Journal of Cultural Heritage 12 (2011) 466–475 Original article Copyright and IPR management for cultural heritage digital content in peer-to-peer networks Dimitrios Tsolis a,∗ , Spyros Sioutas b , Michalis Nik Xenos c , Georgios Styliaras a a Department of Cultural Heritage Management and New Technologies, University of Western Greece, G. Seferi 1, 30100 Agrinio, Greece b Department of Informatics, Ionian University, Tsirigoti Square. 7, 49100 Corfu, Greece c Software Quality Laboratory, School of Sciences and Technology, Hellenic Open University, 12–15 Tsamadou Street, Patras 26222, Greece article info Article history: Received 23 December 2010 Accepted 28 March 2011 Available online 18 May 2011 Keywords: Copyright and IPR management Digital watermarking Peer-to-peer networks Digital images of cultural heritage Optimal key searching and retrieval abstract As a general and effective protection measure for copyright violations, which occur with the use of digital technologies including peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, copyright owners from the cultural sector often use Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems and digital watermarking techniques so as to encrypt copyright information to the cultural content. In other cases, copyright owners restrict or even block access to the digital cultural content through the Internet and the P2P infrastructure. This chapter claims that DRM and P2P can be quite complementary. Specifically, a P2P infrastructure is presented which allows broad digital cultural content exchange while on the same time supports copyright protection and management through watermarking technologies for digital images. © 2011 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved. 1. Research aims The object and the aim of the research is to shed light on the issue of how to exploit a P2P network for disseminating and pro- moting cultural heritage rather than infringing copyright and/or other rights of digital content. It is rightfully claimed that the Inter- net and the accompanying P2P applications are used mostly for downloading copyrighted digital material without permission and without restriction. The basis of the P2P architecture is powerful and combined with social networking applications could at last support a great number of people to use legally this new infras- tructure towards shelf-education, cultural awareness, e-inclusion and life-long learning. This paper proposes an infrastructure which proves that P2P networks are an efficient technology, which if prop- erly used could foster the ethical use of the Internet. 2. Experimental 2.1. Introduction Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking is supported by suitable soft- ware which enables a computer to locate a content file (text, image, video, sound, software, etc.) on another networked device and copy ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: dtsolis@upatras.gr (D. Tsolis), sioutas@ionio.gr (S. Sioutas), xenos@eap.gr (M.N. Xenos), gstyl@uoi.gr (G. Styliaras). the encoded data to its own hard drive. P2P technology often is used to reproduce and distribute copyrighted content without autho- rization of the rights owners. Except for digital music and video the P2P infrastructure is also used to make and distribute illegal copies of digital cultural content which lies under the protection of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) legislation. For this rea- son the short history of P2P technology and software has been one of constant controversy by many in the content industry. In the Cultural Heritage area, the content owners are feeling even more threatened by the broad and unregulated exchange of dig- ital content in P2P environments [1] and cultural networks. The issue is even more intense nowadays mainly because there is a continuously growing need for publicly available digital cultural content and important initiatives are aiming towards this objec- tive. Indicatively the “Google for Libraries Project” and the “Euro- pean Digital Library - Europeana” are mentioned. More specifically the Europeana initiative is planning during its Danube release to publish more than 25,000,000 digital cultural items through the Europeana web site [2]. These initiatives are motivating cultural organizations to support the actions providing digital content but at the same time raise complex issues such as the creation of efficient mechanisms for licensing and the protection and management of copyright for the digital content exchanged. The access models for these initiatives are based mainly on advanced, efficient and mul- tilingual search engines, which produce results in the form of text, image (thumbnail), video or audio in accordance with the content sources. 1296-2074/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.culher.2011.03.009