project duration
2006 – 2009
project objectives
The P2P-FUSION project develops a new software system, Fusion, that supports audiovisual creative activities and makes it easy for anyone to create, reuse and share audio and video productions over the internet legally, without costly servers and complicated system management. Fusion binds together a peer-to-peer network, a distributed semantic database, social enrichment features, audiovisual production and editing software, support for embedded licenses and a social media application toolkit into an integrated easy-to-use solution.
The system will be developed in collaboration with user communities in a codesign process which aims to ensure that Fusion corresponds to real needs and can continue to evolve throughout the project to support the most interesting novel media practices that emerge within the communities.
Peer-to-peer networks have proven to be the most efficient and economical mechanism for large scale media sharing, but unfortunately, they have often been used without due regard to the rights of the creators. P2P-FUSION addresses this problem by including software support for better access management and embedded open content licenses, and by organizing a work process for envisioning new intellectual property solutions that would better combine the best technology with appropriate respect for the rights of both users and creators.
project partners
The project consortium includes University of Art and Design Helsinki and Helsinki Institute for Information Technology from Finland; Delft University of Technology, Sound and Vision and KnowledgeLand from the Netherlands; and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and the National Audiovisual Archive from Hungary. The project runs for three years, from June 2006 to May 2009 and releases a new version of Fusion every May. The software will be published as open source and the consortium will seek collaboration with external developers and other projects.
Fields of our participation
Work Package 3: Social Enrichment (as work package leader)
The Social Enrichment workpackage contains the research and development that builds the social processing and enrichment solutions layer for the P2P-FUSION platform.
The scientific objectives of the workpackage are
- gaining a deeper understanding of social uses of various content types as well as the collective mechanisms that enrich (rate, filter, recommend, edit, connect, comment upon, organize) audio/visual content
- gaining a deeper understanding of grass-roots digital audio/visual archives as emergent social knowledge management systems
The concrete objectives of the workpackage are
- assessing the strengths and weaknesses of social enrichment capabilities and features of already exisiting P2P applications and collaborative environments;
- reviewing and categorizing audio/visual content types that can potentially be creatively re-used by various content communities;
- functionally specifying the social enrichment features of P2P-Fusion so that they optimally serve the needs and uses of the content communities selected and researched in WP5;
- disseminate the knowledge of the project and promote the use of the open source P2P Mediaspace platform.
Work Package 5: Content Communities (as a contributing party)
Objectives
This workpackage contains the activities that take place with specific user communities. Certain user
communities have already been identified, some will be selected and formed during the project. P2P-FUSION will work with a number of content communities in order to:
- assess, trial, demonstrate and validate the use of the proposed P2P technology with real user communities to evolve new social practices
- disseminate the knowledge of the project and to promote the use of the open source P2P Mediaspace platform.
Work Package 7: Access Rights and Licensing (as a contributing party)
The Rights and Licensing workpackage deals with integrating the access right management and
licensing into the P2P-FUSION platform and dealing with rights and licensing related issues in the
project.
Objectives
- To integrate the access management and licensing into the P2P-Fusion platform
- To coordinate the resolution of rights and licensing related issues within the project
- To map and envision the scenarios of appropriate intellectual property (IP) and licensing solutions
(IP Redesign) for the future media environment
The work includes:
- study of the feasibility of combining access rights management and licensing in one
- solution
- development of a compatibility chart and machine and human readable coding system for the various “open content” licenses that will be relevant for the P2P-FUSION platform’s initial uses
- supporting the integration of the licensing features into the P2P-FUSION platform
- offering expertise in the use and potentials of open content licensing solutions
- charting and dealing with emerging licensing needs, including the consultation help to avoid developing unnecessary new licenses
- active charting of IP and licensing issues that relate to the evolution of the media environment and organization of events and processes for envisioning more useful and reasonable solutions for these issues
WP 8 – Dissemination, Exploitation and Collaboration (as a contributing party)
The Dissemination, Exploitation and Collaboration (DEC) workpackage is the main interface between the project and external collaborators, other developers, cultural institutions and the general user community.
The P2P-FUSION platform is open, extensible and available for all actors, and in order to adapt it to the widest circumstances of use, it is in the direct interest of the consortium to recruit collaborators to extend it and build on it already early on.
Our Dissemination, Exploitation and Collaboration (DEC) programme aims to
1) give information about the project,
2) promote the use of the platform,
3) encourage and aid the development of extensions (such as new P2P transports) to it, 4) aid the development of new Media Applications for new Content Communities.
The work includes :
workshops that aim to inspire and involve user communities to take advantage of audiovisual media, the archives and the platform, throughout the project’s duration
- a collaboration programme for developers who might want to extend the platform or plug in new tools for it, especially targeting and supporting the open source community
- a touring campaign promoting open culture and legal creative reuse based on the P2PFUSION platform, together with the Creative Commons international network
- support workshops for archives and other cultural institutions promoting the use and possibilities of the P2P-FUSION platform for their applications.
Project status
Closed
Project participants
Eszter Babarczy, Balázs Bodó, Gábor Vályi, Dániel Varga, Zoltán Prekropcsák, Anikó Gyenge, Ádám Németh, Szonja Kádár, Gergely Tisza, Zoltán Kacsuk.
project website
funding
P2P-FUSION is co-funded by the European Comission through the IST programme under FP6.