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ISCC - Evaluation#

Evaluating the International Standard Content Code (ISCC)

A Comprehensive and Scientific Approach to Understand the Capabilities of ISCC

ISCC Status

As of July 2023 the International Standard Content Code is not yet a published ISO standard. ISO/CD 24138.2 is under development at TC 46/SC 9/WG 18. https://www.iso.org/standard/77899.html

Digital Content Identification#

Welcome to the exploration and evaluation of the International Standard Content Code (ISCC). In the digital landscape, accurately identifying and cataloguing content is a critical task. The ISCC is designed to address this need as a versatile, universal identifier for digital content, encompassing a broad spectrum of formats like text, image, audio, and video.

Understanding ISCC#

With any innovative technology comes a learning curve, and the ISCC is no exception. Across various disciplines, the ISCC's unique approach has sparked many questions:

  • Registration agencies are seeking to understand how this differs from established standard identifiers.
  • Content recognition specialists are interested in its capabilities in granular content matching.
  • Software developers, accustomed to cryptographic hashes for secure data identification, are curious about how the ISCC compares.

Our aim is to provide clear insights into the capabilities of the ISCC, dispel any misconceptions, and deliver a well-rounded understanding of this new and exciting technology.

Introducing TwinSpect#

Purpose

The primary purpose of TwinSpect is to assess to which extent the ISCC is capable of clustering and matching similar content.

To address concerns and provide clarity, we've developed TwinSpect — a comprehensive open-source framework engineered for evaluating the ISCC in an accessible and scientifically robust manner. TwinSpect is built on widely recognized metrics from the field of information retrieval and makes use of various public and private datasets selected and built to fit our evaluation objectives.

While TwinSpect is specifically designed to evaluate the ISCC, its adaptability goes beyond. TwinSpect can easily be extended with custom algorithms, datasets, transformations and metrics.

ISCC & AI#

As we enter the era of Artificial Intelligence, where content creation and distribution are becoming increasingly automated, the role of the ISCC in ensuring accurate content identification, and improving the trust in content provenance becomes even more critical.

Upcoming Semantic-Code

As of July 2023 the ISO draft of the upcoming ISCC Standard already reserves prefixes for the ISCC Semantic-Code which will employ Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence techniques to create ISCC-UNITs that match similarity based on the high-level understanding of concepts. For example the Semantic-Code for textual content will be capable of creating similar codes for the same text translated to different languages (cross-lingual similarity matching).

What´s Ahead#

In the following pages, we will provide a detailed look at the ISCC, explain the TwinSpect evaluation framework, and share the findings from our evaluation. Our goal is to give you a thorough understanding of the ISCC and its potential, in a clear, concise, and business-focused manner.