OKFNers are interested in seeing it happen.
>>
>> The actual code is very simple (it took me about 10 lines of Java, Chris
>> used ImageMagick I think). It writes a licence (e.g. "CC-BY") and
>> optionally an authorname into the pixels of the image (either overwriting a
>> small area or transparency/blending). Options would include writing at a
>> chosen corner / side or adding a small border (which wouldn't affect the
>> image but would be easier to remove by cropping).
>>
>> A tool could be used at many places:
>> * in the software that was used to create the image (e.g. ImageJ - a
>> FLOSS image manipulation tool for science)
>> * when the image was uploaded to a repository. Especially when done
>> before sending images to a publisher
>> * added by publishers who promote the value of Open licences
>> * retrospective addition to Open images (e.g. on CC-BY publishers sites
>> or Wikimedia). This would require the host to cooperate
>>
>> I don't know whether this is in scope for
>> http://www.meetup.com/OpenKnowledgeFoundation/London-GB/998522/tonight's Open Data maker session - I shall be there.
>>
>
> Worth having a look at Jonas Öberg's efforts in this direction at
> http://commonsmachinery.se/
>
> Cheers... Steve
>
>
>>
>> --
>> Peter Murray-Rust
>> Reader in Molecular Informatics
>> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
>> University of Cambridge
>> CB2 1EW, UK
>> +44-1223-763069
>>
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>> --
> Steve Song
> +1 902 529 0046
> http://manypossibilities.net
> http://villagetelco.org
>
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>


-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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