How News and Media Publishers Can Optimize their Content Licensing by Adopting Standard Machine-Processable Rights Presented at IPTC's Spring 2018 meeting

1. SOLVING THREE
CHALLENGES WITH
LICENSING CONTENT
How News and Media
Publishers Can Optimize
their Content Licensing by
Adopting Standard
Machine Processable
Rights

2. THREE NEWS AND MEDIA RIGHTS
CHALLENGES
Many organizations license content from third parties. This leads to
three challenges:
1. Can I publish this content to this website, device or location?
2. How do I minimize my content licensing costs?
3. Can I license my archived content to someone else?
Each of these are questions about content rights – permissions,
restrictions and duties

3. IS THIS CONTENT USE PERMITTED?
Just because I have access to the content doesn’t mean I can use it in
a particular way
 Editorial feeds may be available, but not allowed to be republished
 Publishers license content for a particular publication, but does that permit reuse in
sister publications?
 Time limits and embargos
 Territorial restrictions
 Media and platform restrictions
 Competitor restrictions
Am I complying with any required duties?
 Do I have to provide a credit?
 Are there any additional fees involved?
 Do I need to report back on usage?

4. HOW TO MINIMIZE CONTENT
LICENSING COSTS?
How much will it cost to use a particular piece of content in a
particular way?
 Can I find similar content with a lower price point?
 Can I strike volume deals for the content with a bundle of rights?
Have I already licensed this content?
 If so, can I use it again for this purpose, with the same license?
 What is the term, territory, media and use permitted?
How do I minimize the amount of manual work required to handle
licensing?
 How can I efficiently handle video bundles - footage, music, model releases,
property releases?
 How can l automatically evaluate copyright clearances for content, to enable auto-
publishing?

5. CAN I SHARE OR SELL MY ARCHIVE
CONTENT?
Am I permitted to share or sell content from my archive?
 Third party content may permit re-licensing of content – for additional fees
Even “my” content may contain 3rd party content
 A text item may link to photos, video or audio supplied from another publisher
 A video or audio piece may consist of 3rd party clips
 Does the content itself make use of copyright works – such as music, art works or
buildings?
 Do I have releases from anyone depicted in an item?
Does the license originally granted for a content item still apply?
 At this time and for the required territory and use?

6. RIGHTS CHALLENGES
How to increase efficiency?
 Eliminate manual review of copyright clearances
 Reduce costs by automatically optimizing content selection
 Track licensed content, to increase reuse and minimize costs
How to reduce legal risks?
 Avoid inadvertent rights infringements
 Enforce and relay rights for partner content
How to leverage licensing opportunities?
 Determine whether you can share or sell a piece of content from your archive

7. WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT
RIGHTS METADATA?
Rights are a different kind of metadata from, say, headline or
descriptive metadata
Two kinds of rights
 The contract, which could apply to thousands or even millions of pieces of content
 The per-item permissions, restrictions and duties
Rights are very specific to the publisher / client relationships
 Rights can change independently from the content
 Different parts of a piece of content can have different permissions, restrictions and
duties
Rights are often complex
 Rights metadata requires sophisticated data structures to represent them accurately
and usefully
 Processing rights metadata correctly is therefore harder than most kinds of

8. HOW TO REPRESENT RIGHTS
METADATA?
Editors notes
 The main way it is done today
Make up your own machine-processable representation
 As codes embedded in content
Use an existing standard?
 Picture Licensing Universal Standard PLUS https://www.useplus.com/
 Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/
 RightsStatements.org http://rightsstatements.org/
 RightsML http://rightsml.org

9. COMPARING RIGHTS
REPRESENTATIONS
Key Requirements Editors Notes Proprietary Codes PLUS CC RightsStatements.org RightsML
Increase Efficiency No Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Reduce Legal Risks No Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Leverage Licensing
Opportunities
No Maybe Maybe Maybe Maybe Yes
Represent Contracts No No No No No Yes
Represent Per Item Restrictions Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Vary Rights Independently
from Content
No No No No Yes Yes
Apply Rights to Different Parts
of Content
Maybe Yes Yes No No Yes
Represent Complex Rights Yes No No No No Yes

10. IPTC RIGHTSML
RIGHTS EXPRESSION FOR THE
MEDIA INDUSTRY
Rights expression language
Machine processable
permissions, restrictions and
duties
Tuned to the needs of the news
and media industry
IPTC standard
https://iptc.org/standards/rights
ml/
Founded on W3C ODRL
https://www.w3.org/TR/odrl-
model/

11. IPTC
RIGHTSML:
A
COMPREHEN
SIVE RIGHTS
STANDARD
Supports all use cases - from simple to
complex
Designed for all media types
 Can be "embedded" within an asset – ideal for photo,
video and audio binaries
 Or referenced remotely – for example in a rights
registry
 Or an accompanying file – for cross media publishing
Can be used with a variety of metadata
formats
 IPTC photo metadata, NewsML-G2, Video Metadata
Hub
 And many others
Supports a range of modern technologies
 XML, JSON-LD, RDF out of the box
 And a data model structured to support any others

12. MACHINE
PROCESSA
BLE
RIGHTS:
INCREASE
EFFICIENCY
, REDUCE
LEGAL
RISKS
Compared to the use of editors notes to convey
content restrictions…
… any machine processable representation will
improve efficiency
•No longer necessary to review each item to determine what
restrictions there might be
•No need to remove rights statements from captions or scripts
•Machine processable rights are key for auto publishing
… and reduce legal risks
•Just like any other manual process, rights clearance is prone to
human error
•Converting to machine processable rights entails squeezing out
ambiguity in the current expressions

13. CONTRACTS, PER ITEM
RESTRICTIONS, REUSE
Just like editors notes, adding codes to your content to indicate
permissions works for per item restrictions and duties
 The codes could be a standard like PLUS or rightsstatements.org or proprietary to
your organization
 Just make sure every restriction is covered by the code scheme you pick
 As markup language, RightsML supports per item restrictions and can be used to
express entirely new permissions, restrictions and duties, without changing the
language
RightsML can also be used to express entire licensing contracts –
hard to do with codes
RightsML thus better supports content reuse, since it is necessary to
evaluate the combination of a license and per-item restrictions

14. RIGHTS COMPLEXITY
Some restrictions are straightforward “outs” based on location,
distribution channel or recipient
Others, however, can be complex combinations of restrictions
They may also require the fulfilment of complex duties in order to
“unlock” a particular use
RightsML supports these types of sophisticated scenarios
 In a standard, machine-processable way
 A list of codes cannot

15. RECOMMENDATION: ADOPT
RIGHTSML
You need to adopt machine-processable rights if you want to
 Enable auto publishing
 Limit legal risks
You should adopt RightsML if you want to
 Future-proof your rights expression capabilities
 Support content reuse and archive licensing
 Support complex rights scenarios
Get started with RightsML today
 http://rightsml.org
 https://github.com/nitmws/odrl-wprofile-evaltest1
 https://github.com/nitmws/odrl-rightsml-builder-l0