"The State of Current Rights Management Systems: Initial Findings from BISG & CCC’s Joint Survey of Publishers and Vendors" Many publishers see a trend that may be, like e-books a couple years back, an early indicator of sea-change for our industry. While book sales are becoming more and more elusive, opportunities to sell licenses of content fragments for websites, apps and derived books are growing. Consequently, the mismanaging of rights associated with these fragments can have severe impacts on a publisher’s brand and bottom line. Unfortunately, figuring out who owns all rights available to a work often requires costly research and negotiation that can eat up potential profits before they’re realized. Often, this discourages publishers from responding to rights licensing requests at all. Those who do struggle to track collections and expend costly resources on managing revenues. And when they do license content, they struggle to track collections and expend costly resources on managing revenues. Under direction from BISG, rights experts from the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) and MetaComet Systems, with the help of The Idea Logical Company, have researched the extent of this challenge across the industry. It is hoped that results from this research can lead to recommend best practices for rights management. During this three-part presentation, Heather Reid (CCC), David Marlin (MetaComet), and Mike Shatzkin (Idea Logical Company) present the results of BISG’s research, describe the challenge, and detail what they believe are the next steps toward an industry-wide solution.

1. MORE EFFICIENT
RIGHTS MANAGEMENT
THE KEY TO FUTURE PROFITS
Mike Shatzkin
Founder & CEO, Idea Logical Company
Heather Reid
Director of Data Systems & Services, Copyright Clearance Center
David Marlin
President and Co-Founder, MetaComet Systems
May 5, 2011 Making Information Pay

2. The change that is accelerating
2
 Whole books get harder to sell in any
format: competition and atrophying channels
 Fragment permission and licensing
opportunities grow, due to apps, ebooks, and
web sites
 More transactions, fewer dollars per
 Rights research eating up too much of the
revenue
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

3. Robust rights databases are needed!
3
 Or, so it seemed, but we wanted to confirm
 CCC funded research for a team to speak to
publishers and service providers
 We learned this is a pain point that is
universally appreciated
 We learned that this is a vast problem that
stymies just about every company
 We think we figured out where to begin to
solve it
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

4. THE CURRENT STATE OF RIGHTS
MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
Initial Findings from BISG & CCC’s
Joint Survey of Publishers and Vendors
Heather Reid, Director
Data Systems & Services
Copyright Clearance Center
May 5, 2011 Making Information Pay

5. Survey Process
5
 Goal was to get a read on the rights
management landscape among U.S.
publishers
 We interviewed both publishers and
vendors of rights management systems
 Nine publishers
 Six vendors
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

6. Summary Findings
6
 Only one publisher interviewed has addressed rights
management comprehensively
 Some have at least some data stored digitally in a
persistent data structure
 Many publishers only store their rights data as PDFs of
legal contracts
“50% of all publishers – and even the big ones – don’t
have a digitized contract file. They’ve got contracts filed
in paper files somewhere.“ -Vendor
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

7. Summary Findings, part 2
7
 Current systems are ineffective and
don’t adequately meet needs
 Mix of off-the-shelf and home grown
systems
 Not well integrated
 Not managed/funded as strategic
initiative
 Rights = a choke point In the old world, … you create a book and
 Inbound rights not accessible in the way you push it in physical form and the
contracts departments was … a back office
they should operation. We’re dealing in a content world
 Outbound rights take too long to process now…and as a result…rights
[management]…is critical.”
- Publisher
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

8. Every Transaction is a Rights Transaction
8
 Digital Publishing is a true paradigm
shift
 Creating both opportunities and threats
 Global marketplace for digital
products
 Entails strategic management and
exploitation of rights
 Micro-transactions will grow
 Knowing rights at a granular level is key
“This is about leveraging your
 Rigorous rights management NOT
intellectual property in every sales
optional
channel and every market around
 Table stakes for truly exploiting new the globe.”
markets
- Publisher
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

9. Why Rights Are Important Now
9
 “Licensing is a field that will only continue to grow in this new world.”
 “Rights are the foundation for everything now.”
 “We saw a 100% increase in licensing revenue when we started responding
faster to rights requests.”
 “You have licensing/permissions working in the 60’s and digital media being
created in 2011 – it creates bottlenecks.”
 “Traditional models and channels disappearing at a rapid rate.”
 “You’re losing revenue for sure if you don’t know what your rights are.”
“It’s not can we afford to, but can we afford not to?`”
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

10. How To Move Forward
10
 Industry education
 Best practices
 Discussion of issues and complexities
 Develop standardization of terms and definitions
 For “rights in” and “rights out”
 Common taxonomy
 Alignment within and among publishers
 Reframe rights management as strategic to business
 Rights vended are rights sought
 Publishers seeking bundles of rights are also vending
those same rights
“It’s about [knowing] what you
 Systems and process integration need to own in order to transform
 Reduce manual data entry your business and be a player in
the new marketplace. Otherwise,
 Reinforce proper workflow and communication you’re kind of old news. “
 Cross-company buy-in - Publisher
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

11. Implementation Strategies
11
 Start by databasing current contracts; then
address the backlist
 Systems must be flexible and extensible –
adapting as market demands evolve
 Systems integration is key – rights management
system must talk to other key systems
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

12. CONTENT
IN THE WILD
“not the kind of
stuff that you can
actually let out into
the world”
May 5, 2011 Making Information Pay

13. The Wild
13
“I think it’s the scariest thing that I’ve heard in the past few
years…because the value that we still have as publishers … as
content curators and content creators … if we don’t do a
better job of this, we’re going to lose that advantage … very
quickly.”
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

14. Brand Legal &
Compliance
Stakeholder
Value
Profit Capital
Investment
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

15. “the Company’s independent Legal &
registered accounting firm advised
the Company that the control Compliance
deficiency described below Brand
constitutes a material weakness in Stakeholder
Value
its internal controls.” – an actual Capital
Profit
Annual Report Investment
Single most important value that the rights system
brought to one organization: “Risk Management”
“The bigger issue may be that of potential liability to
the business”
“…exposure and liability
associated with using content we
haven’t acquired.”
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

16. Brand
Legal &
Compliance
Stakeholder
Value
“Publisher Settles Class Action Lawsuit”
Profit Capital
Investment
Importance of Author Relationships: “Any author who
ever hears me responding to this is going to go, it better
be a five. So it’s a five.”
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

17. “a database system that creates extra steps
instead of removes them is never going to be
embraced”
“we probably will still be
dealing with decisions made
now in 15 years”
Brand Legal &
Compliance
Stakeholder
Value
Profit
Capital
Investment
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

18. “Unless you can organize your content in a way that
makes the purchase very easy, it’s not low-hanging
fruit. And that’s kind of what I’m stumbling over right
now is getting the content organized.”
“ ‘it’s just easier for me to go out and source my own content than to work
with you guys,’ scariest thing that I’ve heard in the past few years”
Legal &
Brand Compliance “we’re all sitting on the same problem . . .
Stakeholder we’ve never really placed strenuous
Value demands on our content in this way.”
Capital
Investment
Profit “By the time they got back to the requester, they had gotten
tired of waiting and had gone in a different direction.”
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

19. Risk Mitigation
19
“How good your data management is allows you the greatest
leverage and facility to actually do with your intellectual
property what you thought you were acquiring it for!”
“having really a robust taxonomy in place
that allows us to group content, to group it,
slice it and dice, it”
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

20. A next phase project: to make real progress
20
 The first goal: all publishers properly databasing new
contracts from inception
 The next objective: figuring out what it takes to get
any publisher to that point
 Required: a taxonomy that works, contracts and
permissions mapped to the taxonomy, a workflow that
captures new contract terms in a database reflecting
the taxonomy
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

21. Use and test the taxonomy
21
 Select a core group of (about) 15 publishers: all
sizes, all types
 Pull all current “standard” contracts; map them to
BISG rights committee taxonomy
 Capture 3 months of permission and relicensing
requests: map them to taxonomy
 Analyze taxonomy for gaps; refine taxonomy and,
if necessary, the contracts
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

22. Uncover the workflow challenges
22
 For each publisher, track the workflow that leads to
the contract (editor’s instructions?)
 Look for opportunities to capture contract info in
database simultaneously with issuance of contract
 Redesign workflow to create both at once
 Create checkpoints to make sure contract and
database are in synch
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

23. Spread the best practices
23
 Deliver a template for the database with checklist
of contract “trouble spots”
 Document workflow alternatives that deliver both
contract and database
 Develop a program to cost-efficiently help all
publishers get to best practice with new contracts
 Finally: we can then think about the backlist!
Making Information Pay May 5, 2011

24. FOR MORE INFORMATION
Please contact Jess Johns
jjohns@idealog.com
May 5, 2011 Making Information Pay