Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Some interesting comments from SIIA panel on licensing digital info

There is a perception that young people are the only ones that don't understand copyright--but that's not exclusive to young people. Lots of bloggers, and people who are trying to collaborate in corporate settings, and a whole host of others don't understand the copyright as well as other rights and licensing of content.

"Just because you Google something doesn't mean you can use it in a Powerpoint presentation" Mindy Pennington, Manager, External Content, Library Svcs, Pfizer Global Research & Development.

Ed Colleran, Sr. Director, International Relations from the Copyright Clearance Center: they have created tools to help make it clear about licensing and use of digital content (I wonder what kinds of tools those might be?)

When content is connected with ongoing business, licensing and such becomes a different issue than when individuals use it. I'm wondering if anyone on this panel can comment on the GateHouse vs. NYTimesCo.?

Ed Colleran mentions how the Financial Times releases a certain number of articles for free, then some after registering, which can then lead to purchasing (sounds like a "freemium" model.)

This conversation also makes me think of small-town online newspapers, and if people will buy content from a small paper if they can't get it for free (honestly, I'd say yes...)

Looking at iTunes, if it's easy to pay, and people want the info or product,they will pay--(to paraphrase) Caitlin Grusauskas, a 3rd yr student at Columbia U. School of Law

Dominic Young on the biggest challenges facing content providers: "things like ACAP can help. Innovating in creating the business models that will work for publishers is important" (yes, and knowledge of different business models are important--is that knowledge there?) Right products to attract the biggest audiences.

Ed Colleran: not about text only. people want video, photo, etc. CCC sees that as licensing all that content a big thing. Ed sees future in Creative Commons, esp. for smaller content producers.

Mindy Pennington: publishers more flexible and relevant on what is/isn't licensed and how much is licensing. Esp. for info that's more along the lines of corporate info.

Caitlin: To have multiple licensing, multipule pricing structures. to enable people to share accordingly, is important.

Ed C.: people need to be educated on what they can and can't use. (this is a media literacy issue. how do we begin to work media literacy into the school curriculum. would we get more "media literate" if everyone had to take a journalism class?)

Lots of things said by this panel are things I've heard before, but there don't seem to be any new insights. Hearing about content use between people in corporate settings is one issue (this was new to me). Individual use outside of corporations another. And corporations using and building businesses on other people's content is another issue. There are so many types and kinds of publishers that it may require a variety of licenses, but will knowledge of these licenses be known only to people who access that kind of content regularly? When access to all kinds of content crosses different sectors of the populace, how might the populace know all the kinds of rights they can or cannot obtain?

No comments: