These pages present an overview of INFO2000 programme activities with regard to multimedia rights clearance - the process whereby multimedia producers seek to obtain from rights holders the required permissions for reuse of text, sound, image, video, or other digital objects in a multimedia product or service. See MMRCS Background
Between them, the MMRCS projects have achieved considerable success in their objective of increasing the effectiveness of multimedia rights clearance processes in a wide range of markets. These include creative talent represented by collecting societies, book and newspaper publishing, music and audio-visual industries, game and e-learning software industry.
Many of the resultant web-based services contain impressive content assets, which are made available for reuse to product developers throughout the world. The projects have also been widely publicised both in the media and at exhibitions and seminars in many countries and are now building on their success via further commercial investment and through applications for additional EC funding.
Preface from Jan Hoorens - Principal Administrator, European Commission Information Society - Cultural Heritage Applications.
Professional associations representing the European content industry give their views
The projects address:
- the networking of existing collectively managed multimedia rights clearance systems in six Member States (VERDI),
- interoperability of digital content identification systems and rights metadata within multimedia e-commerce (INDECS),
- sector specific multimedia rights clearance systems for book publishing (EFRIS), audio-visual (TVFILES, PRISAM) and music (ORS) rights,
- integration of electronic copyright management and multimedia rights clearance systems (BONAFIDE),
- best clearance practices for educational multimedia (COMPAS) and protection of creative contributions in a collaborative networked multimedia title development environment (b©).
Final Reports and Review
A document combining the edited Final Reports of all the nine MMRCS projects is available for download in Word 97 (.doc) format (502k), please click here.
A document detailing the Final Review of MMRCS Projects is available for download in Word 97 (.doc) format (393k), please click here.
The eContent Programme
The follow up to rights trading activity under INFO2000 is foreseen under action line 3.2 of the eContent programme, a multiannual Community programme to stimulate the development and use of European digital content on the global networks and to promote linguistic diversity in the Information Society.
The emphasis of MMRCS under the INFO2000 Programme was on integration and interoperation of distributed specialised clearance services at European level through feasibility studies, prototype, standards and pilot system development. Further support is now needed to arrive at a consistent European rights clearance approach, taking account of the current legal framework and its further development.
The focus of future actions under the eContent Programme will be on extending rights clearance pilots and on specific support measures. Pilot projects will be required to cover the enlargement countries, less advanced sectors and specific public sector applications.
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