WG2: Technology issues (TECH)

WG2 studies the complex relationships between technology, and more specifically information and communication technologies, and the public domain and related issues. WG2 will start its work focusing on the following sub-topics: the impact of data formats and protocols on the digital public domain; Rights Expression Languages and in general management of metadata applied to digital or digitalized works, and whether the public domain has particular needs to require a change in the approach to such management; search technologies, with a particular attention paid to semantic analysis capabilities and interface with legal ontologies; storage technologies, and more specifically massively distributed storage such as can be found in P2P systems; trust as it is expressed through the use of digital signatures and timestamps for managing repositories of digital works, particularly when such works are either in the public domain or released under "sharing" licensing frameworks; Digital Rights Management systems and the way in which digital enforcement of copyright policies interacts with the public domain; network policies and the way in which they influence access to, exchange and re-use of the public domain.