Decentralised Media Licensing
Prototype future digital media ecosystems through ownership, rights, and attribution
Workshop Creators:
Design Informatics: Frances Liddell • Billy Dixon • Chris Elsden
Workshop Overview
What To Expect
This hands-on workshop introduces the ORA (Ownership, Rights, and Attribution) framework through 11 practical activities that guide you in prototyping new models for digital media licensing. You'll explore how decentralised technologies can transform relationships between creators, users, and audiences in digital media ecosystems.
Working individually and collaboratively, you'll choose a specific media type and challenge, then develop a complete use case showing how provenance data, smart contracts, and license tokens can enable new forms of attribution, ownership, and rights management that better serve creators and users alike.
Getting Started
To begin the workshop, download the complete materials below. You'll need the slide deck to guide your session, worksheets for participant activities, and the facilitator handbook for detailed instructions.
Workshop Activities
You are now going to prototype a future version of a digital media ecosystem built upon ORA for your chosen media by:
- Defining your media and a related challenge
- Describing contexts of media creation, reuse and engagement
- Producing a 'manifest' and license tokens for your media
- Added together to develop a narrative use-case
Browse through each of the 11 activities below to explore what's covered in the workshop. Click on any activity to view a detailed overview of the steps, objectives, and downloadable worksheets.
At the bottom of this page, you'll also find guidance on adapting the workshop for your specific context and integrating it with other workshops in the playbook.
Activity 1: Choosing your Media & Challenge
Begin by selecting a specific type of digital media and identifying a related challenge or opportunity. This foundational step will guide all subsequent activities throughout the workshop.
Steps to Complete:
- Choose Your Starting Point: You can start with either the challenge or the media. The more specific the media, the better.
- Work Individually: Take 5 minutes to reflect on your choice.
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Consider Example Challenges: Some examples of 'challenges' discussed in conversations around ORA include:
- Artworks that you want to post on social media and encourage fair reuse and attribution
- Enabling more royalties and rewards to trickle-down or go to emerging artists
- Media that you want to digitise but ultimately raise income for return
- Digital media with multiple rights holders, finding the lowest common denominator for licensing that work
Tips:
- Be as specific as possible about your media type (e.g., "music album covers" rather than just "images")
- Think about real challenges you or your organization face with digital media
- Consider both creation and distribution challenges
Activity Worksheet:
Activity 2: Media Creation Context
Explore and document how your chosen media is typically created. Understanding the creation context helps identify where ORA can add value in the creative process.
Steps to Complete:
- Individual Work: Working independently for 5 minutes, place your 'media' in the centre of the canvas.
- Follow the Prompts: Complete the canvas using the provided prompts (not all prompts may be applicable to your media).
- Partner Discussion: For 5 minutes, find a partner on your table, say hello, and use the canvas to briefly introduce your media and challenge.
Consider:
- Who creates this media?
- What tools and materials are involved?
- What is the typical workflow?
- Who are the stakeholders in the creation process?
Activity Worksheet:
Activity 3: Connect to ORA: Manifest File
Define what metadata could be contained in the 'manifest' file for your media. The manifest embeds provenance data directly into the media file, creating an immutable record of its origin and creation.
Steps to Complete:
- Position Manifest Card: Working independently for 5 minutes, place a manifest card to the left of your creation canvas.
- Reflect on Creation: Consider how your media is created and complete the manifest card using relevant information from the prompts.
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Select Relevant Prompts: Choose from:
- Materials used
- GPS Coordinates
- Software required for interaction
- Title of work
- ID of software/hardware used
- Timestamp
- Date of author's death
- Filters applied
Remember:
- The manifest captures provenance—where did this media come from?
- This data cannot be easily stripped or removed from the file
- Think about what information would be valuable for future users or reusers
Activity Worksheet:
Activity 4: Connect to ORA: License Tokens
Design the license tokens that could be issued for your media. These tokens represent bespoke, highly specific rights that govern how your media can be used, remixed, or commercialized.
Steps to Complete:
- Partner Work: Working with your partner for 10 minutes, consider the licence tokens that could be issued.
- Position License Token: Place a licence token card to the right of your creation context.
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Apply Prompts as Conditions: Reflect on how your answers to the prompts could be applied as licence conditions:
- Would like to encourage more remix → 'number of remixes'
- Would like to encourage reuse but have a time restriction in place to create a buzz → 'must be used by'
- Would like to encourage engagement but embed geographical restrictions → 'only used in UK'
Key Considerations:
- License tokens are programmable and machine-readable
- They can represent very specific, bespoke licensing arrangements
- Think about both what you want to enable and what you want to restrict
- Consider how tokens might represent royalties or other forms of value exchange
Activity Worksheet:
Activity 5: Media Reuse Context
Consider how your media may be adopted and reused by others. Understanding reuse patterns helps you design license tokens that enable valuable secondary uses while protecting creator rights.
Steps to Complete:
- Individual Work: Working independently for 5 minutes, place your 'media' in the centre of the canvas.
- Follow the Prompts: Complete the canvas using the provided prompts (not all prompts may be applicable to your media).
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Think About Reuse Scenarios: Consider:
- Who might want to reuse this media?
- How might they want to transform or adapt it?
- What value could reuse create?
- What concerns exist around unauthorized reuse?
Reuse Examples:
- Remixing music tracks into new compositions
- Incorporating images into larger artworks
- Sampling video clips for educational content
- Translating or adapting written works
Activity Worksheet:
Activity 6: Connect to ORA: Acquire Licenses & Update Manifest
Model the full cycle of license acquisition, manifest updating, and new license issuance. This activity demonstrates how ORA tracks provenance through multiple generations of media creation.
Steps to Complete:
- Acquire a License: Cut out a token from the creation context licence token and place below your media.
- Partner Work: With your partner for 10 minutes, reflect on how your media is re-used.
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Update Manifest: Follow prompts to consider what could now be included in a manifest for the reused media:
- Original source attribution
- License acquired
- Modifications made
- New creation metadata
- Issue New Licenses: Consider any new licence tokens that could be issued to support subsequent reuse and engagement.
Key Concepts:
- Each reuse creates a new layer of provenance data
- The manifest tracks the complete lineage of the media
- New license tokens can build upon or modify existing licenses
- Attribution is preserved through the entire chain
Activity Worksheet:
Activity 7: Media Engagement Context
Explore how your media may ultimately be engaged with by audiences. Understanding engagement patterns helps complete the picture of value flow in your media ecosystem.
Steps to Complete:
- Individual Work: Working independently for 5 minutes, place your 'media' in the centre of the canvas.
- Follow the Prompts: Complete the canvas using the provided prompts (not all prompts may be applicable to your media).
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Consider Engagement Scenarios:
- Who is the final audience?
- How do they discover and access the media?
- What value does engagement create?
- How might engagement data feed back to creators?
Engagement vs. Reuse:
- Engagement is about consumption and experience, not creation
- Consider passive engagement (viewing, listening) and active engagement (sharing, commenting)
- Think about how ORA might enable new forms of engagement
Activity Worksheet:
Activity 8: Putting It All Together
Synthesize your work by creating a narrative use case that demonstrates how ORA addresses your chosen challenge. Share and critique use cases as a group to refine thinking.
Steps to Complete:
- Form Groups: On your table in groups of 4 or 6, arrange your canvases to tell your complete story.
- Walkthrough Your Use Case: Each person uses their canvases to walkthrough and reflect on their use case for ORA.
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Follow Discussion Prompts:
- Try to tell a story of media creation, reuse and engagement
- Reflect on how ORA may (or may not) address your challenge
- As a group, help critique and improve each use case
- Reflect on how ORA extends, contradicts or relies upon existing means of rights management
Critical Reflection:
- Be honest about what ORA does and doesn't solve
- Consider technical, social, and legal implications
- Think about barriers to adoption
- Identify opportunities for unexpected value creation
Activity Worksheet:
Activity 9: Describe a Feature
Identify and articulate the most valuable features of the ORA framework based on your work and practice. This activity helps prioritize which aspects of ORA have the greatest potential impact.
Steps to Complete:
- Individual Reflection: Solo for 5 minutes, using the feature card, write down a feature of ORA.
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Consider Prompts:
- What do you see as the most valuable feature or aspect of the ORA framework or demo that you saw today?
- Why do you see that as being important for your work?
- What problem could it solve for you?
Examples of Possible Features:
- Being able to have a permanent record of works with recorded timestamps
- Provable ownership of assets and associated licensing states and conditions
- Bespoke licensing that can accommodate legal, social, and cultural limitations around reuse
- Unbundling ownership rights into specific transferable licenses
- C2PA standard for recording provenance directly in a media file
- Holding decentralised (and non-revokable) ownership over digital assets
- Machine readable licensing
- Public and accessible decentralised registry
Activity Worksheet:
Activity 10: Share Features
Join others who identified similar features to discuss, compare, and critically evaluate the potential of different aspects of ORA. This collaborative reflection deepens understanding of both opportunities and challenges.
Steps to Complete:
- Find Your Crowd: Does your feature focus more on ownership, rights & licensing, attribution or something else? Follow facilitators to a table with this focus.
- Share Features: Share your feature with the group on your table for 25 minutes.
- Critical Reflection: As you share, critically reflect on its potential. Use the prompts on the back of the feature sheet to help you, and fill these in as you talk.
- Combine Similar Features: Try to combine any similar features on a new card.
Discussion Tips:
- Build on each other's ideas
- Challenge assumptions constructively
- Consider both benefits and drawbacks
- Think about real-world implementation challenges
- Look for patterns across different media types and contexts
Activity Worksheet:
Activity 11: Rank Features
Prioritize the features identified through voting and discussion. This final activity creates a shared understanding of which aspects of ORA have the greatest potential value across different contexts and use cases.
Steps to Complete:
- Vote with Dot Stickers: For 5 minutes, use dot stickers to vote across the different features on your table.
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Consider Evaluation Criteria:
- Performance: How would it improve processes/efficiency?
- Attractiveness: Does it feel exciting? Does it feel novel/unique?
- Benefits for your own work/practice: Would this directly help you?
- Arrange Top Features: Arrange your top 3 features on your table.
- Share with the Room: Present your prioritized features to the entire workshop.
After the Vote:
- Discuss why certain features ranked higher than others
- Look for consensus across different tables and contexts
- Consider what the priorities reveal about current needs in digital media
- Think about next steps for exploring the highest-priority features
Activity Worksheet:
Workshop Outcomes
ORA is an adaptable technical framework that can be implemented in many ways to support new forms of ownership, licensing and attribution.
Today we hope you managed to gain an understanding of ORA, and begin to apply this to a real-world context.
Through the 11 activities, you've explored how provenance data, smart contracts, and license tokens can reshape relationships in digital media ecosystems. You've considered how these technologies might address real challenges you face in your own work, from enabling fair attribution to creating new revenue streams for creators.
The features you've identified and prioritized represent the most promising opportunities for ORA to create value. Whether it's permanent ownership records, bespoke licensing arrangements, or machine-readable rights management, these capabilities point to a future where digital media creators have more control, transparency, and fairness.
Make It Your Own
The Decentralised Media Licensing workshop is designed to be adapted for different media types, creative sectors, and organizational contexts. Whether you work in music, visual arts, journalism, film, gaming, or any other creative field, the activities can be tailored to your specific needs and challenges.
You can adjust the workshop duration by focusing on the most relevant activities for your group. For instance, if your participants already have strong familiarity with digital rights management, you might spend less time on foundational concepts and more time on the ORA-specific activities (Activities 3, 4, and 6).
The workshop materials are fully customizable to match your brand and context. Modify the worksheets to include examples from your sector, adjust terminology to match your audience's language, and add supplementary materials that connect ORA to your specific regulatory or business environment.
Consider running this workshop alongside or after the DSD Fundamentals workshop to provide participants with both broad ecosystem thinking and specific technical implementation strategies. The combination helps teams understand both the strategic potential and practical applications of decentralised service design.
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Have you used this workshop? We'd love to hear how it went and learn from your experience.
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