ARTHUR: A Collaborative Augmented Environment for Architectural Design and Urban Planning

Projects in the area of architectural design and urban planning typically engage several architects as well as experts from other professions. While the design and review meetings thus often involve a large number of cooperating participants, the actual design is still done by the individuals in the time in between those meetings using desktop PCs and CAD applications. A real collaborative approach to architectural design and urban planning is often limited to early paper-based sketches.In order to overcome these limitations, we designed and realized the ARTHUR system, an Augmented Reality (AR) enhanced round table to support complex design and planning decisions for architects. WhileAR has been applied to this area earlier, our approach does not try to replace the use of CAD systems but rather integrates them seamlessly into the collaborative AR environment. The approach is enhanced by intuitiveinteraction mechanisms that can be easily con-figured for different application scenarios.

Development of Fonts for African Scripts: Using Computer Technologies to Preserve Africa s Written Heritage

The issue of the font making for modern indigenous African scripts is briefly discussed. Encoding problems, including the Unicode standard, are addressed. Font samples are presented for some of the scripts.

Games as Cultural Heritage: Copyright Challenges for Preserving (Orphan) Video Games in the EU

The long-term preservation of complex works such as video games comes with many challenges. Emulation, currently the most adequate preservation strategy for video games, requires several acts that are technically possible, but closely governed and restricted by copyright law and technical protection measures. Without prior authorisation from the rightsholder(s), it is therefore difficult to legally emulate these works. However, games often have several rightsholders that are in some cases near impossible to identify or locate – particularly with regard to older games. This paper therefore focuses on these so-called orphan video games and examines whether (and to what extent) they are covered by the directive on certain permitted uses of orphan works 2012/28/EU (Orphan Works Directive). As complex works with software and audiovisual components, it is difficult to classify video games in their entirety. The Orphan Works Directive, however, only covers certain categories of works. This paper therefore analyses 1) whether video games in their entirety can be considered types of works that fall under the directive, i.e. audiovisual or cinematographic works, and 2) whether the provisions of the orphan work exception are suitable for the specifics of these complex, “multimedia” works.

Cultural Heritage Online? Settle It in the Country of Origin of the Work

This article examines the conditions under which a system of extended collective licensing (ECL) for the use of works contained in the collections of cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) participating in Europeana could function within a cross-border basis. ECL is understood as a form of collective rights management whereby the application of freely negotiated copyright licensing agreements between a user and a collective management organisation (“CMO”), is extended by law to non-members of the organisation. ECL regimes have already been put in place in a few Member States and so far, all have the ability to apply only on a national basis. This article proposes a mechanism that would allow works licensed under an ECL system in one territory of the European Union to be made available in all the territories of the Union. The proposal rests on the statutory recognition of the “country of origin” principle, as necessary and sufficient territory for the negotiation and application of an ECL solution for the rights clearance of works contained in the collection of a cultural heritage institution, including orphan works.