The Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property and Growth recommended that:

“In order to boost UK firms’ access to transparent, contestable and global digital markets, the UK should establish a cross sectoral Digital Copyright Exchange… A range of incentives and disincentives will be needed to encourage rights holders and others to take part. Governance should reflect the interests of participants, working to an agreed code of practice.”

In its Response, the Government has stated that it wants to see a DCE, or something like it, to speed up copyright licensing and thus enable new business opportunities.

Brief History

• April 2010 – The Digital Economy Act receives Royal Assent.
• November 2010 – Prime Minister David Cameron announces an independent review of how the Intellectual Property framework supports growth and innovation.
• May 2011 – Professor Ian Hargreaves published his Independent review of IP & growth including 10 recommendations. One of which is for the creation of the world’s first Digital Copyright Exchange.
• August 2011 – The Government publishes its response to the Hargreaves review which accepts all ten of Professor Hargreaves’ recommendations. The Government’s goal is to have measures in place by the end of this Parliament
• November 2011 – Richard Hooper is appointed by the Government to conduct a feasibility study on implementing a Digital Copyright Exchange in the UK. The purpose of the exchange, which was first proposed in the Hargreaves Review of IP and Growth last May, would be to allow content users to license copyrighted material from rights-holders simply and transparently through an online platform.

What are the benefits of the Digital Copyright Exchange?

It is hoped that this will make it easier for rights owners, small and large, to sell licences in their work and for others to buy them. It will make market transactions faster, more automated and cheaper. The result will be a UK market in digital copyright which is better informed and more readily capable of resolving disputes without costly litigation.

How will the Digital Copyright Exchange be implemented?

Richard Hooper has been tasked with conducting a feasibility study on implementing a DCE. The study will be done in two phases. Phase 1 is diagnostic, looking at what are the issues surrounding copyright licensing in and for the digital age. Phase 2 will examine and recommend the range of potential solutions to any issues found.

The study is currently in phase 1. Richard is meeting with a range of stakeholders interested in the Digital Copyright Exchange idea, and he has put together a number of events where he can talk specifically to digital startups who act (or are trying to act) as content licensees.

Essential to the process are detailed, productive and candid discussions about the issues startups currently face in licensing matters and how a digital exchange could help address those.

Where can I find the Call for Evidence? 

The Call for Evidence document available on the IPO website.

Could lessons from the past help deliver economic growth and enhance online reputational value for content creators contributing to the ‘digital economy’ in the UK today? Could a ‘Made in Digital Britain/UK’ help us demonstrate quality and value in a global market? Sure terms like ‘Britain’ and ‘UK’ are politically loaded terms it seems these days, but the variants cited above may provide a way in which either ‘UK PLC’ or the home nations could express their digital offer in a more compelling way.

 As we enter the second decade of the Digital Revolution, we see a propensity of policy and strategy reports highlighting the UK’s credentials for innovation and entrepreneurship through the exploitation of digital technologies, alongside disappointingly numerous impact and quality initiatives. Many of these originate from publicly funded agencies, all keen to stress their digital credentials. Yet, a simple ‘tag’ – graphic, metadata or other expression of ‘Made in Digital Britain/UK’ might help us stress the UK ’s unique contribution to this digital revolution in an increasing complex and cluttered online market.

Politicians and other policy makers might begin to see the ‘value proposition’ of digital content, whether it be games, multimedia or other assets being generated at an extraordinary rate in the UK as a measureable and valuable contribution towards a truly digital economy. This may be considered a ‘jingoistic’ or somehow part of a ‘new imperialism’, but if the UK is to succeed in this new paradigm and adopt affordable solutions to market its unique skills, expertise and knowledge in a global market, then perhaps the lessons of the 19^th century might help inform the opportunities of the 21^st century.

Needless to say, the term ‘Made in Digital Britain/UK’ (or home nation variants) might be applied selectively in the first instance to digital content originating from ‘assured suppliers’ in the public and private sectors perhaps? We would want this ‘trusted’ identifier to be considered the modern day equivalent to today’s ‘Rolls Royce’ rather than yesterdays ‘British Leyland’ in terms of international reputation.

We could envisage a raft of reasons why this tactic might be misguided, impossible to instigate or plain wrong, but just how many meetings, conferences or other resource intensive activity on ‘impact’ or ‘quality’ will we have to endure before we can offer the world a ‘trusted’ identifier that marks out what is truly ‘unique, valuable and difficult to emulate’ from the British (English, Northern Irish, Scottish or Welsh perhaps) digital offer.

As custodians of the nation’s cultural heritage, galleries, museums, libraries and archives regularly acquire analogue works and incorporate them into their collections. The objects that these organisations acquire are normally not digital images, but the original objects themselves. The type of objects most likely to be acquired by the cultural heritage sector includes original paintings, original photographic prints, manuscripts and other archival works, books and journals, sculptures and archaeological objects.  The acquisition of born digital objects is still relatively rare, but there are internationally recognised standards regarding provenance in these cases. Consequently, the orphan works issues facing cultural heritage organisations are, to a large extent, related to the analogue back file, estimated at 13 million objects, held at public expense in collections that can only exhibit or make access available to a small fraction.

The cultural heritage sector receives funding to ensure that it creates digital objects, including images, from these analogue collections. This not only ensures that digital images are captured by the sector, together with metadata for preservation purposes, but also widens access to the UK’s cultural heritage so that it can be used for education and research. This digitisation work ensures that images of collection works can be viewed by the public even if the physical objects are either too fragile or too numerous to display.

Although the sector works closely wherever possible with the living creators (and/or their agents) of works represented in an organisation’s collections, often it will acquire works from people or organisations that have no direct relationship with the original creator, such as auction houses, private collectors and members of the public. These objects may change hands many times before a work is acquired by the cultural heritage sector, and the fact that it is possible to own the physical work while not owning the copyright further muddies the waters. Unpublished text-based works are often the most likely candidates to be “orphaned” because either the duration of copyright has meant that the link to the rights holders has been lost; rights holders do not know that they are rights holders; the creator died intestate; or a company was liquidated without allocation of the assets. Such is this problem that 50% of works owned by archives may be orphan works, as reported in the In From the Cold survey.

This means that, despite all best efforts, establishing and contacting the rights-owner of a work is not always possible. However, it will always be “despite all best efforts”. Cultural heritage organisations take their responsibilities very seriously regarding the acquisition and care of collections. Where objects are acquired without any information, curators and collection management specialists will spend considerable time researching objects in order to find out their provenance, history, rights holders etc as well as capturing and storing pre-existing information. They will often research the object on the internet, refer to online databases, such as the WATCH file, carry out research in libraries and archives, advertise in the press, hunt for publications by the same creator and contact trade and professional organisations. This type of research is core to the work of the qualified and skilled professionals working in our cultural heritage sector and carried out in accordance with national and internationally recognised standards, such as SPECTRUM. SPECTRUM is the core standard for collections management and is used in over 7000 museums worldwide. If the rights holder for a collection work could be found, often the professionals working in the Cultural Heritage sector would find them!

Some cultural heritage organisations will take a risk-managed approach. They will  decide that, after carrying out reasonable searches to trace the rights holder, if the works remain orphan works it is within the public’s interest and part of their role as publically funded custodians of these works to publish digital images of these objects online. Interestingly, there is anecdotal evidence from several organisations who have noted that putting digital images of their collection works online, which include orphan works, has been positively welcomed by rights holders who have been reunited with objects with which that they had lost touch.

In 2009, the In From the Cold report established that professionals working in the cultural heritage sector can spend over half a day trying to trace a single rights holder. Conservatively estimated, this would mean that it would take in the region of 6 million days’ effort to trace rights holders for the estimated 13 million orphan works that exist within the cultural heritage sector alone.

This is an enormous figure and clearly requires some kind of solution or sets of solutions which recognise and reward rights holders, but at the same time frees up access to these important works. However, it should be noted that the current survey is mainly interested in raising the issue of orphan works as a concern by cultural heritage and education sector and understanding the depth and breadth of this issue. No recommendations have been made in this survey in terms of a policy solution. The aim here is to raise the issue, not outline the solution. To support this, the survey is open to all. While it is primarily aimed at capturing the experience of those working with and in education and cultural heritage specifically, it does permit, as witnessed by some creators, the inclusion of a wide spectrum of experiences. We are supportive of fair and appropriate recompense to all rights holders. We note – and welcome – that despite criticism by the Stop 43 group, the survey has been completed by a number of photographers keen to contribute towards its findings.

We would like to thank those who have taken the time and effort to complete the survey and express their comments via this blog.

The final consultation on implementing the Hargreaves Review is most likely to be published in mid-December, which is very much welcomed by the SCA. The consultation will have a three months response time, with a deadline expected to  be in mid March. It is expected that this will ask for more evidence and suggestions on how to implement the new exceptions into law.

More recently, the IPO and the Ministry of Justice have announced the implementation of a small claims track to the Patents County Court (soon to be renamed the IP County Court). This recommendation was first made by the Jackson Review, and re-affirmed by Hargreaves. It is excepted that following a final consultation on the details the small claims track will be implemented early next year. The background is that IP disputes currently can only be dealt with through “multi-track”, according to the Civil Procedure Rules. Multi-track is most appropriate for commercial disputes with a value of over 25k. The small claims track will be designed to deal with IP disputes of a value up to k5. The idea is that it will provide small and medium sized businesses, as well as individual copyright owners, such as photographers, with better and affordable access to justice. See http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/hargreaves.htm

And, last but not least, the IPO has announced the appointment of Richard Hooper to lead Digital Copyright Exchange feasibility study. The Digital Copyright Exchange being one of the more high profile recommendations of Hargreaves. This study will be undertaken over the coming 6 months, Richard Hooper saying:

“I want to talk to people across and outside the sector to find out how they see the licensing challenges facing them. As part of that process, I’ll be looking to meet the key players and to provide opportunities for all those interested to air their views. We will then be able to forge some common understanding so that I can look to produce appropriate industry-led solutions which respond to the spirit of Hargreaves’ vision.”

For more info see http://www.ipo.gov.uk/about/press/press-release/press-release-2011/press-release-20111122.htm

We need your help in building the evidence base to support you to deliver digital content more efficiently and effectively, so we are asking you to complete this short survey: http://1686881.polldaddy.com/s/orphan-works-survey.

We know what a chore survey completion can be, but we think it is important to provide policymakers with empirical evidence on which to base decisions rather than lobbynomics. The survey will only take a few minutes and as a thank you we will enter your name to the prize draw – giving you a chance to win a new Kindle! The closing date for the survey is Friday 16 December 2011, names will be entered into a prize draw and winners will be notified by email. We will publish the results of the survey in January 2012.

Some background:
In 2011, the SCA and CT have been joined by LIBER, Museums Galleries Scotland, Scottish Library and Information Council, Research Libraries UK (RLUK)  and SCONUL in an attempt to gauge the changes, through this online survey, that have occurred since the original report was published. The results will be shared with UK IPO, HMG, EC and European Parliament.   In the recent Independent Review of IP and Growth, Professor Ian Hargreaves stated that the government “…should begin by legislating to release for use the vast treasure trove of copyright works which are effectively unavailable – “orphan works” – to which access is in practice barred because the copyright holder cannot be traced. This is a move with no economic downside”. Many other countries already have solutions for orphan works. The European Union is also proposing a Directive on Orphan Works.

The seminar, aimed at arts organisations and artists from across England, drew on a mixture of arts sector case studies and discussions about the many opportunities and issues associated with archive content.

Speakers included:

• Roly Keating, Director of Archive Content, BBC
• Andrew Nairne, Executive Director Arts, Arts Council England
• Dr Paul Gerhardt, Digital Archives Associate for Arts Council England, Archives for Creativity
• Professor Sarah Whatley, Professor of Dance, Coventry University
• Cassandra Carias, Senior Associate, Harbottle & Lewis LLP
• Naomi Korn, IP Consultant
• Siobhan Davis, Siobhan Davis Studios

Get a flavour of the day from the videos below, which feature interviews with the SCA’s Sarah Fahmy, Stuart Dempster and Naomi Korn as well as many of the other speakers and participants in the event.

Expert view: creative use of archive:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Seminar highlights:

Click here to view the embedded video.

IP tips for creating digital archives:

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Jeff Lynn -   Chief Executive Officer, Seedrs Limited, Chairman, The Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec)
• John McNaught – Deputy Director, National Centre for Text Mining, University of Manchester
• Ben White – Head of Intellectual Property, British Library
• Naomi Korn – IP Consultant, JISC
• Philip Ditchfield – Contracts and Licensing Manager, GlaxoSmithKline

6 October New York, NY and London, UK –Ithaka S+R, with funding from the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance, released today “Revenue, Recession, Reliance: Revisiting the SCA/Ithaka S+R Case Studies in Sustainability”, a report that reviews the impact of tumultuous times on the business models of 12 digital projects first profiled by Ithaka S+R in 2009.  

Some of the projects profiled include the UK’s National Archives’ Licensed Internet Associates programme, which has shown major revenue growth in recent years despite budget cuts felt by the entire institution; Cornell University’s eBird, which has experimented with partnerships to develop new revenue generating offerings for users; and the University of Southampton’s Library Digitisation Unit, which has made strategic choices to better align its mission with that of the university.

Nearly all of the projects profiled live under the umbrella of larger institutions.  One of the key findings to emerge is that many of these projects are relying on their host institutions for support to an even greater extent than two years ago. Whether this is a good arrangement and what this means for their future remains to be seen.

“While some project leaders have pursued an aggressive awareness-building strategy within their host institutions as a way of ensuring ongoing support, others have preferred to fly under the radar,” commented co-author and Ithaka S+R Programme Manager, Nancy Maron. “Either way, where host support is a major part of the sustainability plan, aligning project goals with the host’s mission is especially important.”

The report notes that difficult economic times have called for deep across-the-board spending cuts at many organisations, which can deny digital resource projects the capital investment they need just as they are beginning to grow. Many of the projects studied had the intention of contributing revenue to their host, but only some were successful in doing so, and even those were unable to fully support their ongoing costs.

“This research concentrates on organisations coming to terms with the long term liabilities incurred in digital projects and post-grant funding,” stated Stuart Dempster, Director of the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance.  “It’s not just the actions the project teams have taken but the reasoning behind those choices that will help others start to determine which strategies, or parts of them, might serve as models for their own projects.”

The projects that had the most success did not follow one particular business model but rather spent a tremendous time understanding all of their stakeholders – from their users to university administrators and volunteers. 

“There is no single path to sustainability,” stated Kevin Guthrie, president of ITHAKA. “Successful projects understand the value they offer to their most important constituents and are able to adjust their approaches to meet new challenges and changing conditions.”  

The cases covered include scholar-led initiatives (Electronic Enlightenment, eBird, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London, the National Science Digital Library MSP2: Middle School Math and Science Pathway, the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae), library and museum projects (The National Archives, L’Institut national de l’audiovisuel, the University of Southampton Library Digitisation Unit, V&A Images), and publishing projects (Hindawi, DigiZeitschriften) with a diverse range of revenue models (e.g., subscription-based projects, endowment-funded resources, and open access digital libraries). 

These case studies form part of a long term commitment by the Strategic Content Alliance to provide empirically-based evidence freely to education, research and cultural bodies in the development of digital content. This research is ongoing with the development of a new digital entrepreneurship syllabus due for delivery in summer 2012.

Revenue, Recession, Reliance: Revisiting the SCA / Ithaka Case Studies in Sustainability (October 2011)

This full report includes a full summary of the research and findings, all 12 case studies and a decision-making tool

In 2011, two years and one economic crisis later after the intial 2009 case studies were undertaken, a new round of research and interviews was conducted with the leaders of the twelve projects that were the focus of our original case studies. Our goal was to see how their sustainability models had held up, where weaknesses might be starting to show, and what new strategies project leaders were adopting in response. How had budget cuts and other factors affected the projects? What had project leaders learned about making their resources valuable to users? Where did the resources – financial or non-financial – come from to make continued growth and innovation possible? And how could these lessons be useful to others?

Summary report

This report includes a full summary of the research, methodology and findings

Executive Summary

Briefing paper

You’ve received a grant and made the case to your organisation to digitise content or otherwise develop an online resource. Your team executes the plan to the letter, and the result is a thing of beauty. What happens next? This briefing paper gives hints, tips and suggestions around sustainability planning for those involved in creating, managing or otherwise supporting digital content.

Decision-Making Tool/Framework

When planning to build a digital resource, project leaders tend to spend a great deal of time thinking about the execution of the project itself, and considerably less time thinking about what will happen once the resource is built and operational. This decision-making tool/ framework can help project leaders and those who support them to better define the activities, costs and revenues that will be needed to achieve the sustainable outcomes they desire. All types of projects should find this useful and use some of the principles outlined here to guide the process by which they consider sustainability planning

Podcast

In this podcast, Nancy Maron, programme manager at Ithaka S+R joins JISC’s Rebecca O’Brien to discuss this work. Nancy explains the sticking points in research funding and shares the lessons learnt from organisations based in Egypt, France, Germany, the UK and the USA to see which strategies have been adopted in order to sustain their online digital resources over the long term.

In 2009, Ithaka S+R published twelve detailed case studies of online digital resources, exploring the strategies project leaders were using to sustain those projects for the long term. All of the case studies have been updated in 2011. Read on to find out more and download the case studies.

It is striking to note the cavalcade of business know-how and other associated sustainability advice and guidance – printed, electronic and events being aimed at organisations such as colleges, universities, libraries, museums etc as a result of the current perfect storm of reduced funding, recession and rapid technological change.

These case studies are truly unique, as they cite real world financial information, something conveniently overlooked by many other publications. We have revisited a cross-section of emergent internet business models and how these are being applied not just at a particular moment in time, but over a two year period from 2009-2011.

Each case study takes into account the effects of reduced funding, staffing cuts, organisation change, new revenue streams and changes in tack and direction by some.

These case studies are aimed at assisting practitioners understand the challenges and opportunities being addressed by developers of digital content collections at home and abroad in education and cultural heritage-type organisations during turbulent times.

We will be releasing a comprehensive report, based on these case studies, including a synthesis of emergent trends, executive summary and a supportive decision-making tool at the Arts Council England-BBC Academy Building Capacity in the Arts archives event on 6th October 2011. This event will be followed by a series of webinars from mid-October onwards. If you would like to know more about this, or are interested in receiving further information on future sustainability work, please email s.dempster@jisc.ac.uk

The cases covered include scholar-led initiatives, library and museum projects, and publishing projects with a diverse range of revenue models (e. subscription-based projects, endowment-funded resources, and open access digital libraries).

Download the case studies

• Department of Digital Humanities (formerly, Centre for Computing in the Humanities), King’s College London (UK) – A degree-granting academic department supporting research projects in the digital humanities that has faced challenges due to recent changes in the UK funding system (http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2009/05/iDF153-SCA_Ithaka_CaseStudies_v2_CCH_v1-03.pdf)

• DigiZeitschriften, Göttingen State and University Library (Germany) – An archive of German language scholarly journals supported by a library partnership model and institutional subscriptions that covers its costs, but may have challenges ahead (http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2009/05/iDF153-SCA_Ithaka_CaseStudies_v2_DigiZeit_v1-03.pdf)

• eBird, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University (USA) – A web-based database of birding observations that has thrived by serving both amateur bird-watchers and academic researchers (http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2009/05/iDF153-SCA_Ithaka_CaseStudies_v2_eBird_v1-03a.pdf)

• Electronic Enlightenment, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (UK) – An online collection of edited correspondence from the early seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, which illustrates the benefits and challenges of outsourcing key functions (http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2009/05/iDF153-SCA_Ithaka_CaseStudies_v2_ElectEnlight_v1-03-1.pdf)

• Hindawi Publishing Corporation (Egypt) – A for-profit publishing company that has grown by using an open access contributor-pays business model (http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2009/05/iDF153-SCA_Ithaka_CaseStudies_v2_Hindawi_v1-03.pdf)

• Inamédiapro and ina.fr, L’Institut national de l’audiovisuel (France) – Two divisions within the National Audiovisual Institute that illustrate the balance of mission-based goals and revenue generation (http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2009/05/iDF153-SCA_Ithaka_CaseStudies_v2_INA_v1-03a.pdf)

• Licensed Internet Associates Programme, The National Archives (UK). An initiative within The National Archives (TNA) that works with commercial partners to digitise their holdings, and to enhance the value of that content through careful selection and curation (http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2009/05/iDF153-SCA_Ithaka_CaseStudies_v2_TNA-_v1-03a.pdf)

• The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways, National Science Digital Library. The Ohio State University (USA) – An online network of collections, services, and tools for math and science teachers that faces an uncertain future as the end of its grant funding approaches (http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2009/05/iDF153-SCA_Ithaka_CaseStudies_v2_MSP2_v1-03.pdf)

• Southampton Library Digitisation Unit (formerly, BOPCRIS), Hartley Library, University of Southampton (UK) – A university library-based digitisation center that has shifted focus from providing services to external clients to serving its host institution (http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2009/05/iDF153-SCA_Ithaka_CaseStudies_v2_Southampton-_v1-03.pdf)

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University (USA) – An online open access encyclopedia with user-contributed content which launched a ‘freemium’ model to supplement payouts from its project endowment (http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2009/05/iDF153-SCA_Ithaka_CaseStudies_v2_SEP_v1-03.pdf)

• Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, University of California, Irvine (USA) – A digitised collection of ancient Greek texts, whose subscription model has strengthened by its efforts to broaden its audience (http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2009/05/iDF153-SCA_Ithaka_CaseStudies_v2_TLG-_v1-03.pdf)

• V&A Images, Victoria and Albert Museum (UK) -The image licensing unit at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which struggled to cover costs of its commercial activities, while also providing free services to the larger organisation and to researchers (http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2009/05/iDF153-SCA_Ithaka_CaseStudies_v2_VAImages-_v1-03.pdf)

You can also download the individual case studies and  receive alerts on the October release at http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/research/case-studies-in-sustainability-2011/case-studies-in-sustainability-2011/

Find the original case studies and reports here: http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/business-modelling-publications/

JISC ITT Strategic Content Alliance: Digital Content Sustainability Syllabus Development

The JISC, on behalf of the Strategic Content Alliance (SCA) invites tenders to create a syllabus of open digital resources and related training courses. This syllabus is intended to foster the development of a new generation of “digital entrepreneurs” within institutions and organisations who can support the long term sustainability and exploitation of cultural, educational and not-for-profit digital content.

The deadline for tenders is 12 noon UK time on Monday 17 October 2011.

JISC ITT: Strategic Content Alliance: Digital Content and Host Institutions Support Strategies

The JISC, on behalf of the Strategic Content Alliance (SCA) invites tenders to research the techniques and strategies being deployed by grant-funded digital content project leaders (e.g. project managers, senior responsible owners, collection developers) in eliciting host institutional decision makers (e.g. Provosts, Vice Chancellors, ICT Heads) support for the long term (post grant) development and sustainability of cultural, educational and not-for-profit digital content.

The deadline for tenders is 12 noon UK time on Monday 10^th October 2011.