An automatic copyright clearance system for uses of multimedia instructional materials

摘要

Complex and onerous tasks often arise concerning the copyright clearance when university or junior-college faculty members decide to utilize copyrighted works in their classes, developments of multimedia instructional materials or researches. This paper describes an automatic copyright clearance system which includes databases of knowledge about copyright-related legislation, copyrighted works and intentions of copyright owners. A user enters both the purpose and the means of using a copyrighted work stored in the database. Referring to the database of knowledge about copyright-related legislation, the system decides the question whether we have to clear the copyright. If it is required to clear the copyright, the system queries the database storing intentions of the copyright owner. The user can access the copyrighted work in only the cases for which the copyright law restricts the rights or the copyright owner gives the license. Furthermore, to protect copyrights, the World Wide Web server distributes digital works including the identifications of users as digital watermarks through the secure sockets layer.