Pssst!  Standard  Digital  Rights  Vocabulary  is  Already  Here  By  Julia  Goodwin  

If  your  company  uses  a  rights  management  system,  you  are  translating  complex,  unstructured  contract  narrative  into  a  digital  rights  vocabulary  readable  by  a  computer.    Your  organization  is  relying  on  this  digital  rights  vocabulary  to  do  its  sales  and  financial  transactions.  So,  the  nagging  question  is,  why  can’t  we  all  agree  on  a  standard  terminology  across  companies?    It’s  hard  to  help  feeling  the  pull  of  the  inevitable.    The  market  inexorably  rewards  velocity:  easier  transactions,  open,  common  language,  elegant  and  simple  solutions  that  remove  impediments.    Processes  that  slow  the  market  tend  to  be  replaced.    Yet,  an  accepted  digital  rights  language  hasn’t  garnered  adoption  to  enable  the  market’s  needs.    Frequent  claims  against  a  common  digital  rights  vocabulary  include:    

1. It’s  too  complicated  to  standardize;  it’s  a  non-­‐starter  2. A  negotiating  edge  is  lost  if  we  have  an  exact  and  cohesive  vocabulary  3. Common  users  won’t  understand  it;  it  needs  a  specialized  legal  background  to  

interpret  4. You’ll  never  get  agreement  across  companies  or  industries  on  terminology  

 There  is  surprising  news  within  your  own  organization  that  points  to  the  fact  that  standardized  rights  terms  are  possible,  they’re  already  used…and  successfully:    

1. If  you  have  a  rights  management  system,  you’ve  gone  through  the  difficult  exercise  of  getting  many  legal  professionals  to  agree  on  the  vocabulary  they  use  to  define  rights  vocabulary  such  as  the  names  of  rights,  channels,  territories,  languages  and  contract  attributes  like  options  or  exclusivity  or  holdbacks.  

2. All  that  professional  agreement  now  lies  in  your  rights  system  which  the  company  trusts  to  runs  availability  reports,  expiration  reports,  to  expedite  and  reveal  all  kinds  of  knowledge  about  assets  and  digital  rights  in  your  company.  

3. So,  you’ve  proven  that  standard  rights  vocabulary  is  possible;  that  negotiating  advantages  are  lost  and  that  common  users  won’t  understand  terms  become  watered  down  arguments.      

 

 Where  a  company’s  standard  rights  language  does  break  down  is  in  the  transactions  between  itself  and  its  partners  and  customers  -­‐  in  the  very  heart  of  its  sales  and  distribution  transactions  -­‐  In  other  words,  in  the  most  important  parts  of  its  business.    If  one  of  the  Digital  Rights  languages  such  as  ODRL,  Dublin  Core’s  RightsExpression  or  PRISM  were  to  be  perfected  and  adopted,  and  we  all  spoke  the  same  language,  what  would  happen?      

• Offers,  Licensing  and  Sales  agreements  would  be  standardized  and  swiftly  comparable  and  executed.    What  is  your  average  contract  review-­‐to-­‐execution  time  and  costs  today?  

• Reporting,  invoicing  and  payments  required  for  participations  or  royalties  would  be  automated  and  executed  timely.    How  many  days  a  month  does  it  take  the  Royalties  Department  to  service  these  tasks  today?    What  is  that  cost?  

• Rights  Management  Systems  would  be  networked  across  shared  partner  contract  points  and  requests  for  subscription  content,  renewals,  status  of  revenues,  and  execution  of  options  could  take  minutes.    What  do  these  activities  cost  now?    How  far  away  is  your  Rights  Management  information  from  the  point  of  sales  and  distribution?  

 We  could  also  brainstorm  many  innovative  ways  for  digital  rights  metadata  to  travel  with  the  asset  such  as  turning  if  off  when  it  expires  or  watermarking  it  when  copied  illegally.    The  marriage  of  asset  and  digital  rights  metadata  could  finally  make  indisputable  and  less  contentious  DRM  possible.    In  the  Medical  Health  field,  there  is  a  coding  system  called  ICD-­‐10,  or  the  International  Statistical  Classification  of  Diseases,  10th  edition.    The  system  allows  for  doctors,  medical  coders,  billers  and  insurance  payers  to  automate  their  processes  without  ambiguity.  Imagine!    With  ICD-­‐10  there  is:    

• Agreement  among  International  Physicians  • A  standard  that  is  in  its  10th  edition  • A  common  vocabulary  for  transactions  involving  multiple  parties  • Vocabulary  and  codes  that  precisely  define  all  complex  injuries,  diseases,  

severity,  anatomic  site,  etc.,  to  do  with  the  human  body    If  we  can  imagine  this,  somehow  a  common  digital  rights  vocabulary  seems  a  lot  more  do-­‐able.    We  know  how  to  do  it  individually.    Let’s  figure  out  how  to  do  it  together.