Standardized Rights Statements for News

At the IPTC Spring Meeting in Lisbon  https://iptc.org/events/spring-meeting-2019/, I proposed IPTC Rights Statements For News, an approach inspired by https://rightsstatements.org/.

This approach would support both efficient filtering of content and sophisticated evaluation of restrictions. It is simple, flexible, accurate, descriptive and transparent.

You can read the full proposal at https://www.slideshare.net/smyles/iptc-rights-statements-for-news but, in a nutshell, the idea is:
1. Create a standard set of rights statements specific to news and media
2. Express each rights statement as a URL, which can be embedded in content and therefore is suitable for filtering
3. Enable each rights statement URL to be dereferencable, meaning it can be evaluated by machines or by people

I think that this approach would work well for expressing rights and restrictions for news and media. Having other industry players work with rights in a compatible way would help with adoption. If  customers are getting rights statements in the same way from several publishers, it is more likely that CMS and MAM vendors will implement the necessary support.

If you're interested in finding out more about this or other IPTC initiatives, feel free to get in touch https://iptc.org/about-iptc/contact-us/

Developing the Digital Marketplace for Copyrighted Works Meeting in Washington DC on January 25th

I'm looking forward to the "Developing the Digital Marketplace for Copyrighted Works" meeting in Washington DC on January 25th. This is the latest in a series of meetings organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Internet Policy Task Force. The stated goal is to "facilitate constructive, cross-industry dialogue among stakeholders about ways to promote a more robust and collaborative online marketplace for copyrighted works".

I will be speaking on the "identification" panel ("Capturing Content, People, Permissions"). I attended the previous meeting (see my short summary and watch the videos). If a day of rights discussions sounds like your idea of fun, then this is a free, open-to-the-public meeting (sign up). You can also watch the live stream.

Developing the Digital Marketplace for Copyrighted Works

I recently spoke at "Developing the Digital Marketplace for Copyrighted Works", organized by the Commerce Department’s Internet Policy Taskforce. The goal of the public meeting was to "facilitate constructive, cross-industry dialogue among stakeholders about ways to promote a more robust and collaborative digital marketplace for copyrighted works". My impression of the roughly 80 attendees was of a mix of publishers and lawyers - who tended to be pretty conservatively dressed - and music people - who tended to be in more sparkly outfits. Most of the discussion revolved around music, photo and video, but it turned out that a lot of the problems and potential solutions were quite similar across industries and media types. I've linked to the video of the event at the end of this post.

I've been involved in rights work at the Associated Press, including adding rights and pricing metadata to AP's Image API. I lead the IPTC's Rights Working Group. And I'm working within the W3C's POE group to turn ODRL into an official standard.

Bright and early at the USPTO “developing the digital marketplace for copyrighted works” meeting pic.twitter.com/QoXVGStshC

— Stuart Myles (@smyles) December 9, 2016

I spoke on the first panel with the topic of "Unique Identifiers and Metadata". I was teased a bit about "fake news" (this was in Alexandria. VA on December 9th 2016, so close both in time and place to the U.S. Presidential Election). Amongst other things, I spoke about how apparently simple things - "let's agree on identifiers for photos" - turned out to be quite complicated - since a text item, a photo or a video is not really a single, simple atomic thing, but more like a molecule of information. (You can watch the entire panel - which turned out to be quite lively, despite the early hour - in the video linked below).

I also moderated a round table, with the topic "What are the practical steps to adopting standards for identifying and controlling copyrighted works?". As everyone at my table introduced themselves, they mostly said "oh, I'm just here to learn, I don't have much to contribute" but, in fact, we had a very vigorous discussion, which covered *lots* of topics! I summarized them during the "Plenary" session (again, I've linked to the video below). We talked about three areas. First, was why we need standards - creators and rights holders should be compensated for their work, which could be financial compensation or it could be getting distribution and recognition. Second, we talked about the big barriers - technology, the culture of the Internet and human nature itself. Finally, we talked about concrete steps which the government and other organizations could take to get standards developed and adopted. (For the details, you'll need to watch the video. My segment runs from about 39:30 to about 45:55 but I recommend watching everyone's summary of their individual breakout sessions)

If you're interested in rights, then you should consider coming to London for the week of May 15th. That's because the BBC is hosting a Rights Day on May 15th, the IPTC will be holding its Spring Meeting (including discussing RightsML) on May 16th and 17th and W3C will hold its face-to-face meeting on May 18th and 19th. If you're interested in any or all, contact me and I will put you in touch with the right rights people.

Opening Remarks and Panel Session 1: Unique Identifiers and Metadata

Panel Session 2: Registries and Rights Expression Languages

Panel Session 3: Digital Marketplaces

Plenary Session

Making Progress on Rights - W3C Permissions Obligations and Expressions First Public Working Drafts

I've been working within W3C's Permissions & Obligations Expression (POE) Working Group as an Invited Expert. We have just issued our First Public Working Drafts:

• The ODRL Information Model
• The ODRL Vocabulary & Expression.

"one" by Andre Chinn
https://flic.kr/p/5pGcyx

The W3C POE WG aims to create recommendations for permissions, obligations and licensing statements for digital content. The WG is using the W3C ODRL Community Group specifications as the starting point for its work. These are the same specifications which form the foundation of IPTC's RightsML work.

"poe" by 为民 王
https://flic.kr/p/gp2Bc

If you're interested in digital content, then I recommend looking at - and commenting on - the W3C POE drafts. The ODRL Information Model describes the foundational concepts, entities and relationships of ODRL. The ODRL Vocabulary & Expression describes how to encode the ODRL model in XML, JSON and RDF.

"Use in case of emergency" by Katia Sosnowiez
https://flic.kr/p/5MMhFz

The POE WG has also published the Use Case and Requirements Note. I have contributed one of the Use Cases: News Permissions and Restrictions. Again, the Working Group is looking for feedback on - and contributions to - the Use Cases, so that it can derive a detailed set of requirements for the POE work.

JSON, Rights and Linked Data for News: the Latest IPTC Meeting

What is the best way to represent news using JSON? How can publishers convey rights metadata, to make automatic publishing more efficient? What role does linked data play in improving the production and consumption of news?

In June 2013, publishers from around the world gathered at the IPTC face-to-face meeting in Paris - graciously hosted by the AFP - to discuss these and other topics.

Saint Eutache by mamsuco
http://www.flickr.com/photos/millets100fs/3559017612/

News in JSON

JSON is a lightweight format which continues to gain in popularity and tool support. The IPTC has therefore undertaken an effort to define the best way to represent key news properties using this technology. Although we could automatically translate from one of IPTC's existing XML standards into JSON, we believe it is better to create a spec for news properties in a way that results in more "natural" JSON. Find out what we're proposing via my latest News in JSON slides, which discuss the current NINJS draft.

Rights Metadata

There is a lot of interest amongst publishers of all sizes in expressing rights metadata, particularly for photos. Presently, most publishers need to have editors read the notes associated with each photo, to find out if there are any restrictions they should observe. The promise of machine-readable rights metadata is to make this a more efficient process: for example, to be able to automatically detect when an editor needs to decide whether to use a particular piece of content, rather than examining every photo, just in case.

I've been leading an effort within the IPTC to create RightsML specifically to support publishing industry requirements, based on the general-purpose W3C Community Group standard ODRL framework. In March 2013, we organized a one day conference with representatives from publishers, news agencies, photographers trade associations, law firms and standards bodies to examine the question: how can technology help assert and protect the rights of content creators? Find out more about that discussion, including video of the presentations. We are now focused on driving adoption of the RightsML standard, with better documentation and examples.

photographer by liz west
http://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/1430290427/

Embedding Rights in Photos

ODRL and hence RightsML has a data model with a well-defined representation in XML. However, many producers of photos would rather have the rights expressed inside the binaries themselves, rather than - or in addition to - having an XML "sidecar". (That's in part because many photo workflows discard any other files and just work with the photos themselves). The challenge is what format to use? Our experiments with trying to embed either RDF or XML within XMP didn't work.So, now we're looking at expressing ODRL in JSON.

NewsML-G2

Currently, NewsML-G2 is the IPTC's flagship standard for news exchange. It continues to evolve, with a full production release each year (and "developer" releases in between). At this meeting, APA unveiled a new perl library to make it easier to produce G2. And we learnt about a major effort to compare the details of NewsML-G2 production by major providers, with the goal of harmonizing them, to make it easier for our customers.

Harmony Roof Sculpture - Opera Garnier - Palais Opera by ell brown
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ell-r-brown/3772502193/

Linked Data and the Semantic Web

We heard about interesting progress from the BBC on using rNews and the Storyline Ontology to enrich the presentation of news on the web. The AFP's medialab showed innovative news prototypes, also leverage rNews, including one for extracting quotes by politicians on various topics. And we at the AP discussed some of the details behind our Metadata Services offering.

Join Us

As well as updates on standards and practical sharing of industry information, the once-a-year AGM is when the IPTC updates its policies. At the Paris meeting, we decided to add an additional level of membership: now individuals can join the group, making it easier for people to participate in the standards used by the news industry and allowing them to attend these kinds of face-to-face meetings. Contact the IPTC Office for more information.

Mining for eBooks

In February 2013, the W3C, in partnership with IDPF and BISG, organized a workshop on eBooks, in conjunction with O'Reilly's TOC. I was invited to speak about AP's and IPTC's experience with implementing permissions and restrictions with machine readable rights. (ePub lets you include DRM statements; it seems that some publishers are using ODRL v1; IPTC have selected ODRL v2 for the foundation of RightsML). It was a great experience being on the panel and I got a lot of thoughtful and interesting questions.

eBook Readers Galore by libraryman
http://www.flickr.com/photos/libraryman/5052936803/

eBook Newbie
I'm a bit of a eBook neophyte. However, I learnt a lot from hearing the other publishers talking about their experience, hopes and frustrations with this digital publishing mechanism. And it struck me how similar the news industry is to the book industry. In his opening keynote, Bill McCoy talked about the three main ways that publisher deliver books these days: files, apps and websites. Of course, these are also the three main ways that news is delivered, today, too (not to mention dead trees in both cases for non digital publishing). As various other speakers presented at the workshop, they repeatedly used examples from newspapers and magazines (although, sometimes, as illustrations of what *not* to do). And, it has to be said, both book publishers and news publishers are in the same boat of trying to figure out their digital futures.

For more about both the eBook workshop and TOC, I recommend Ivan Herman's reflections.

Evolution of Readers by jblyberg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jblyberg/4505413539/

Mining for eBooks

Given how easy it is to create and publish an eBook, it would seem that mining a news archive could yield some interesting books. Some news publishers are already conducting experiments with ebooks in this way. For example, the UK's Guardian have a series of Guardian Shorts. (Martin Belam wrote some quite interesting articles about how he worked with the Guardian archive to create ebooks on the Internet and the Olympics). Similarly, Vanity Fair have also started to play with ebooks.

Of course, ebooks aren't the only way to make use of a rich news archive. The New York Times recently launched their TimesMachine which lets you see browse back issues between 1851 and 1922 (“all the news which was fit to print”).

As software continues to eat the world, it will be interesting to see how formerly different kinds of publishers converge and diverge in their attempts to make their digital ways.

Machine Readable Rights: A One Day Conference in Amsterdam

I'm helping to organize a free, one day conference on 12th March 2013 in Amsterdam, to discuss "Machine Readable Rights and the News Industry".

Sunset Over Amsterdam (Frontpage) by Werner Kunz
http://www.flickr.com/photos/werkunz/4565900446/

We're aiming to bring together the major players who are interested in the topic, across business, legal, editorial and technical groups. We have quite a few people who have signed up already, but it isn't too late to register if you're interested in attending - or speaking.

Coffee cup by Doug88888
http://www.flickr.com/photos/doug88888/2953428679/

The IPTC has organized similar one day conferences before. We've found that the presentations and panel discussions are always thought provoking. And the less formal introductions and discussions that happen over the coffee breaks, lunch time chats and after meeting drinks are at least as important.

If you're interested in machine readable rights, then don't hesitate to sign up!

IPTC and Rights Expression Languages

IPTC has been looking at how to express rights for news content. At the Rome IPTC meeting, I presented the work to date (slides are on slideshare). And Daniel Pähler presented ODRL, the Open Digital Rights Language.

The News Industry Need for Machine Readable Rights
Various news publishers have identified the ability to be able to express rights in a machine readable way as being a priority. In part, this reflects the fundamental changes that have been transforming the news industry. Once, an agency such as the Associated Press distributed content to editors at newspapers and broadcasters, who would select which items they would use. In the process of this selection, they would be able to read any editors' notes, which could include any restrictions that needed to be observed. However, increasingly, news outlets are fully automated, with very little - if any - editorial oversight of what is published. Amongst other things, this drives the need for the expression of rights and restrictions in a way that can be evaluated automatically. This automation would allow the editorial process to be more efficient. In general, an editor still needs to exercise their judgement as to whether a particular restriction applies in a particular context. But, automatic evaluation of rights and restrictions can identify the items that need those decisions, rather than having editors inspect every single item. (This exercise of editorial judgement means that these systems are not like DRM, in which particular actions are forbidden and typically enforced by the devices involved).

IPTC and Rights Expression
IPTC reviewed how the various news formats that it maintains allow for the expression of rights. In every case, there are currently semi-structured ways to express rights using natural language, which wouldn't easily allow for the fully machine-readable rights expressions that member companies need to express. On the other hand, the IPTC has consistently decided that it didn't want to develop a machine-readable rights expression itself - members of the IPTC have felt qualified to develop news formats, whereas legal matters are a different domain.

ODRL and ACAP
After reviewing several candidates, we felt that ODRL v2 was the best fit for an existing (though not quite yet complete) rights expression language. In particular, it offers the ability to create an industry-specific rights vocabulary that can be "plugged in" to the ODRL framework. The IPTC has been working with ACAP on developing this vocabulary and with the ODRL group to help refine the ODRL v2 framework itself.

Daniel's slides can be downloaded from the ODRL Wiki.  They give a nice introduction to the ODRL effort and the ODRL v2 approach.

Questions on Rights and ODRL
Daniel and I were asked several questions about rights for news in general and ODRL in particular. For example, there was some discussion about whether rights are really only applicable to photographs (the consensus was no - every media type has increasing amounts of rights being applied). There were questions about how to apply rights to the parts of an item (such as the frames within a video). The partMeta structure of NewsML-G2 handles this nicely (assuming we were to include ODRL within the partMeta structure, which I think we would). There were also questions about what industries are using ODRL today. Chiefly, the mobile phone industry uses ODRL v1 as part of the OMA DRM system (http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2004-05-31-a.html). Daniel explained that there are several academic projects that are using or working on ODRL v2 (Daniel himself is from the University of Koblenz).

Get Involved
You can find out more about the ACAP ODRL profile - and even participate in the work - by visiting the a special Wiki page set up by ODRL for ACAP:

http://odrl.net/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=ACAP+Profile