The Linked Content Coalition (LCC), the unique media project that recently published its innovative technical framework to improve the management and communication of and access to online rights information, has been re-constituted as a permanent organization.
The new LCC is a not-for-profit global consortium of standards bodies and registries with a remit to facilitate and expand the legitimate use of content in the digital network. Its Ten Targets for a Digital Future aim to ensure that every creator and every creation can be automatically identified on the net if they wish to be; that every creation can have machine-readable rights information linked to it (whether for commercial or free use); and that existing standards of different media types can be interoperable.
Angela Mills Wade, Executive Director of the European Publishers Council (EPC), the organization behind the original idea for the LCC project, said: “The LCC was set up in response to calls from the European Commission for ‘Big Ideas for the Digital Agenda’. The resulting data framework is currently being used in a project (RDI) co-funded by the European Commission to improve efficiency in licensing, and has been adopted as the data model for the UK’s Copyright Hub.
“Importantly, the LCC is not about re-inventing the wheel; LCC will do nothing that competes with existing standards, but will deal with matters of common interest across existing standards bodies including interoperability between existing standards, and the development of specific all-media standards or tools. The LCC is leading the way to create the infrastructure needed to support efficient global digital media businesses.”
Robert Madelin, Director General of DG Connect at the European Commission said: “The LCC sets out to facilitate and support the legitimate use of copyright works under any business model, including “free use” where enabled by law or rightsholder choice. We at the European Commission are delighted to have been the catalyst for the creation of the highly-effective LCC which proves that innovative thinking and data management are key to the future of effective licensing.”
UK Copyright Hub Chairman, Richard Hooper, said: “The Copyright Hub’s aim is to make copyright licensing simpler. The Hub is being built on the foundations laid down by the LCC over many years. We are working together closely and neither party is duplicating the work of the other: a genuine collaboration and meeting of minds.”
In its new Manifesto, published today, the LCC supports interoperability between the computer systems of any and all legitimate participants in the digital network – from private individuals to multi-national organizations, and including creators, rightsholders, publishers, aggregators, rights and content exchanges, retailers, consumers, cultural institutions (including libraries, museums and archives) and their agents and associations.
The six founder Board members of the LCC are EDItEUR, the International DOI Foundation (IDF), the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC), Movielabs, the US National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the PLUS Coalition. A further group of standards bodies, including many of the International Agencies for the ISO TC46/SC9 Information and Documentation identifier standards, are now set to join.
The LCC Forum is also launched to provide an open platform for anyone other than standards bodies to support and participate in the implementation, application and development of the LCC Framework.
Angela Mills Wade said “Even in the early days of the LCC, it became clear that this was something special; a two-year project that has brought together the interests, best-practice and talents of cross-media organisations around the globe. Everyone involved realized that this unique collaboration should continue which is why we are launching the LCC Forum today. The LCC has created some invaluable resources for the online community and I am proud to say that it is now set to build on this success into the future.”
www.linkedcontentcoalition.org
www.rdi-project.org
www.copyrighthub.co.uk
