The video department’s flat-file system is one of the many SQL-based products popular with small television stations in the recent past. These systems allowed for the logging of video in a quick and dirty way, and as you scan through the cataloging information in the system you will discover that, indeed, most of the data are dirty: Each producer had its own style of entering notes, and in some cases files are duplicated because one producer couldn’t find another’s work. To sort out video access for your new employer, you’ll have to implement both digital preservation tactics as well as digitize the videos for preservation and access.
For the digital preservation/content migration effort, a programmer with a proven track record in custom ETL writing should be hired. After the digital asset manager works with the ETL programmer to ETL the data, the videos can be digitized or loaded to match the metadata records by using the bar codes as a guide. Once the videos themselves are associated with as many records as possible, metadata cleanup can begin. There are many cataloging outsourcing firms available to do this kind of work, as mentioned in Chapter 5, including those that specialize in video, like Apex CoVantage. If the company your organization contracts with to digitize video can’t or won’t add or edit metadata in your system, and instead tries to talk you into paying to use its proprietary DAM, find another company. Your videos, and their metadata, should reside in one DAM that belongs to your organization. Use the failure of the legacy scanning project as a warning to anyone who tries to talk you into proprietary storage solutions;
both digital preservation and digitization for preservation hold long-term access as a primary goal in their efforts.
Solutions Summary
There is more than one solution for each of the migration scenarios listed here, and new techniques and best practices are emerging all the time, as both digital preservation and digitization for preservation mature. In your career as a digital asset manager, you will likely confront migrations just like these, as well as even more challenging projects. One of the main tenets of all preservation work is to make sure that your work doesn’t leave a mess for someone else to clean up down the road. This means documenting your processes, following the best practices listed by the Library of Congress, Society of American Archivists, Association of Moving Image Archivists, and American Library Association.
Don’t reinvent the wheel and thus invent a new preservation or access problem for your successors. Always design your preservation work as if you might win the lottery and retire to your own private island in the morning, to never speak of legacy systems, content migration, or accessibility ever again.
Conclusions
While this chapter approaches digital preservation and digitization for preservation with the understanding that digital asset managers want to migrate and preserve everything, the reality of limited resources (time, money, and people) means that we can’t save everything. Prioritize the funds and hours available to getting collections in the DAM based not only on immediate need, but also on the rate at which stored media may be decaying or becoming inaccessible.
There are many workshops, web sites, and publications available on the topics of digital preservation and digitization for preservation. Listed here are just a few resources; remember when approaching digitization for preservation in particular that active professional communities are likely in your area wrestling with many of the issues you may encounter.
Conservation OnLine (
• http://cool.conservation-us.org/topics.html) contains many reliable links to publications and discussions on both digital preservation and digitization for preservation.
The Digital Preservation Coalition (
• http://dpconline.org) is one of the most respected organizations in the field, and it offers both publications and training.
The Library of Congress Digital Preservation web site (
• http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/)
regularly publishes on new developments in the field, as well as highlighting the processes being used at the library for projects in progress.
The National Archives in the United Kingdom (
• http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
information-management/projects-and-work/digital-preservation.htm) is often slightly ahead of the Library of Congress in digital preservation measures, but it publishes less frequently.
The Society of American Archivists (
• http://saa.archivists.org/4DCGI/events/
ConferenceList.html?Action=GetEvents) runs regular classes on topics related to digital preservation and digitization for preservation, both in a live online format and day-long classes in person. These classes are taught by professionals active in their fields and are attended by professionals working with active collections.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a web site (
• http://digitalpreservation.
ncdcr.gov/) that provides digital preservation education materials within a well-designed web site.
Brand and Rights Management
Chapter Goal: To outline how digital asset management systems (DAMs) function in both brand management and rights management initiatives.
Two Sides of the Same Licensed Coin
Earlier in this book, both brand management and rights management came up repeatedly in reference to other subjects. Both were mentioned as the first justifications for why an organization might need a DAM in Chapter 2.
In Chapter 7, a brand-request workflow was used as an example of why a separate web portal was desirable for DAM access by outsiders. In the discussion of return on investment (ROI), both brand and rights management figured prominently in Chapter 10. Because the issues of intellectual property (IP), creative governance, and building consensus of ideas are inherent to digital asset management, so brand management and rights management are inherent to DAM systems. More important, brand and rights management are two sides of the same coin: brand management is IP management by the license holder; rights management is
IP management by the licensee.
“Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.” (Confucius, Analects XV.24) Knowing that these two concepts are so closely linked, it behooves digital asset managers in conversation on these topics to point out that we should never expect to impose on others rules and regulations regarding copyright that we would not expect of ourselves. This can be a difficult ethical rule to follow, though, as both concepts of brand and rights management have complex meanings layered with legal jargon and rules that change, and this can lead to frequent misunderstandings and differing interpretations across a single organization, let alone any one industry.
This chapter will outline the general rules of rights management and their implications for brand management as the general rules exist at the writing of this book. Readers should be aware that as the information age is just now upon us, the way society deals with laws governing image rights, privacy, and copyright are shifting and vary widely from state to state, and even more between countries.
Rentism as an Economic Model
While most readers will be familiar with the three currently dominant political/economic constructs of capitalism, socialism, and communism, many may be surprised that copyright forms the basis of another economic model with nearly as much geopolitical intrigue as the big three: rentism. The concept takes its name from the traditional idea of landlords and renters; the landlord owns the property and dictates how it may be used, while the person who actually lives in the house is a renter, paying a fee for limited kinds of use. The landlord thus extracts wealth
from his or her possession not through production of goods or selling of goods but by managing property for others to use. In his article “Four Futures,” Peter Frase explains a possible rentism future thusly:
Suppose, for example, that all production is by means of Star Trek’s replicator. In order to make money from selling replicated items, people must somehow be prevented from just making whatever they want for free, and this is the function of intellectual property. A replicator is only available from a company that licenses you the right to use one, since anyone who tried to give you a replicator or make one with their own replicator would be violating the terms of their license. What’s more, every time you make something with the replicator, you must pay a licensing fee to whoever owns the rights to that particular thing. In this world, if Star Trek’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard wanted to replicate his beloved “tea, Earl Grey, hot,” he would have to pay the company that has copyrighted the replicator pattern for hot Earl Grey tea. (Source: Peter Frase, “Four Futures”, Jacobin Magazine, December 2011)
Rentism solves the problem of how anyone would make money from hot tea ever again once it was available to everyone via a replicator; thus rentism is a reaction against the end of scarcity of consumer goods. Whether you have problems with the ethical and moral arguments underpinning rentism or not, the concept has become deeply entrenched in international law. Treaties and lawsuits over IP are evergreen in the news, and entire subcultures and companies, such as Pirate Bay and Bit Torrent, have become devoted to subverting and avoiding them on the Internet.
The truth is that we already live in the future of the Star Trek replicator, as far as digital assets are concerned.
The Internet allows for an infinite number of ways to duplicate any image or text in any format, at any time, for free.
However, if you believe that you are bound by ethics and morals to pay photographers, graphic designers, and other creative personnel for the use of their work, then you need to use your DAM to manage both the license your organization takes out to use the work of others as well as the license your organization grants for use of their own IP.
If you do not believe that you are bound by ethics and morals to manage your licenses, both granted and accepted, then you might want to consider that you are most certainly bound by the law. The penalties for IP infringement vary widely but should not be ignored.
“Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” (Buddha, Udanavarga 5:18)
A Quick-and-Dirty Guide to Rights Management
Every DAM should have the ability to associate rights documentation with all assets, period. If your organization stores rights documentation separate from imagery before implementation of a DAM, this practice should cease with DAM implementation. This can occur with the linkage of a legal documentation system to the DAM or by storing scans and/or copies of legal documentation in the DAM as related files to assets. Rights information is critical to the use of assets, so storing assets separate from this information impacts the usefulness of the DAM as an endeavor.
Key to understanding rights management in any country is that at any time, a digital asset manager should be able to pull up the rights associated with an asset. While rights violations sometimes arise out of simple
misunderstandings, the unambiguous proof of intent to do the right thing by rightsholders will always save the day.
When trying to do right by copyright holders, digital asset managers should keep the following four rules in mind.
Everyone Owns His or Her Own Face
Never publish or distribute an image of a person without his or her permission, ever. While current law allows for news organizations only to publish or broadcast images of persons without their consent, for-profit and educational organizations should never do so. While there is “wiggle room” in the law in some jurisdictions for educational or nonprofit organizations to use images of people without their express written consent, it’s generally considered a bad idea. A common complaint heard from public relations personnel is that while their organization is for-profit,
they are providing material for news organizations and thus shouldn’t be bound by the permissions rule. This is false;
just because you work in PR doesn’t mean that you work for a news organization, and many, many lawsuits have been filed that back this up. If there’s one hard-and-fast rule in copyright and licensing, it’s that everyone, all over the world, owns his or her own face, and one’s face cannot be used without one’s express permission.
Digital asset managers often become the unfortunate bearers of bad news when images are turned in to the DAM without documentation of permission to photograph by the people in the pictures. Public relations folk don’t like to hear that none of the images of that celebrity visit are usable or that no pictures of all those kids hugging the company mascot can be distributed. Digital asset managers must be polite but firm: no image distribution without legal permissions from the persons pictured. If you are the one put in this uncomfortable spot, make sure that you have company lawyers to back you up. If the company regularly asks you to break this rule, look for another job. An employer that distributes images of persons without permission likely has little to no concern for the rights of others or is operating with a potentially catastrophic misunderstanding of IP laws that could permanently damage your career.
Never Assume a Location Is Copyright-Free
Laws regarding the use of locations in imagery are currently a mess. While this rule applies specifically to the shooting of photography and video, it’s also up to digital artists to make sure that images in their “backgrounds” aren’t owned by someone else. Once a photographer shot pictures of a couple on an interesting-looking bench in a public park.
Later, it turned out that the bench itself was a copyrighted work of art, and the artist sued for use of the work in the photograph, which had been used in an advertising campaign. Buildings, park grounds, monuments—an image of anything can belong to someone else. While it is hoped that this legal morass resolves itself in the next few decades, digital asset managers must, in the meantime, make sure that the documentation related to locations and objects is fully documented in their systems.
Different Cultures Have Different Norms
When providing legal documents, waivers, or even signage to those being photographed in order to gain permission for use of their images, don’t assume that everyone can read. Don’t assume that everyone understands what he or she has consented to. Don’t assume that anyone will sign anything at a public and planned event.
Make sure that the content generators in your organization have been provided with consent forms in the local language, are compliant with all local laws and customs, and that someone is on-site who speaks the local language and can answer anyone’s questions. In short, treat everyone the way you yourself would like to be treated. If, at an outdoor event, someone shoved a piece of paper written in a foreign language in your face and pushed a pen into your hand, would you sign?
While many digital asset managers would protest that these issues are ones of content creators, marketing, legal, or anyone else but them, the truth of the matter is that while issues of cultural sensitivity may not be strictly the purview of digital asset management, they certainly have an impact on the DAM. Because the DAM is the ultimate media distribution machine, the DAM will be the mechanism that allows for images obtained with or without appropriate consent to be used. Digital asset managers need to know that the actions in which they are complicit are ethical, moral, and legal, just as one does with any aspect of daily work.
Never Assume You Know an Image’s Origin
When loading content—especially older content from shared drives—it can be difficult to track down rights information. When older images are loaded without rights information, it’s best to make sure they are visible but watermarked against use. Cries of “But we’ve been using these images forever!” will assail a digital asset manager’s ears once a well-worn stock image without documentation is pulled from circulation. Meet these cries with the argument that it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen and that it’s time they stopped leaning on older images anyway. How to research an image’s rights will be discussed later in this chapter. The bottom line should always be that if you don’t know where
All of these rules are backed up by an international law that was negotiated in Berne, Switzerland, and is commonly referred to as the Berne Convention. First put in place in 1887, this set of rules states that copyright is governed by the country of origin. For example, if a copyright is filed in the United States, that copyright is enforceable in any of the other 166 countries that have also signed the Berne Convention, even if the same copyright law does not exist outside the United States.
When dealing with issues of international copyright law, there exists a shorthand for testing if copyright might apply, commonly referred to as the Berne three-step test:
It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the eUnion to permit the reproduction of such works [a] in certain special cases, provided that [b] such reproduction does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and [c] does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author. (Source: https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/Three-Step%20Test_FNL.
pdf, retrieved 11/21/2013)
Managing Rights Associated with Stock Photography
Stock photography, as commonly purchased from Internet libraries, is often the bane of a digital asset manager’s existence, but that doesn’t have to be the case. As you look to solve issues related to the use of stock photography, know that these should be addressed at the source: the designers who purchase and license the assets for use. Make the designers feel like heroes; the better they keep up with the provenance of their stock images, the more likely it is that their coworkers can reuse the same image under the same license, thereby saving everyone the time and hassle of tracking down another picture. Draft the designers as allies in your quest for digital asset record completion, and let them know they can take the following actions to document stock licenses.
Make Sure Stock Photography Is Licensed in the Organization’s Name
A frequent mistake by those licensing stock imagery is the purchase of use in the name of the designer or contracted company rather than the organization who ultimately owns the web page, publication, or ad where the image is used.
The licensee needs to be the entity who publishes or otherwise distributes the image.
Collect a Copy of the License for Every Image
When a stock image is licensed, there should be documentation that comes along with that purchase. If the
documentation is not imported with the image, a master license should be available from the stock house, pertaining to either the single image for sale or the overall agreement between the purchasers and the image source. Every stock image housed in a DAM should have a license attached to it, even if that’s a single group license to which many images are linked.
Learn Your Legal Team’s Opinion on Royalty Language
Some stock image houses make as much from catching “violations” of license terms as much as from honest sales.
The rules behind terms such as royalty-free, use seats, and complicated terms of use are not there to help those purchasing images from stock houses; instead they legally tie down the rights to the images as much as possible.
Have legal counsel determine which kinds of stock licenses are appropriate for your organization’s uses. Due to the increasingly litigious nature of stock houses in the recent past, many organizations have a “zero tolerance” policy toward buying stock images at all.