Objects: Rights Information

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Introduction

The rights information about both the physical objects and their digital representations is important to capture. For general, textual statements about rights information the model uses the LinguisticObject pattern that should be familiar. For more specific rights that can be identified individually, such as copyright, and optionally who holds those rights, there is the ability to assert them in a machine readable way.

Credit / Attribution Statement

It is important to be able to give a credit or attribution statement that should be displayed along with the object. For example, a painting that has been donated might have the requirement to state who the donor was. This is modeled as a LinguisticObject, that is classified_as aat:300026687 being the identity for "acknowledgements". The actual string is given in value.

{
  "@context": "https://linked.art/ns/v1/linked-art.json", 
  "id": "https://linked.art/example/object/59", 
  "type": "ManMadeObject", 
  "label": "Example Painting", 
  "classified_as": ["aat:300033618","aat:300133025"], 
  "referred_to_by": [
    {
      "id": "https://linked.art/example/text/23", 
      "type": "LinguisticObject", 
      "value": "Donation of Ms J. Smith; Example Organization", 
      "classified_as": ["aat:300026687"]
    }
  ]
}

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Rights Statement

For general statements about rights that have not been aligned with any other controlled vocabularies such as AAT or rightsstatements.org, the information can be provided in the same way as for a credit line. The difference is that it is classified_as aat:300055547, being the identity for general "legal concepts".

{
  "@context": "https://linked.art/ns/v1/linked-art.json", 
  "id": "https://linked.art/example/object/60", 
  "type": "ManMadeObject", 
  "label": "Example Painting", 
  "classified_as": ["aat:300033618","aat:300133025"], 
  "referred_to_by": [
    {
      "id": "https://linked.art/example/text/24", 
      "type": "LinguisticObject", 
      "value": "Copyright of this object has not yet been assessed", 
      "classified_as": ["aat:300055547"]
    }
  ]
}

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Rights Assertions

More detailed information is, however, often available and it is useful to be explicit. These patterns associate a Right that the object is subject_to, and then give more detail about the nature of that right, such as what sort of right, and who holds it.

Rightsstatements.org Assertions

There is a recent effort to standardize rights statements, described at rightsstatements.org. Twelve basic rights statements were identified and given URIs to identify them. If any of these statements apply, it is useful to use these URIs to ensure that client systems can process them the in the same way.

The object has a subject_to property, which records the particular Right. It is then classified_as the rightsstatements.org URI that's appropriate for the situation. A label can also be given to provide clarity, and to display to the user.

{
  "@context": "https://linked.art/ns/v1/linked-art.json", 
  "id": "https://linked.art/example/object/61", 
  "type": "ManMadeObject", 
  "label": "Object", 
  "classified_as": ["aat:300033618","aat:300133025"], 
  "subject_to": [
    {
      "id": "https://linked.art/example/Right/0", 
      "type": "Right", 
      "label": "No known copyright", 
      "classified_as": ["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NKC/1.0/"]
    }
  ]
}

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Copyright, unlike the above situation where there is no known copyright, is slightly more complex in that it can be held by an individual or organization. It is often important to capture who holds the copyright. Other situations are similar, such as for trademarks.

In these cases, the Right has an additional property of possessed_by, which refers to the Actor that holds the right. Actors are further described in the section about people and organizations.

{
  "@context": "https://linked.art/ns/v1/linked-art.json", 
  "id": "https://linked.art/example/object/62", 
  "type": "ManMadeObject", 
  "label": "Example Painting", 
  "classified_as": ["aat:300033618","aat:300133025"], 
  "subject_to": [
    {
      "id": "https://linked.art/example/Right/1", 
      "type": "Right", 
      "label": "Copyright of Example Painting's content", 
      "classified_as": ["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/"], 
      "possessed_by": {
        "id": "https://linked.art/example/actor/3", 
        "type": "Actor", 
        "label": "Copyright Holder"
      }
    }
  ]
}

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