Managing Digital Rights and Permissions

Content is freely available to anyone in the world now, making it more important for publishers to know the kinds of assets they have and where they are stored. Although copyright is sometimes seen as a hindrance to creativity, it actually protects and enables the industry.

What are Rights & Permissions?

It is important to understand the difference between “Rights” and “Permissions” when discussing digital assets. Rights are assigned to the rights holder and are defined by law. Permissions, on the other hand, are the privileges granted by the rights holder.

Any kind of content (text, image, video, audio, etc.) cannot be used without the owner’s permission, especially for commercial purposes. Likewise, distributing images of someone’s property or assets may violate that person’s rights, especially if the material is copyrighted. To prevent such issues, digital assets managers should secure this property and monitor its use. Copyright law is intended to create a balance between publishers, authors, distributors, general users, and the public.

Digital Assets Rights and Permissions

The issue of digital rights and permissions is as relevant today as ever. Digital assets managers and publishers must track the rights attached to their assets to avoid any legal penalties for copyright infringement. Assets management has become a necessary requirement for publishers, as it is likely that they have accumulated a large number of assets over time. Ownership of these assets likely has transferred between parties and may even have been lost in the shuffle. Therefore, it is important for publishers to keep track of their rights and permissions along with the digital assets themselves.

Keeping this in mind, publishers can seek the help and expertise of content solutions providers that are also specialists in documenting digitized services as well as managing rights and permissions. Publishers can manage their assets better by investing in digital asset management systems and solutions. Digital assets include text, graphs, images, videos, audio, illustrations, and so forth. By utilizing the services of content solutions providers, publishers will have the ability to:

Directly communicate with third party systems
Enable licensing to make the content accessible to global markets
Offer real-time licensing opportunities for available assets
Fully control the price of licensing their content

Using Rights and Permissions

Most of the information on rights is captured in written contracts, which should be interpreted by specialists before an asset can be used by anyone. Any publisher that wants to license bulk assets must take the time to research the rights and permissions attached to them before these assets can be reused.

MPS has years of expertise in managing rights and permissions for digital assets. We provide the following types of services:

Project management
Asset/manuscript assessment
Permissions clearance
Adaptation suggestions
License review and negotiation

With the changing landscape of content, the permissions process has become more complicated. Our experts can manage all aspects of research and clearance as well as provide expertise on copyright law. With new technologies and platforms developing, customer demands are always changing, and it is vital to have experienced rights and permissions managers working to ensure that your assets are properly tracked and licensed to accommodate these changes.