When we launched this campaign, we felt that adding 18 million more works to Elog.io was a laudable goal in itself. Thanks to the generous help from Flickr, Safe Creative and Europeana, we may easily add much more than that within days of closing this campaign. We're likely talking about adding closer to 100 million more works to Elog.io.
This changes our campaign promise. While the goal of raising $6,000 remains the same, we'll be able to do more with what we get. We've included some of our use cases that we've built Elog.io with (see "What can Elog.io do?" below) and if we succeed in this campaign, we'll start working off that list to add more functionality to Elog.io.
Our campaign
There are billions of photographs on the Internet, but difficult or impossible to find any information about them. We've made Elog.io to make it easier to find information about photos. Giving people access to the provenance of a photo helps them understand who authored it, where it comes from, and makes it possible to build a range of awesome and innovative new tools (see below)!
Elog.io has a lot of promise to make the world a better place for photographers and other visual artists. - Jonathan Bailey @ Plagiarism Today
Stop and look at this photograph!
Do you know where this photo is from? Do you know who took it? This is a photo of the signing of the Geneva agreement on the settlement of the political situation around Afghanistan, taken by Eduard Pesov. If you didn't know that, chances are you'll think about the photo differently now that you do.
Knowing the context in which a photograph appear changes the meaning of it. It changes the value of it. So it's a shame that many photos don't have this information available.
What more is, even when photographers try to include this information, social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter actively or by acts of negligence, remove such information when photos are shared.
This isn't just a theoretical problem. It has practical implications too. Knowing who authored something is essential to be able to give credit to that person, something that's required by many licenses used for photos. If you want to know whether you can include a photo you've found in your blog or not, you need to be able to figure out what license applies to it. The more you know about a photo you've found, the more you can do.
We developed Elog.io to make processes like these easier. At its core, Elog.io is a database specifically suited to store provenance information about any kind of digital work. Information which can be used by anyone. We've demonstrated how this works by building two plugins (one for Firefox and one for Chrome) that uses the information in Elog.io to give information about photo you find online, including giving credit to their authors, automatically. Because knowing the author of a photo is the start of a wonderful conversation and the beginning of unraveling the full context.
http://t.co/fr7CLCouZB - a plugin that makes photo attribution easy and seamless. Life saver for editors, publishers, writers… h/t @RDBinns
Having access to the provenance of photos you find online allows you to find the source, author, and license information for that photo. It allows you to give credit, if you're required to do so, or if you want to provide attribution to the author. It allows individuals and businesses working with digital works to verify who authored something, and what the license information is. It can help people looking to find more works by the same author.
Elog.io works for any kind of media: books, photos, movies, songs. We've included some perks for photos that make them easier to find, but the technology powering Elog.io is generic. It is also completely Free and Open Source Software, allowing others to build upon the same technology to create new and amazing things.
When designing Elog.io, we went through very many use cases, to make sure that the design we came up with was able to fulfill all of them with little or no effort. Here's a list of what Elog.io could do:
Voluntary use tracking (you/your application notify Elog.io when you've used a work)
Semi-automatic use tracking (manually or automatic, our plugins take note of works that you see online that are uses of other works, and notifies Elog.io of this to make this knowledge known)
Crowd curation of metadata (improving the quality of the Elog.io data set by making it possible for the crowd to edit the information, with potential feedback loops to Wikimedia Commons, Europeana and other data sources)
Remix tracking (a variation of use tracking, but focusing on the needs of remixing communities)
Creator pingbacks (get notifications when your work is used elsewhere, or when its metadata is updated)
Create presentations (automatic credits inserted at the end of your Powerpoint or LibreOffice presentation)
License validation (verify the licenses of images in your document against Elog.io, for instance)
License traffic sign (automatically green, yellow or red light images when you copy them from the web, with a notice about the license terms)
Metadata scrubbed (a service to purposefully scrub metadata from images and the Elog.io catalog to verify that an author can not be identified that way, for people who want to avoid being connected with their works)
GLAM-visitor connection (presenting more information from a gallery, library, archive or museum about a work found online, encouraging deeper and more valuable connections between the institute and its potential visitors)
Vendor-neutral tagging of images (making it possible to make connections between people and objects featured in photos)
License chooser (make it easier to choose an open license based on what previous works you've included that might limit your choice of license)
Github for creators (version control and provenance tracking for the creative community - we actually replicated parts of the Github data model to facilitate this)
Private or public annotation of works (contribute your own metadata to a work, either publicly or privately just for you or a group you're part of)
License logging (make a persistent record that at a certain date, you used a work under a certain license, and have Elog.io keep this record for you, in case the original work license change)
Conflict resolution (record and provide ways to act when works have conflicting information, especially in cases of public domain works also being registered as copyrighted by an entity)
License & work lookup (make it possible for people or organisations that use or support openly licensed works to look them up in Elog.io to ascertain licenses, or verify that something is in the public domain)
Who am I?
I'm Jonas Öberg, a technologist, teacher, software developer, project manager, non-profit serial entrepreneur, husband and father from Sweden. While working as a regional coordinator for Creative Commons, I came to see how difficult it was for people to attribute correctly, even when they had the best intentions to do so (which isn't always the case). With the help of the Shuttleworth Foundation, I began working on a way to automate the process of attribution, building on the idea that giving people and computers access to the provenance of a work enables us to build tools that make use of that information in an intelligent way.
When we started working with Jonas, we thought it was just about automating the process of attribution, but we learned that there's more at stake here: knowing where a photograph comes and who took it is crucial to understand it. I'd never go to a museum or gallery that had no information about their exhibits! And I hope that I'll one day have that information when i browse the web too. - Helen Turvey, CEO Shuttleworth Foundation
Through that work, I realised that the attribution is the visible part of a larger issue; connecting the creators with the works that they have created, and providing context and history to works posted online. But having systems in place that support attribution, would also unravel a lot of other uses. For those viewing the works, it would give them the context to appreciate the works. It would add meaning and value, and offer ways to connect to the creator.
Just as almost anyone who has published something on the Internet, I've seen my work used and abused by others. I enjoy seeing the creative spark that one of my creations could inspire. But not giving credit takes something away. It takes away the connection between myself and my creation. It puts severe limits on how others perceive my work when they see it online. When they can not even find who authored the work, they're prevented from understanding the full context of it.
In this way, Elog.io is also a way to satisfy my own need: it creates the first steps towards creating the largest provenance store for digital works. It allows someone to be inspired by my work and create something new from it, safe in the knowledge that their new work will automatically link back to me, and to its source. As well as allowing someone to publish my work on their own web site or blog and have it automatically attributed and linked back to me. Persistent. Automatic.
The world according to Elog.io
Ever since we launched Elog.io, we've used community curated repositories of information. Databases where the community, not only the authors, have come together to curate information about photographs. We want to continue in this spirit, to ensure that the information in Elog.io is respected by the community, because in Elog.io is an implicit acknowledgement of respect for the creator and their wishes regarding their creations. Elog.io is saying "we know who created this, and we'll make sure this information is in Elog.io, so that we can provide consistent and accurate information about it for history."
From science to food, we all remix other people's work in order to create something new. Elog.io has the option of including information about the source of every work added. When creating a new song, it can be referenced back to the audio works in Elog.io that were used to create it, contributing to the tree of remixes. You could do this directly in Elog.io, but it'll be more powerful when it's integrated in the tools you use to create.
elog.io is a great plugin/API that makes photo attribution easy & seamless. @elog_io hope to see a wordpress integration soon ! #commons
Elog.io isn't just about photographs though, it's about media. We've purposefully built Elog.io using a standard from the W3C (the ones who build standards for the Web) that's called Media Annotation. It can cover video, audio, images, and a whole bunch of other stuff too. If you can build it, we're pretty sure that Elog.io can describe it.
How we'll use the money
We'll use the money from this campaign to get 18 million additional photographs under open licenses or in the public domain into Elog.io, and we'll provide documentation and instructions for how you and others can provide information to Elog.io. That's the only thing we'll promise. If we stretch beyond our goal, we'll put all of those resources into expanding on our promise. We could do 40 millions, 100 millions, or more.
Our budget
Specifically, the costs that we have to look forward to for the period of March 2015 – June 2015 are:
Salary for one developer, $1150 per month = $4,600
IndieGoGo fees (ca 4-9% + 25 USD) = $480
Hosting fees (database server & storage), $60 per month = $240
Rewards = $680
What if shipping & rewards cost more than $680? Don't worry, we've got that covered from our own pockets. Most of the shipping costs are already pre-paid, as are a bunch of t-shirts. We estimate the additional cost of $680 to cover the rewards, but this varies up and down depending on how many contributors we have to the campaign and what rewards they select.
Credits
Video from 31c3 conference in Hamburg, 2013. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.
Video background music by Ian Alex Mac, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.
Xkcd comic by Randall Munroe, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5
The combined video by Jonas Öberg, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0.
Black and white photograph of the signing of the Geneva agreement by Eduard Pesov. From the RIA Novosti archive, image #827168. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0.
Photo of Jonas Öberg by Kristina Alexanderson. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.
Icons from participants of the Noun Project, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States. Icons used include works by David Fauveau (medal icon), Misirlou (media icon), Brennan Novak (network icon), Wilson Joseph (chart icon), Björn Andersson (lock icon), and SuperAtic LABS (puzzle icon). Public domain works from the Noun Project used include the icon of a community garden, created during an Iconathon, and the help icon by Nice and Serious.
Looking for more information?Check the project
FAQ
At the end of our campaign, we'll do a special director's cut, exclusive, Vimeo video where we'll name and thank every one who's contributed to the campaign. You won't get to star in the video, but you'll get a very noble mention in it!
0 claimed
Source code credit & thanks
$24 USD
This is your opportunity to shine, persistently! We'll put your name in the source code of Elog.io so that it will be forever known that you've contributed to it. We'll also thank you in our thank you video.
0 claimed
Thanks, bloopers & stickers
$39 USD
We want to thank you in style. Sure, we'll mention your name in the thank you video. Sure, we'll put your name in the source code. But you will also receive a unique pen & paper thank you card. Crafted with a real pen! With real ink! Real paper! We'll also get you exclusive access to our bloopers reel. There's singing, dancing, papers falling, me reading parts of True Names, and other goodies. And as if that's not enough, we'll also send you our exclusive Elog.io campaign stickers!
0 claimed
Everything & the T
$175 USD
You'll get everything included with lower rewards, plus our Elog.io Attribution Revolution campaign t-shirt. What would a project be without its very own t-shirt?
0 claimed
Your photographs in Elog.io
$750 USD
This is a special perk to get your own collections of photographs into Elog.io. With this reward, we'll give you everything from previous perks, and work with you during the months after the campaign ends to get your photographs searchable and findable through Elog.io. And when people using Elog.io stumble upon your photographs used elsewhere on the web, we'll give you a weekly or monthly email update letting you know (max 10,000 photos, service available for two years).
0 claimed
Your priority
$750 USD
NEW: If you claim this perk, we promise to put an effort into realising your favorite Elog.io feature. Depending on what you ask for, we may not be able to complete it, but we'll put it on the top of the pile!
