The Universal Content Identifier (UCI) () is a South Korean identification system that identifies digital content through unique alphanumeric codes. It is based on

Uniform Resource Name A Uniform Resource Name (URN) is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that uses the scheme. URNs are globally unique persistent identifiers assigned within defined namespaces so they will be available for a long period of time, even after the re ...

(URN) system.

History

The development of UCI began in February 2003, and later in March, the Ministry of Information and Communication (now dissolved) confirmed the development of a national URN-based system. In October, the

National Computerization Agency The South Korean National Computerization Agency (NCA) () is a statutory government agency acting as Korea's top IT policy and technical support agency. Overview The agency was founded by Article 10 of the Framework Act on Information Promo ...

submitted a

Request for Comment A Request for Comments (RFC) is a publication in a series from the principal technical development and standards-setting bodies for the Internet, most prominently the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). An RFC is authored by individuals or ...

to the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet standard, Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster ...

for creating a namespace for UCI in the URN system. UCI was adopted by The Telecommunication Technology Association () in June 2006. In November 2008, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism held a conference in the Plaza Hotel, Seoul to discuss the adoption of UCI into the private sector, as well as assigning a UCI to every digital content that is published on the internet. In 2008, UCI merged with the Content Object Identifier (, ), a separate system developed by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (precursor to the current Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism). In January 2009 or 2008 (sources conflict), the UCI was officially designated as a Korean Information and Communication Standard (). By the end of 2014, there were 36 registrar organizations, with around 173,500,000 registered works.

Features

UCI is used for all types of digital media, including music, video, and phone applications. In addition to uniquely identifying pieces of digital media, UCI provides

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

such as the author and title. UCI can be used for copyright management since it identifies the source material to any device that the media is shared. UCI is based on the

(URN) system, which different from URLs that they specify a unique content rather than a location. The UCI code is composed of three parts in the form "prefix code - entity code - qualifier code". The prefix code () identifies the registration authority and the registrant, and the entity code () identifies the resource itself. Finally, the qualifier code () identifies the different forms of the same piece of media. Two studies independently proposed the integration of Integrated Copyright Number (ICN), which is a separate national system developed by Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, with UCI in order to streamline copyright management and distribution.

Management

The Korea Copyright Commission is the central authority of UCI. The Commission has picked several companies and organizations to be registrars for UCI, such as Imazins () and Media Scope (). Media Scope has expanded UCI adoption across various

karaoke is a type of interactive entertainment system usually offered in nightclubs and bars, where people sing along to pre-recorded accompaniment using a microphone. Its musical content is an instrumental rendition of a well-known popular song. I ...

companies. In 2021, Korea Literature, Academic works and Art Copyright Association was assigned with additional roles, and established the "Literary and Artistic Works UCI Issuance System". By October 2023, the Association reported assigning UCI to 510,000 works.

History

Features

Management

References

Sources

External links