Transcript Digital Asset Management

Managing Digital Assets
Richard Poynder
Freelance Journalist
www.richardpoynder.com
1
Four points




There are two (frequently confused) terms associated with managing
digital assets: Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Digital
Rights Management (DRM). These tend to be treated as two distinct
technologies, and two separate issues. A better approach might be to
view them as complementary building blocks for effectively managing
digital assets in a networked world
Superficially DAM may appear more of an issue for librarians, and DRM
for content providers. This would be an erroneous assumption!
The development of DAM and DRM reflects the continuing impact of
web technologies on content distribution, and has significant
implications both for librarians and for content providers
There is much still to do!
2
DAM


Digital Asset Management (DAM): grew out of corporate
creative departments/advertising agencies in late 1980s
“A set of coordinated technologies and processes that allow the
quick and efficient storage, retrieval and re-use of digital files …
[including] .. All types of text, video, audio, and image files,”
Chris Schaefer, senior product marketing manager, Artesia
Technologies

i.e. multimedia content, which is becoming an increasing issue
for many libraries

A variety of off-the-shelf solutions are now available

DAM tends to be viewed as mainly an issue for librarians/
information professionals i.e. content management
3
DRM





Digital rights management (DRM). Came to prominence in late
1998, with the formation of the Secure Digital Music Initiative
(SDMI)
SDMI's charter: “to develop open technology specifications that protect
the playing, storing, and distributing of digital music such that a new
market for digital music may emerge.”
DRM solutions also being developed for text, video, software etc. etc.
There are two parts to DRM: (1) a description of the rights associated
with the content (meta data describing e.g. “usage rules”), and (2)
technical enforcement of those rights/rules (encryption, software keys,
watermarking etc.)
DRM tends to be viewed as mainly an issue for content providers i.e.
intellectual property management
4
Question: what is the
relationship?

Content
DAM


DRM

Content
DAM (content
management)
DRM (rights
management)
But what’s the
relationship?
5
The need for DAM in libraries



University of Oxford Study in 1998 ("Digitizing Intellectual
Property: the Oxford Scoping Study“, Stuart Lee, Ariadne Issue
22, Dec 1999 )
The University had attracted £2.2m for digitisation during the
1990s
The study concluded that: “Accurate cataloguing of collections
was often notable by its absence, especially to the level of the
individual item.”

A need for new management tools

Text => multimedia => digital content per se
6
Institutions using DAM
systems

Stanford University Libraries: using Artesia’s TEAMS technology
to manage and deliver multimedia content to classrooms

California Academy of Sciences: using Canto Software’s Cumulus
system to provide multimedia resources over its intranet

San Francisco’s Exploratorium Museum: using TEAMS to manage
the 100,000 analogue resources it is currently digitising

Question: who is responsible for managing the process?
Librarians? Techies? Vendors (e.g. NETg as supplier of 85,000
“learning objects”)?
7
The DAM process

Information audit

Establish the meta data

Decide on formats

Prioritise the input queue

The ‘ingestion’ phase

Ongoing process/procedures to integrate new content
8
OPAC versus DAM system



OPACs remain primarily text-oriented bibliographic tools
“Since … [documents indexed in an OPAC] ... are increasingly
created in some other place, what they really want is to be able
to describe them, or classify them, and then link to them. That
is the most common model,” Susan Stearns, VP Marketing,
Inmagic
Will this remain the most common model for libraries in the
future?
9
OPAC versus DAM system




DAM systems are generally more limited in terms of indexing
Convergence? “Many institutions needing DAMs do not need
OPACs; and while I can envision OPACs integrating some
aspects of DAMs — because libraries will own digital objects — I
can’t see the opposite occurring. Until every piece of
information in the world is digital, they will probably remain
separate,” Rosemarie Falanga, senior information specialist,
Exploratorium
Question: are libraries migrating from holding collections, to
pointing to them (e.g. electronic journals); or increasingly
holding them in different formats (e.g. via digitising); Or both?
Indexing => Hosting/Holding=> Managing => Whose
responsibility?
10
Add a spoonful of DRM


DRM is a controversial issue for librarians
“DRM changes the fundamental relationship between the
creators, publishers, and users, to the detriment of creators,
users, and the institutions that serve them. DRM, if not carefully
balanced, limits the ability of libraries and schools to serve the
information needs of their users and their communities in
several ways,” ALA (www.ala.org/washoff/DRM.pdf)

Fair dealing; first sale doctrine; pay-per-use; enforced time
limits; lack of anonymity

Nevertheless, however the rules are hammered out, DRM is fast
becoming a fact of life
11
What does this mean for
librarians?

Until now DRM has been perceived primarily as a vendor issue

But like it or not managing DRM looks set to become a core
aspect of the librarian’s job

Consider, for instance, librarians as intermediaries and
managers of third-party electronic content

“The only people who own all the rights in a piece of content
are the original creators, so everybody in the chain from that
point onwards only uses rights and then passes them on down
the chain,” Mark Bide, Senior Consultant, Rightscom, Digital
Content Strategy Consultants
12
What does this mean for
librarians?



Librarians as publishers: Exploratorium’s aim is to use the web to
create a “Library without walls”, but does not use DRM
What about the copyright issues? “While we are planning, on a limited
basis, to include third-party assets as part of the project, the thirdparty would have to be someone who agreed with our mission and
priorities,” Falanga
“What is unclear is what is necessary for libraries to do to adequately
protect themselves from infringing other’s rights. Libraries need to
define their legal basis. After all, that a library’s patrons are restricted
to those who can get in their doors does seem archaic,” Trudy Levy,
founder of Image Integration, Digital Imaging Consultants

Eprint archives

Question: how can libraries ignore DRM?
13
What does this mean for
librarians?




The changing technological environment is also opening up new
opportunities for librarians
Librarians as institutional content managers: “Instead of just
buying in externally produced information resources and managing
those, we should be at the heart of managing our own institution's
information resources as well,” Stephen Pinfield, academic services
librarian, University of Nottingham
“My guess is that within most organisations there is no clear
responsibility for managing all this digital information. So expect a
wake up call similar to the Texaco case. Then organisations will start to
take it seriously,” Stearns
Do you know exactly what information is flowing through your
enterprise? Do you know its provenance, and what rights go with it?
Does anyone in the organisation know, or manage the flow?
14
The future for content
management/distribution



The technologist’s dream: Each item of content will be born with
ownership and usage rights
These rights will be expressed by means of a self-proclaiming digital ID
strapped to the content’s metaphorical forehead, and in many cases
the content will be locked with a digital padlock
Much of this content will then be released on to the web, where it will
be bought/sold/exchanged by means of real-time negotiation of rights,
along with any payment, eventually by means of agents/bots

The content will be viewable in any standard viewer (where today’s
DRM requires a proprietary viewer), offering increased flexibility

So what needs to be done?
15
What needs to be done?

A need to better integrate DAM and DRM?

How today does content management interface with copyright
management?


DAM systems can describe rights (and can include
watermarking), but they cannot enforce them (DRM 1, but not
DRM 2)
“We allow companies to incorporate … [rights related
information] … but when it comes to utilising that information
for protection purposes we leave it to DRM companies,”
Schaefer
16
Which works better?
DRM
DAM
Content
This?
Or this?
17
What needs to be done?

A universal DRM language: “Unless we have got a way of expressing …
[usage] .. rights and permissions in a machine readable form nobody
can hope to effectively manage digital assets,” Bide

A standard viewer

But currently a lack of DRM standards

XRML, MPEG-21, 2003; But who is driving it? (Microsoft?)


XrML “is a standard chasing an application, it is already way too
complex, even in its limited context,” Martin Lambert, CTO, Sealed
Media
“The SDMI Forum is on hiatus as of June 2001, and is not accepting
new members.”
18
What it means for vendors?

The licensing/subscription model is too limiting for a networked world.
(IP access as a primitive form of DRM)

Pay-per-use content currently available is hard to access, and too
expensive



“Our clients continually point out to us that there is an inherent
contradiction in our offering a modular object technology that cries out
for pay-per-use, but we still treat it as a library when selling it,” Jim
L’Allier, chief learning officer for NETg
“We’ve got some ideas as to future business models, but if you
disconnect the current business model, how do you phase in a new
business model that honours your object technology,” L’Allier
Making the transition requires “wing walking”
19
What it means for vendors?


The ongoing migration from free to paid-for content threatens a return
to self-contained data silos (pre-Dialog?)
Today's DRM: “Our content sealing technology in effect makes
intangible goods behave like tangible goods i.e. they can only be used
in one place at one time,” Lambert

What, then, was the point of the web, network externalities, and the
hyperlink?

CrossRef, DOI, SFX, OpenURL only go half way; they still generally
assume a licensing/subscription model

Need for new, standards-based, solutions — to “free the content”, but
securely

Need for proliferation and acceptance of digital cash technologies
20
A cautionary tale

The Music Industry: “Sales of singles and albums will fall by more
than 7% this year, to just over $31 billion – the third fall in a row”,
Informa Media, November 2002

Piracy cost music industry $4.3 billion last year (The International
Federation of the Phonographic Industry)

Wing-walk before it’s too late?

“Information wants to be Free”(ly) available

DAM principles are a real and pressing issue for vendors
21
Four points




There are two (frequently confused) terms associated with managing
digital assets: Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Digital
Rights Management (DRM). These tend to be treated as two distinct
technologies, and two separate issues. A better approach might be to
view them as complementary building blocks for effectively managing
digital assets in a networked world
Superficially DAM may appear more of an issue for librarians, and DRM
for content providers. This would be an erroneous assumption!
The development of DAM and DRM reflects the continuing impact of
web technologies on content distribution, and has significant
implications both for librarians and for content providers
There is much still to do!
22
Break open the data silos!
Content has nothing to lose but its chains. It
has a world to win.
Information of the World Disunite!
23