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Well the time has come to stop worrying and to enjoy the ride.  With the potentially immenent establishment of  the Book Rights Registry (BRR), combined with pure capitalism, that ride is about to get real fast and real exciting.  Publishing isn’t going down – it’s on the cusp of exploding!

In this brave new world, what exactly does it mean to be a publisher?  I would define a publisher as a rights holder to content.  It is an entity whose sole purpose is to accumulate and sell content.  Whether they sell that content as a book or to an agent to re-sell, their primary objective as a business is to maximize the return on their assets.

In this time of uncertainty, there is tremendous pressure on publishers to figure out where its universe is headed.  There seems to be an assumed rule that publishers must define and navigate this landscape themselves.  In fact, publishers need do only one thing:  sell their assets, their content.  That might mean a book, an ebook, or a website anthology – as long as they are selling it in a way consistent with their mission, that’s the only thing that a for-profit publisher should be doing.

For commercial publishing to complete the next phase of its evolution, it must be set free from the forces of traditional models.  It must operate in an environment where books are not the dominant medium for content. Let the force of the market and the entrepreneurial spirit bring forth a punctuated equilibrium.

What does it mean to set it free?  It means the creation of a definitive licensing repository for static content (writing, art, etc. – the content that typically comprises books).  It means providing a mechanism for any business to very easily monetize the content of any other business with mutual consent to terms of usage.

Amongst the most important things that publishers do well is package content for commercial sale.  They find or create it.  They edit it.  They make it look pretty.  They promote it.  Up to now, the mechanisms for sale of that content have been largely limited to the physical world.  The Book Rights Registry provides a portal to a whole new, unexplored universe.  It provides a new mechanism for publishers to sell content to anyone.  Equally important, it provides a new mechanism for anyone to use content in hertofore unthought of ways.

There are plenty of issues with the Google Settlement that favor Google in perhaps unfair ways.  But the Book Rights Registry opens the door to anyone to commercialize this universe of content.  It’s a new frontier.  And it’s going to be a wild ride!

To begin, I will reiterate our goal.  As part of the Google Book Settlement, a Book Rights Registry (BRR) will be created that will enable rights holders to identify the rights that they control, and how those rights may be expresed, if at all.  The BRR will in turn enable third parties to easily license those rights while acting as a clearinghouse for royalty payments due to the rights holders.

The above description suggests the need for interfaces between rights holders and the BRR, and between the BRR and licensees (e.g. Google).  Those interfaces will almost certainly be managed through automation and/or web-based interfaces.  Thus the need for standards.

In an increasingly networked world, clear and unambiguous communication (between machines) is essential.  Imagine a telephone network without standards – or the internet…Machines know HOW to talk to each other…  but we need industry standards so that they know WHAT to say to each other – a common vocabulary… in other words, “identifiers” and “metadata”

- Mark Bide, July 2, 2009, Presentation to PLS Annual Copyright Meeting

Over the last several weeks, I have been investigating existing standards for communication between these interfaces.  At last, much of the search is over.  The solution is ONIX for RRO’s.

ONIX for RRO’s is actually two messaging standards:  ONIX-DS (“DS” = “Distribution”) and ONIX-RP (“RP”= “Repertoire”).  A repertoire represents the available uses for content, while the distribution reports on how the content was actually used, and the payments associated with it.  (Note:  I edited the original text based on a correction provided by Mark Bide – please see comments for more details).

These ONIX messages allow a rights holder to identify their content (a whole subject of its own), and the rights that they hold for that content.  It enables the specification of territories, usage, context, timing, and payment.  Finally, it provides fields for licensees of content to specify payments due for the use of that content.

So ONIX for RRO’s can provide the standard messaging for interfaces between the BRR, licensors, and licensees.  What is the status of ONIX for RRO’s – is it ready for prime time?

These standards are relatively new.  They are currently undergoing their first trial implementations in the UK.  So the jury is still out.  In my opinion, though, the standard offers real potential as it has been well conceived by people with intimate knowledge of international rights. (Note:  Please see Mark Bide’s comment for a more informed status of the trial).

Another issue are the codes.  One strength of ONIX is that it separates the message format from the codes used to populate much of the data.  This enables much greater flexibility in how the message can be used.  A new set of codes will likely be required for use in the US, and for the implementation specific to the BRR.  The good news is that these codes can be built off the great work already performed on the two existing code sets (that are still under development):  those of IFRRO and those of the UKRRO.

Another question also remains – it appears that the ONIX for RRO messages can indicate payment information.  Do these messages represent too much overhead for that type of report?  Or should we investigate the use of the Digital Sales Reporting (DSR) message (also an EDItEUR intitiative).  (Disclaimer:  I co-chaired the original committee that created the DSR message).

As described by the Arrow website, “Solutions envisaged by [Arrow] include the establishment of systems for the exchange of rights data, the creation of registries of orphan works, information on or registries of works out of print and a network of rights clearance mechanisms. Key to achieving this objective is interoperability, standards deployment and stakeholder involvement.”

According to the ARROW website, the project is funded by the eContentPlus program.  The “eContentplus programme is a multiannual community programme to make digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable.”  The program was a 4 year endeavor with a budget of 149MM Euros.

The ARROW project itself has been configured to be a 30 month project which started in September of 2008.  The first phase, scheduled to run through September of 2009, is mainly conceptual with the following stated goals:

• Legal framework & Business Models
• Interoperability
• Design of system architecture

The second phase, scheduled to begin in September 2009, seems to be where the real meat and potatos are:

• Set up of right information infrastructure
• Creation of Registry of Orphan Works
• Network of clearing mechanisms

The primary goal of the organization is to establish usage guidelines for orphaned and out-of-print works.  A secondary goal is to create a mechanism for establishing a marketplace for rights.

The following section was added to the original post on August 7, 2009

It turns out that ARROW is not a standard per so, but rather a project to help institutions identify the rightsholders of content, and to aid in the claiming of orphaned works.

To help implement this project, ARROW has been working very closely with IFFRO and EDItEUR to develop the ONIX-DS and ONIX-RP standards.  Those are subjects to themselves, and will be the topic of future posts.

“What Google is doing, i.e. scanning of books without authorization of the right holders whilst giving them the opportunity to opt-out is without doubt a violation of European copyright laws,” said Stijn Debaene, a copyright specialist with law firm Allen & Overy LLP in Brussels. There’s “no doubt” that the hearing will lead to that conclusion, he said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=a.qRZItrfNaA

• Uniquely identifying discrete content, including components (aka chunking) of existing content
• Associating available rights and usage of that content, and corresponding pricing
• Protocols for communicating that content and rights (the message) to the BRR
• Protocols for messaging acceptance status by the BRR
• Protocols for discovery of content by third parties
• Protocols/Messaging for requesting use of content by third parties from the BRR
• Reporting of usage and payments by third parties to the BRR, and by the BRR to content owners (publishers)

Several standards exist that may be usable for certain components of this data flow.  Here, I am going to investigate the use of ACAP.

ACAP has been suggested as a possible standard for representing available rights for content.  After studying the standard (see http://www.the-acap.org/Files/8d/8df1c295-0124-4e56-b3b5-777ba15e682f.pdf for a good overview), I believe that there are some things that can be learned and borrowed from the standard, but that it is not appropriate for use with the BRR.

ACAP has been designed to identify how third party “crawlers” can use content on a website.  Therefore, it has an entirely different set of use-cases than is required by a BRR standard.  For the BRR, we need to identify content which may or may not be published on a public website.  Because it will often not be so published, a standard for crawling web sites is not appropriate.

That leaves open the question of whether we can use the same methodology for identifying usage rights.  Again, ACAP is not designed for this purpose.  It has a much coarser descriptor of rights than is required.  For example, it defines that translation is allowed, but it does not indicate in which markets or which translations.  It also does not appear to address non-textual usage (i.e. a dramatic reading of content to be broadcast online).

So while there are things that we can learn from ACAP, it is not intended to be used in such a way as is required by the BRR.

For future analysis:  can we use the rights expression capabilities of ONIX (ONIX-PL), and if so, does it make sense to.

Apparently, the EU shares many of these beliefs in such a concept – at least the top “digital” policy maker does.

Read a brief from IDG, or see Viviane Reding’s speech on You Tube.

Dave

Royalty Software