Museum Guide to Digital Rights Management Published

[David Green <redgen@xxxxxxx>]

Dear Colleagues,

This publication was developed principally for the museum community, but may
be of interest to a wider rights audience.



The Canadian Heritage Information Network has recently announced the online
publication of A MUSEUM GUIDE TO DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT, by David L. Green,
of Knowledge Culture. It is available at
<http://www.pro.rcip-chin.gc.ca/sommaire-summary/gestion_numerique_droits-dig
ital_rights_management-eng.jsp> (and at <http://goo.gl/dvMp>). Materials from
recent presentations on the Guide and the issues it highlights are separately
available on the Slideshare website
<http://www.slideshare.net/event/museum-computer-network-2010>.


**PUBLICATION**
For effective participation in 21st-Century culture, much of which is being
played out via the Internet, museums that are clear about the intellectual
property (IP) rights they own, or are assigned, have distinct advantages.
Effectively managing object and derivative media IP rights enable museums to
more confidently distribute and broadcast images and to cover some of their
costs by licensing their IP for commercial use.

The MUSEUM GUIDE TO DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT details the technical and
strategic decisions involved in managing the rights of objects and their
images by museums today. It is based on a survey of current museum practices
and on interviews with 25 Canadian, US and UK practitioners in the field and
advises its readers on digital rights management good practice, captured in a
set of Summary Recommendations.

Going beyond the limited "asset-protection" understanding of "DRM", this Guide
takes a broader view of Digital Rights Management, based on the end-to-end
rights-and-reproductions workflow familiar to all museums.

In addition to charting the impact of digital technologies on streamlining and
automating rights management workflow in the museum, the Guide calls attention
to the critical role that IP Management now has in the cultural heritage
community today. The author maintains that there are increasing pressures for
museums to be explicitly clear about the rights they have (and do not have)
for displaying and reproducing images of the objects in their collections, and
how images of their works can and cannot be re-used by the museum, commercial
entities and the public.

It is the Web that is largely responsible for the shift from institutions'
earlier concern over the rights of those comparatively few images captured
from a museum's collection for publication in catalogs and art books, to the
expectation today that a museums entire collection will be photographed,
cataloged and posted online. This shift demands a new approach to researching,
capturing and communicating the rights of a museum's entire collection.

The first section of the CHIN Museum Guide to Digital Rights Management is a
retrospective review of rights management through various technical means,
from the rise of computerization, through to early collections management
systems, digital asset management systems and end-to-end rights management
systems.

The second section, reviewing current practice and extrapolating good practice
in museum rights management, is organized around the rights management
workflow, from assessing the intellectual property that the museum owns or
needs to acquire permission to use, through recording and tracking the status
of those IP rights, to licensing IP to third parties and recording and
tracking those licenses. Each section is followed by succinct
recommendations.


**PRESENTATIONS**
Supporting the publication of the Museum Guide to Digital Rights Management
are materials from the 2010 Museum Computer Network (MCN) Conference panel
session, "COPYRIGHT & TECHNOLOGY."

Slide presentations available on the MCN2010 Slideshare Events page
<http://www.slideshare.net/event/museum-computer-network-2010> include the
following:

* David Green's presentation on the Guide,
<http://www.slideshare.net/redgen/museum-guide-to-digital-rights-management>,
together with a transcript at
<http://www.slideshare.net/redgen/museum-guide-to-digital-rights-management-t
alk-transcript>.

* Deborah Wythe's "Rights Transparency: The Brooklyn Museum's Copyright
Project," at
<http://www.slideshare.net/dwythe/mcn-2010-brooklynmuseumcopyrightprojectwyth
e-5634335>.

* Alan Newman's "Digital Asset Management + Image Intellectual Property
Management," at <http://www.slideshare.net/alannewman/newman-damip-mcn2010>.

* Jeff Sedlik's "PLUS," presented by Alan Newman, at
<http://www.slideshare.net/alannewman/plus-newman-mcn-2010>, and

* Darci Vanderhoff's, "The Phillips Collection, Watermarking using Digimarc,"
at
<http://www.slideshare.net/darcivan/the-phillips-collection-watermarking-usin
g-digimarc>.


The two-page set of Summary Recommendations drawn from the Guide will shortly
be available on the CHIN website and can be found, for the time being, at the
Slideshare site: http://www.slideshare.net/redgen/recommendations-5636582.


David Green is Principal at Knowledge Culture; Deborah Wythe is Head of
Digital Collections and Services, The Brooklyn Museum; Alan Newman is Chief,
Digital Imaging & Visual Services, The National Gallery of Art and a PLUS
Boardmember; Jeff Sedlik is President & CEO, The PLUS Coalition; and Darci
Vanderhoff is CIO, The Phillips Collection.


Thank you for your attention.


David L. Green, PhD
Principal, Knowledge Culture Consulting
www.knowledgeculture.com
davidgreen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
@redgen
203-307-5037