Copyright Clearance and Transaction Use Permits

Peter Brantley
February 19, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

There are times at a conference when several people tell you, “You have to talk to Person-X” and no matter how hard you try to align schedules, it just doesn’t happen.  At the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference, for me, that Person-X was John Billington of the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC).  John is the Product Manager for New Media at CCC (and, btw, not to be confused with his uncle James, who is the Librarian of Congress, i.e., the head honcho at the U.S. Library of Congress).  

The place of CCC in publishing probably benefits from a short digression.  The CCC, a not-for-profit company, has long provided rights clearing and licensing services for institutions such as libraries and major corporations; they offer a variety of products ranging from suite (repertory) licenses to individual author-based services.  Well-known publishers ranging from Stanford’s Highwire Press to O’Reilly Media use products such as RightsLink to authorize customer-based usage of intellectual property.  Historically, CCC has been most involved in licensing text-based products - written materials, such as articles (e.g., coursepacks), books or their subcomponents (e.g., chapters), and similar materials. 

Like everyone else, CCC has noted the rise of new media forms and the desirability of IP holders to obtain satisfactory use arrangements that do not perceptibly endanger their ability to extract value from their core assets.  Tellingly, I was lucky enough to catch up to John in San Francisco only because he was attending a gaming conference - and with major online games engendering extensive markets in pre-run players at set skill levels, as well as online property development in virtual environments such as SecondLife, rights licensing is an increasingly important desiderata.