Project
The P2P-FUSION project develops a new software system, Fusion, that supports audiovisual creative activities and makes it easy for anyone to create, reuse and share audio and video productions over the internet legally, without costly servers and complicated system management. Fusion binds together a peer-to-peer network, a distributed semantic database, social enrichment features, audiovisual production and editing software, support for embedded licenses and a social media application toolkit into an integrated easy-to-use solution.
The system will be developed in collaboration with user
communities in a codesign process which aims to ensure that Fusion
corresponds to real needs and can continue to evolve throughout the
project to support the most interesting novel media practices that
emerge within the communities.
Peer-to-peer networks have proven to be the most efficient and economical mechanism for large scale media sharing, but unfortunately, they have often been used without due regard to the rights of the creators. P2P-FUSION addresses this problem by including software support for better access management and embedded open content licenses, and by organizing a work process for envisioning new intellectual property solutions that would better combine the best technology with appropriate respect for the rights of both users and creators.
The project consortium includes University of Art and Design Helsinki and Helsinki Institute for Information Technology from Finland; Delft University of Technology, Sound and Vision and KnowledgeLand from the Netherlands; and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and the National Audiovisual Archive from Hungary. The project runs for three years, from June 2006 to May 2009 and releases a new version of Fusion every May. The software will be published as open source and the consortium will seek collaboration with external developers and other projects.
P2P-FUSION is co-funded by the European Union through the IST programme under FP6.
For more information, please contact the project coordinator, Kari-Hans Kommonen (khk@uiah.fi) or project manager Sanna Marttila (sanna.marttila@uiah.fi).