SDI Convergence - Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association

3. PHASE I: EUROPEAN CONTEXT AND ACTIVITIES ON USE AND REUSE OF
GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
In the first phase of the research the overall context related to the dissemination and
reuse of digital information was considered, especially in the geographic information
environment.
3.1 Digital Rights Management (DRM) and its application in the geographic context
(GeoDRM)
Digital Rights Management (DRM) focuses on the protection of digital content: the term
‘Digital’ refers to the protected resources, ‘Rights’ refers to the intellectual property
rights linked to the resources and ‘Management’ applies to defining and enforcing a
policy to respect these rights. In this way information owners and distributors can control
type of access and use of digital contents.
Geographic Digital Rights Management (GeoDRM) is the application of DRM in the
geographic field, and it provides a framework to legislate the use of geographic information.
The narrow definition of GeoDRM refers to “electronic licensing of geographic
resources to manage and protect intellectual property rights” (Vowles, 2007). In the
broad definition, GeoDRM can be taken to cover a large “spectrum of capabilities and
underlying technologies supporting description, identification, trading, protecting monitoring
and tracking of all forms of use rights for both tangible and intangible (electronic)
assets, including the management of rights-holders relationships” (OGC, 2007).
The GeoDRM application needs a set of technologies and a legal framework, where all
rights over geographic resources are specified by the information owner, while information
users obtain geo information under certified conditions by using an automated or
semi-automated implemented geolicence. Piedmont Region founded its project exactly
on this assumption.
3.2 The leading role of Geographic Rights Management in the INSPIRE context
The INSPIRE Directive recognises the importance of intellectual property rights for
public authorities, using Geo Rights Management services (GeoRM), useful to specify
electronically distribution policies. A Rights management service is a technology providing
additional functionalities to control access, under specified conditions and policies.
It represents a filter between the INSPIRE service bus and INSPIRE network services,
as described in the draft Implementing Rules for Network Services (INSPIRE,
2008).
In the INSPIRE context, a service bus is a software bus that allows the connection of
the geo-portals and their applications to other INSPIRE network services (discovery,
view, download, transformation and invoke services). RM services include three different
layers: authentication and authorisation, licensing and eCommerce. GeoRM supports
the automated transfer of legal rights to final users using electronic licences
specifying terms and conditions. The traditional method to protect static content is
copyright, using paper-based licences. The Creative Commons concept introduces
standard electronic licences for static content for reuse of their intellectual property
(Welle Donker and Van Loenen, 2006). GeoRM introduces a different way of managing
and protecting intellectual property rights, using electronic licences for dynamic content.
The regional project is going to follow this approach, to realise ‘click-licences’ for
its geographic information.
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