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Scot Morris

Scot Morris, Director of International Relations, APRA/AMCOS

Scot has a Master of Laws in Information Technology, Communications and Media Law from the University of New South Wales and a Master of International Business from the University of Sydney.  He has recently completed a Graduate Diploma in EU, UK and US Copyright Law at King's College London.  

As Director of International Relations Scot is responsible for maximising the overseas earnings of APRA's members and establishing and maintaining effective relationships with affiliated societies. He is currently the Vice-Chair of the Asia-Pacific Committee of the International Confederation of Authors and Composers Societies (CISAC) which was established to foster the co-operation between regional societies and to develop music copyright infrastructure in the region.   He is also responsible for co-ordinating activities within CISAC in relation to the development of international identifiers through the MIIIP, ISAN and ISWC projects. He is a member of the Music Council of Australia and on the Management Committee of the Copyright Society of Australia.

Scot's comments from the seminar

APRA/AMCOS represents songwriters, composers, and music publishers. In terms of digital rights management, the copyright industry loves to indulge in acronym hell; and so for my use, as well as yours, I thought it would be useful to refer to a few slides relating to current activities and international co-operation activities with respect to digital rights management, and the type of partnerships that are being forged between content providers and owners, and broadcasters, cable networks and distributors. (Refer PowerPoint slideshow)

I want to talk briefly about digital identifiers: digital object identifiers and digital works identifiers.  Those particularly referred to in the summary were the International Standard Audiovisual Number (ISAN), which is currently being developed internationally, and the first one, the Music Industry Integrated Identifier Project (MI3P).  The last one is, the Digital Object Identifier.

Digital rights management, in terms of the Digital Agenda Act, corresponds to electronic rights management, the concept of electronic rights management - that is, the implementation of works identifiers, developing usage rules, and also developing metadata that links and expresses those identifiers and usage rules in electronic format. That distinguishes digital rights management from digital management of rights, which corresponds more to technological protection methods.  They are things such as access controls, copy controls, encryption passwords and watermarking, where certain identifiers and usage rules and licence information is actually embedded in files containing works.  So they are persistent association technologies

The Music Industry Integrated Identifier Project has now been underway for several years.  It is a large co-operative project between the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI), the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), CISAC, which is the International Confederation of Authors Societies, and BIEM, the International Mechanical Rights Society Organisation.  These organisations have worked together to develop a standard release identifier that will be unique internationally.  It is called GRID: an identifier of different types of releases of sound recordings of musical works.  Its intention is to be used in header information, in electronic files of sound recordings and to also be included in watermarks of digital files of sound recordings.  Also it is, and will be, one of the identifiers used in IPEG 21, the interoperable multimedia platform that is slowly being developed.

Probably of more importance to this audience is the development of what is called the ISAN, the International Standard Audio Visual Number.  This is a co-operative project between: FIAPF (International Film Producers Organisation), AGICOA the organisations administering cable retransmission rights and secondary rights; CISAC again; and FIAPF (the International Film Producers Association).  The standard developed in the ISO, was developed by those organisations and the Motion Picture Association of America, the European Broadcasting Union and the USA's ABC network.

It is ISO approved, along with other international identifiers.  Works identifiers have been in existence for quite a while.  You are probably aware of quite a few, such as the ISBN, the ISSN for serials, and a relatively new one called the ISWC (the international standard works code), which identifies copyright works as opposed to ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) which represent or identify sound recordings.

APRA and the Swedish society, STIM, were the first organisations to commence issuing ISWCs.  Now all Australasian musical works and compositions are automatically accorded an international standard works code once they are registered with APRA.  That information, that metadata, is then sent around the world to affiliated collecting societies to ensure adequate identification of our repertoire overseas.

For the ISAN (the International Standard Audio Visual Number), there is an international agency that has been founded, I think in 2002.  It has recently appointed a new general manager, so there is a renewed vigour and impetus in the whole project. That international agency, based in Switzerland, is called "ISANIA".  It is responsible for appointing regional agencies that will be issuing these international standard audio visual numbers.  APRA, together with Screenrights, has formed a non-profit joint venture and put in an expression of interest to be the regional agency for the issuing of ISANs.

As I mentioned before, APRA has a fairly comprehensive database of audiovisual works that are broadcast, as does Screenrights.  We have, since 1997, been the regional agency for ISWCs.  We see this as a way of fostering co-operation between our partners, distributors and broadcasters generally and the content owners that we represent.

Over the next few months we have to put together a business plan and financial model for this non-profit issuing of ISANs; so if we haven't, in our scoping projects, talked to you already, we probably will be in contact with respect to looking at ways of integrating international standard audiovisual numbers in a lot of your rights administration.  ISANs, have the capacity to be unique and persistent.  Because they have the backing of all these international organisations, they will also be comprehensive.  They are, however, a dumb number in that they would be linked to other databases of metadata which, for example, identify the audiovisual work that will be in the ISANIA database in Switzerland.

ISANs will also be used in other ways. For example, in APRA's database we will link audiovisual numbers to our existing international standard works code numbers and ISRCs for recording rights that will enable us ultimately to just use numerical identifiers for works.  Currently, as you are aware, we struggle with identifying or using titles to track usage of works.  We have worked with radio broadcasters to ensure that the programming they use for their playlists can extract title and performer information and deliver that to us electronically, so that we can auto match against our database. We find that now we can auto match in the high 90 per cent, but this still requires quite a bit of human intervention for those works where the titles are not adequately identified.  With international numbering systems, that will enable all rights holders and all distributors to rely on these numbers for instantaneous transactional licensing and tracking and auditing of works.

For broadcasters and other distributors and users, the question of back catalogues and back works is important. The benefit of ISAN having AGICOA and a lot of these other partners involved is that, to start the number having a significant importance and rollout, AGICOA's existing database of all audiovisual works that have been released in Europe will be given free ISAN numbers.  That will include basically all US and foreign, including Australian, repertoire that has been used in Europe and they also have a transitional regional authority set up in Switzerland to register other US works, MPAA works, that have not been released in Europe.

There is also the next step which is the V-ISAN, which is the same system effectively, but it allows users to register different versions of the same audiovisual work.  So while ISANs would cover and be issued to things such as television programmes, series and individual episodes, interstitials, television ads, things like that, V-ISANs will also allow a version to be linked to the original ISAN which, for example, would cover an airline version of a feature film. The V-ISAN also has been included in the assessment of identifiers by the SMPTE.

The uses for broadcasters for ISANs would be to facilitate programme scheduling, inventory management, production of programme guides, monitoring broadcasts and, in fact, has been discussed as one of the important watermarks or identifiers for works included in broadcast flags. It is a digital identifier for the online trading of audiovisual works, and, as I have said, it also will probably be the identifier that is used in IPEG 21.  It has applications in anti-piracy and it could be one of the bits of information is included in watermarks that identify the works and can identify works that are used outside the restricted domain under the usage rules that may be imposed on delivery to the domestic environment.  So basically it is about digital asset management rights facilitating rights acquisition and licensing and identification.  From our perspective it really makes life a lot easier in terms of identifying and distributing, and a lot less costly.

There was also mention of digital object identifiers, which is a very broad discussion of usage rules and a metadata dictionary that has been developed.  It is a system for persistent identification and an interoperable exchange for intellectual property rights in digital networks.

Here in Australia the Copyright Agency Limited is a regional agency and it has done a DOI project on course packs, so its application to date has mostly been in print areas and digital text areas, and the educational field. I have put a few further websites on Slide 6 for more information about digital object identifier. WWW.ISAN.org and www.SMPT.org have a lot of information on watermarking. The European Broadcasting Union has done a lot of reports on watermarking and digital identifiers as well.

That is just an introduction to some of the co-operation that is being undertaken internationally in developing international standard identifiers.  This will ensure that we will have the tools in the future to face some of the issues of piracy and assist content owners receiving their just rewards from digital exploitation of their works.

To read Scot's powerpoint presentation click here.

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