Putting CommonsDB into use

Karin Glasemann

Jan Ainali

Marc Maillard

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CC BY-SA 4.0

Wikimedia Sverige

Karin Glasemann

Meet the team

Project manager

Jan

Ainali

Community liaison

Sebastian

Berlin

Developer

Marc

Maillard

Content partnerships coordinator

• Open Future
• Liccium
• Institute for Information Law
• Wikimedia Sverige
• Europeana

Project partners

Co-funded by

the European Union

CommonsDB is co-funded by the European Union under the 2023 work programme on the financing of Pilot Projects and Preparatory Actions in the field of Communications Networks, Content and Technology.

Intro to CommonsDB

Review of currently explored use cases.

Introduction to the project and the technology.

Live demo of the registry as it looks today.

Expanding on the use cases.

Refining criteria.

Developing new ideas.

15%

5%

5%

75%

Agenda

Use cases

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Demo

Workshop

This is space

for bold ideas

If you have any questions or ideas, don’t hold them in, share them immediately.

• Strengthen links between works and rights information
• Enable anyone to access rights info directly from the source
• Help solve attribution challenges for cultural heritage institutions
• Create greater legal certainty with robust, verifiable links to declaring parties

General goals of

CommonsDB

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• Building a prototype registry to demonstrate the approach
• Target: 5+ million declarations from 5 partners by July 2026
• Publish a two-part feasibility study (May 2025 & Jan 2026)
• Develop a sustainability plan to support long-term public digital infrastructure

How are we doing this?

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• Content fingerprinting & identification: International Standard Content Code – ISCC (ISO 24138) (published with a free license before becoming an ISO standard)
• Robust binding of machine-readable metadata
• Signed declarations: Verifiable attribution using Verifiable Credentials (VCs) and Qualified Certificates
• Federated registries: Open, interoperable, verifiable registries of records (p2p technology)

Technical summary

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• >5,000,000 declarations.
• 2 data providers.
• Feasibility studies:
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Final event in September.

Current status

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Registry explorer

A human-first interface for the registry (there is also an API).

Available at:�https://registry.commonsdb.org/explorer

Screenshot by Open Future, interface by Liccium (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Use cases for CommonsDB

Primary

Enable verification of content rights status across multiple sources

Wikimedia Commons

(See next slides and Potential for the communities)

GLAM institutions

Collections rights research

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Upload help

Get help with license selection

Prevent duplicate images

Prevent uploading similar images even though they are not exactly the same

Backlog cleanup

Process all images already on Commons

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See also the introduction video.

Use cases for Wikimedians

Live

demo

Exercise time

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Etherpad: w.wiki/SUdy

When is an image “mature” enough to declare?

What are some other signals of “maturity”, making an image ready to declare?

What are some signals of “immaturity”, suggesting an image is not ready to declare?

What to do when uploading multiple images?

If we find “duplicates” in a backlog tool, what may be some possible actions the tool should suggest?

If conflicting rights statements are discovered in CommonsDB, how should the Wikimedia community be made aware?

What other possible use cases can you imagine using technology like this?

Q&A

Credits

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Karin WMSE.png Elenor Weijmar (WMSE), CC BY 4.0�Wikimedia-Summit-2024-Portrait-2 Ekvidi, CC BY-SA 4.0�Sebastian WMSE.png Elenor Weijmar (WMSE), CC BY 4.0�Marc WMSE.png Elenor Weijmar (WMSE), CC BY-SA 4.0�Flag of Europe.svg, Public domain

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Wikimania 2026 designs, Eclos Productions, CC BY-SA 4.0

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