I have emailed the owners of the site but all messages have bounced.

RightsAgent was a licensing service based upon CC+ that allowed content creators to license their content both for free and paid credits. Its system connected with Creative Commons licensing, allow the automatic selling and distribution for commercial use when such use was not directly allowed under the license.

As I reported back in July, RightsAgent has been slow to find traction. Though it remains to be seen if this is just an extended temporary outage or an abrupt closure, it is definitely a sign of trouble at the company.

In the meantime, all of the buttons for the service, including the one that was on this site, have stopped working. If you are using the service, I strongly recommend that you remove the button and only consider putting it back should it come back online.

I will report any additional information when I get it.

That is one of the reasons that, on this site, I have tried very hard to cover content licensing as well as plagiarism and copyright infringement detection/cessation. My goal has always been to help Webmasters develop a balanced system for protecting and exploiting their work.

However, even as companies have risen to the challenge of helping bloggers detect and stop plagiarism and content theft, those that have attempted to make a business off helping bloggers license their content have, for the most part, fallen flat.

So where did these companies go wrong? What can be done to fix the problem? Is content licensing dead as a business model?

These are tough questions without easy answers.

The Problem Comes to Light

In late 2006, I hard written a post entitled Content Licensing: The Sensational Seven that detailed the best content licensing sites available at that time.

When I ran across the article a week ago, I realized that three of the services, Lisensa, Scoopt Words and Yepic had all either closed shop or had announced their closure.

But while three closures out of seven may be a good percentage, especially considering the failure rate of startups in general, it is important to note that two of the four remaining, Numly and Registered Commons, are non-repudiation services that allow bloggers to also affix license information and one of the two licensing services, Copyright.com, is a stalwart of the traditional media not targeted at bloggers.

Only one licensing service in the article, BlogBurst, was both targeted at bloggers and was still in business after a year and a half.

To the credit of those who closed, Lisensa was replaced by RightsAgent, which is still in operation but struggling to gain traction, Scoopt is continuing to offer their photography licensing service and Yepic, despite a promised closure date of June 8th, is still active (though various parts of the site seem to be in disarray).

It is clear that companies who try to make a living off of helping bloggers license their content for money are struggling but why is something of a mystery.

The answer, however, likely lies in the medium itself and the challenges that any company would face in trying to market free content for cash.

Not-So Happy Times

Theoretically, these should be good times for companies wanting to get in on licensing blog content. Creative Commons launched their CC+ initiative, which makes it possible to extend Creative Commons Licenses, making it easy to start such a business and build on the success off CC.

Most importantly though, largely thanks to Creative Commons, more bloggers than ever are aware of and thinking about content licensing. It is a popular topic for bloggers and becoming better understood every day.

The problem, however, is not a lack of bloggers. The problem is a lack of buyers. Though bloggers seem to be relatively easy to lure with promises of easy licensing and quick money, few seem to be willing to buy what they are selling.

The result is that most accounts make little, if any, money and the company stuggles to earn a profit off the few who do generate sales.

The reason for this is five fundamental flaws with licensing blog content for cash:

1. Quality: Though most blogs are good to the people who read them, very few are up to the standards of people who would want to pay money for content.
2. Content is Already Free: The content involved, in most cases, is already free on the Web and most bloggers will give permission for reuse with a simple letter and a promise of attribution. This also creates duplicate content issues and makes the purchaser second to publish the work, further reducing the work’s value to a potential buyer.
3. Limited Buyer Pool: Even if the work is seen to be of high value, there is a very small pool of potential buyers. Mainstream media outlets and blog networks are two obvious choices, but very few bloggers are going to pay for content they could easily write.
4. Paid Blogging: For most potential buyers, it is a better deal for them to contact a blogger and have them create custom content for their site at a rate likely comparable to purchasing the old, stale content from their blog.
5. Confusion: Licensing content is confusing to start with and the injection of a middle man, generally, does not help. It introduces a third party and, depending on the system, can make things much worse in this area.

The result of this is that the vast majority of blog content licensing services are destined to fail and it would seem that the industry is largely doomed before it begins.

However, there are ways companies an exploit this and turn what appears to the ultimate buyer’s market into a place where serious money can be made.

Gold from a Coal Mine

It is clear that profiting from blog licensing is going to require more than just having bloggers put a badge on their site and raking in the profits.

If a company is going to stay alive in the blog licensing field, they need to look at other options.

1. Be a Non-Profit: The first idea is to simply not worry about profit at all, be like Creative Commons and just offer tools and resources to help bloggers, as well as other Webmasters, and rely on donations and good will. Though CC seems to have a lock on this market, there may be room for other players if they can bring something new to the market.
2. Perform Quality Control: Blog Burst has remained successful in large part due to its quality control. Most blogs are not accepted into the service and this keeps the non-selling membership to a minimum.
3. Sell the Blogger: Rather than trying to sell the actual blog content, consider selling the blogger and making him or her available for custom writing jobs. In short, don’t be an agent for the words, be an agent for the person.
4. Offer an Additional Service: Registered Commons, My Free Copyright and Numly all offer licensing assistances as part of their service but primarily focus on being non-repudiation services. This keeps them from relying on the licensing element as a business model.
5. Profit from the Bloggers: Since bloggers will inevitably outnumber buyers, profiting from them makes sense. This can be done either through ad revenue or, if you can justify it, a fee for your services.
6. Premium Content: One can also skip the issue of trying to sell recycled content and focus on selling “premium” content by bloggers, something that Associated Content and Yepic both attempt to do.

The key is to not rely on the sale of regular blog content as your business model. Though many bloggers produce great work well worth the price they request for licensing it, the nature of blog content limits how much others will pay for it and how often they will buy.

Optimism. Or Something Like It

This is not to say that I am completely gloomy about the future of blog content licensing, just that I think the traditional business model of making money by selling already-available content is not likely to thrive, even though licensing companies can exploit the “long tail” and offer a wide variety of information to buyers.

Still, there are several blog licensing companies that I am optimistic about. Companies that have either proved themselves already or are exploring promising new models.

1. BlogBurst: Controversial it may have been at times, there is little doubt that Blog Burst has been around longer than just about anyone in this field. Their tight quality controls and strong partnerships with mainstream media have kept them going even as others have struggled to gain traction.
2. iCopyright Creators: Though the Creators service is new, iCopyright is not. It is a well-established and trusted name in content licensing, used by outlets such as the Associated Press and Reuters. Combined with a business model that takes no revenue from actual licensing deals, it has promise to be a major player in the future, if it can gain traction.
3. Associated Content: Another industry stalwart, Associated Content has an effective rating system that works to perform some quality control and a business model that combines sales and advertising revenue. Also, it’s focus on premium, unique content seems to help it attract both visitors and customers.

While other companies will likely still be around in a few years, especially the non-profits and those primarily offering other services, these are the content salesmen right now that seem to have the best position and the brightest future.

Of course, on the Web, that can change in a moment’s notice.

Note: Mentioning a company in this list is not necessarily approval for their service or their policies, just an observation that they appear to be in a good position to be in business years down the road. See other articles on the site for my opinions about the companies.

Conclusions

I think the problem with content licensing can be summarized by taking a quick look at my user page on RightsAgent.

Though I added the button to my site shortly after publishing my first article about them back in January, this site has only received six “credits”.

Since my content is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA license, meaning there is no fee for commercial use, there is no charge for these credits. RightsAgent has been offered for the convinience of the licensor (to aid in proper attribution) and the mutual protection of the two of us.

So far, by my math, no one has taken advantage of it. All six credits were given to myself by me during testing. This is despite the fact that dozens of sites have reused content on PT, with my blessing.

Though many may consider RightsAgent superfluous on this site, it is worrisome that no one was at least curious about the functionality it can provide.

The simple truth is that almost no one wants to go through a third party to license blog content and, while the business model can work, it is going to require more than simply being a passive salesman. It is about brokering deals, controlling quality and forging relationships.

In short, these companies need to function less like Web 2.0 services and more like traditional agents. Sometimes there is no substitute for a large personal network or a handshake agreement.

If blog licensing companies wish to succeed, they need to learn how to combine the traditional license dealmaking with new technologies.

If they can do that, then I suspect there is nothing stopping one from making a decent living helping bloggers license their works.

Content licensing company iCopyright has opened up a beta of their new, free service targeted at bloggers and other content creators on the Web. Entitled iCopyright for Creators, the service holds a great deal of promise for those seeking an easy way to encourage reuse of their content while protecting their rights.

The company, which typically handles licensing for large organizations such as the Associated Press and Reuters, is making a version of their service available for free to smaller content creators and it includes the ability to perform both paid and unpaid licensing as well as providing other tools to facilitate the licensing process. .

Though only one of the more recent entrants in the race to help bloggers better license their content, iCopyright is a well-known and well-respected company in the licensing field and it brings with it some serious weight and reputation as it seeks to give smaller content creators similar powers and tools those available for large corporations.

How the Service Works

The basic premise behind iCopyright for Creators is very similar to other licensing services such as RightsAgent in that it tries to simplify the licensing process while providing protections for both the content creator and the licensee.

The iCopyright system works by having copyright holders register for an account with the service. During that process, they select a series of licensing terms and services that they want to offer. Their list of current options includes the following:

• Reproduce for Non-Commercial Use (Free)
• Create Derivative Works for Non-Commercial Use (Free)
• Reproduce for Commercial Use (Paid)
• Creative Derivative Works for Commercial Use (Paid)
• Contact the Creator for Other Permissions (Contact Form)
• Discuss the Work (Contact Form)
• Subscribe to the Creator’s Blog or Newsletter (Via RSS)

The Webmaster is then presented with a “tag” to place on their site, typically in the footer of each post, similar to the one below. (Note: This is an image of the tag due to problems with JavaScript and WordPress. Also, this is NOT the actual license of this work, but rather, a sample of the iCopyright badge. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License located in the sidebar.)

The tag then appears on the site where visitors can click on it to access the licensing terms offered on the site.

If a user selects one of the free options, they are immediately taken to a page and provided with a special link to use to provide attribution. The URL leads to a profile page, similar to this one, that includes a short bio of the author, a link to a more extensive bio and the terms the work was licensed under.

If a user selects one of the paid licenses, they are then taken to a very similar page, complete with a similar link, but a link to pay for the use via PayPal. The PayPal link sends the money directly to content creator, completely bypassing iCopyright and any licensing fees from the company (Note: PayPal fees will still apply).

Finally, the user selects either the contact, discuss or subscribe options, they will either be taken to a contact form or redirected to a specified URL depending upon what the content creator selected in their control panel.

In all of the cases above, the option descriptions can be modified to fit with the site, though the actual licensing terms can not.

All in all, iCopyright for Creators is a very compelling solution for individual site licensing needs, especially those that need more than what Creative Commons can provide.

Lots to Love

In general, the iCopyright system is a simple, powerful and elegant solution to a very complicated problem. Every element of the process has been refined and simplified to make it easier on the parties involved.

For example, signing up for the service is a simple process requiring just a few steps. Outside of the typical username/password creation, you also provide personal information, such as your address and phone number, as well as bios and information about yourself for display on their site.

The process takes only a few moments, especially if you already have biographical information available, and is very well explained throughout. For users, the licensing terms are clear and the process of obtaining rights to a work is presented through a very clean, non-intimidating interface.

However, the features that I am most excited about include the following:

1. Great flexibility: You can choose what licensing you want or do not want to offer. You can offer only paid options, only free options, no derivative works or just require that people use iCopyright’s forms to contact you about any and all licensing.
2. Contact Forms: One of the “hidden” features is that iCopyright for Creators provides you with hosted contact forms so readers can discuss your work with you for any reason, not just licensing. Great for sites that can’t run their own contact forms.
3. No Fees: iCopyright directs all PayPal payments to go directly to the content creator and does not take a “middle man” fee. They are considering other methods of monetization.
4. Double Protection: The use of third-party licensing pages provides protection to both content creators and licensees. It prevents copyright holders from going back on a license they provided and licensees from overstepping the terms they agreed to and claiming they had permission.
5. Practical Attribution: Finally, the service provides clear, simple terms for what constitutes attribution. This avoids many of the controversies seen with Creative Commons Licensing.

iCopyright for Creators has a great deal to offer bloggers and other Webmaster. However, that isn’t to say that the service, especially the beta, is perfect in every way. There are a few caveats worth pointing out.

Some Reservations

Correction: The terms of the iCopyright Licenses ARE human editable. That alters or mitigates against many of the reservations below. Please keep that in mind as reading on. See comments for further information.

It is worth pointing out that the iCopyright for Creators service is currently in public beta and that many of these issues may be straightened out before the final release. These comments are intended to be a part of the feedback process and to help users decide if they want to participate in the beta itself.

With that in mind, I do have some reservations about the current incarnation of the system. If I had complete control over the process, I would strongly consider changing the following things:

1. SEO Issues: The current attribution system does not link back to the original work. This can create SEO problems as the licensed copies appear to be duplicate content and can directly compete with the original posts. Furthermore, with the current layout, it takes two clicks to find a link to the original site from a licensed copy and the default attribution box is not a clickable link. This comes from iCopyright trying to serve both print and Web licensers, but an HTML-based attribution box would be a nice addition.
2. Paid Licensing Oddities: Those who are very interested in paid licensing may be unnerved that the license URL is provided before the payment is sent. Payment is handled on something of an honor system and enforcement is completely a function of the content creator.
3. Creative Commons Incompatibility: The terms of iCopyright’s licenses are wholly their own and are incompatible with Creative Commons. This site, for example, can not use iCopyright for Creators because there is no Share-Alike equivalent and no means to allow free commercial use.
4. Missing License Options: As mentioned above, there are some licensing options you can not select, such as free commercial use or GPL-like conditions. You can alter the description of a license, but not the actual license terms or its name.
5. Terminology: Many, especially bloggers, may be thrown off by the use of the name “tag” to describe the footer iCopyright users add to their content. The term tag already has other meanings and this may cause confusion in some cases.

With the possible exception of the SEO issues, these should be very minor concerns for anyone interested in licensing their work who desires terms that are compatible with what iCopyright has to offer.

For the most part, these are all small prices to pay for a free service that provides simple, clean and effective copyright licensing, especially from such a trusted name.

Conclusions

Overall, I am very impressed with the iCopyright for Creators system. It is clean, easy to understand, flexible and effective. Best of all, it is completely free.

However, perhaps the greatest attribute iCopyright brings to the table is its name. Though not well known among bloggers, they have been in business for over a decade and are partnered with many in the mainstream media. They have a great reputation with both large content creators and those that routinely license content.

Though the system is not perfect and there is room for improvement, it is a compelling option, especially for sites that want content licensing that sits somewhere between a liberal Creative Commons License and all rights reserved.

Considering that the site, the service and all aspects of it are free, there is little harm in signing up for an account and seeing if iCopyright is a good fit.

If it isn’t, you can always not add the tag.

I won’t be using it on this site due in large part to the license incompatibilities, but it is an option I will gladly consider for other sites I work on and advise for.

Gallery

Yepic, previously covered on this site in late 2006, is a site that allows its users to “buy and sell information about anything” and enticed bloggers and other authors to sell premium content through their service.

The email, which was sent by Yepic CEO Richard Tripp, said the following:

“Just an official note that we will be taking the website, Yepic.com, down on June 8, 2008 and will not be re-launching thereafter. If you have any questions, please email me…”

It has been a mixed bag for user-generated content in recent months. Premium user-generated content sites, such as Blogburst and Associated Content, have done well while others, including Yepic and Scoopt Words, have closed down.

Clearly this field is still very unstable but it appears that there is still plenty of interest, with companies such as RightsAgent, from the people originally behind Lisensa, continuing to explore new options.

Lisensa, despite some early fanfare, never really took off and was quietly shut down some time last year.

However, one year later, some of the minds behind Lisensa have come back together and, with new backers, are creating a new content licensing system. This one, RightsAgent, is far more robust, easier to use and much more powerful than Lisensa. Coming so soon after the Lane Hartweel controversy, RightsAgent also seems to be a more timely solution.

This system, though still in heavy development, has a great deal going for it and seems to be very well positioned to greatly change how bloggers and other content providers license their works, even those that have no intention of collecting money for their creations.

How it Works

RightsAgent works very similarly to its predecessor in many ways. Based in large part up on the new CC+ system, which allows for extensions to Creative Commons Licensing, RightsAgent lets you easily create an account and then register your content sources.

Currently, you can register any blog that you run as well as your Flickr and Revver accounts. The system will automatically detect any Creative Commons Licenses embedded into your work and place that work under your assigned license. The system will update to reflect any license changes and you can also change the license terms within RightsAgent at any time.

Content registered with RightsAgent is updated at regular intervals and inserted into your personal feed. Users can either visit your personal page on RightsAgent or subscribe to that personal feed to get updates about your content available for license across all of your sites.

When visitors access your personal page, they then have the option to license your work for their own sites and publications. However, what happens next depends on the license you provide and the use they desire.

If the use is one that you’ve decided you wish to charge for, the system will prompt the user to add “For Profit” credits to their account at the rate of $1.10 per credit. They can then exchange those credits for the right to license your work at a rate you’ve previously designated.

If the use is not one you’ve decided to request payment for, they are then prompted to give thanks via “Non-Profit” credits, which are free. Up to three non-profit credits can be assigned at once. Non-profit credits can not be redeemed for money, but do go to aid your reputation on the site.

Once the transaction is complete, the buyer receives one credit for licensing the work and the licensor receives as many credits as designated in the transaction. Credits bolster your reputation on the site which, as the site grows, will help to distinguish between high and low quality sites on the service.

All in all, there is a lot of reasons for rightsholders to take an interest in RightsAgent and many good reasons to look at using the service.

Benefits

The benefit of RightsAgent, fundamentally is that it offers a standard way for content creators to license their work. This protects both the person who is licensing the work but also the one offering it by eliminating much of the “your word versus mine” disputes that arise from informal licensing.

Since RightsAgent stores a record of every transaction, both paid and unpaid, in both user accounts, If a user oversteps the bounds of the license or a licensor tries to go back on the agreement, there is clear proof as to what was agreed upon and when the agreement took place. This guards against license changes and prevents people from using CC to “trap” others, as has been suggested by some critics.

But what is best about the system is that it is truly all inclusive. You can use it to license both your commercial and non-commercial work. It can be used with content across a wide range of sites, with more sites to be available soon, and is a great way to provide a “one stop shop” for anyone interested in licensing your work, no matter what format.

Also, much like MyFreeCopyright, RightsAgent provides a non-repudiation element by parsing your feed regularly and displaying approximately when works are posted. However, the system does not currently provide a time of posting, just the date.

Finally, the site offers very granular control over how you license your materials. If you want to increase the price of one post or reduce it for another, you can do so. Though you can set a default rate, you can modify it on a per-item basis as you go through.

However, there are limitations to RightsAgent, many of which are still being worked on and developed. However, these limitations might still be grounds for some to hold off on using the system until it is more complete.

Potential Issues

Most of the problems with the system stem from the fact that it is still in heavy development. Many elements are expected to be corrected as the system grows.

However, one limitation of the current system is that, as with Lisensa before it, that it does not distinguish between the New York Times and a small blog when determining pricing. Even though you can set the price per work, you can not set price points based upon readership or size of publication. This means all users pay the same price, regardless of their expectation of profit.

The second is that the fledgling reputation system, in its current form, can be gamed pretty easily. There are a few bugs in the system that allow users to easily inflate their totals. Though this is not an issue at the moment as the system is so new, it will need to be fixed before it is a useful barometer of performance.

Speaking of the reputation system, the use of “credits” may seem to be an inelegant solution. Though it is necessary to make the reputation system work, it adds another variable when trying to set price points for your work and adds an extra layer of complication when trying to

But perhaps the biggest limitation is that the system is currently not very user-friendly to those seeking to license content. Though content creators can easily set up accounts and license their works, it can be much harder for those seeking to use the content to find it. There currently is no search engine for applicable content, entries are not tagged in any way and the only clear means to find someone’s personal page is through the provided badges.

These are elements that are currently being worked on by RightsAgent and should be available in the near future.

Finally, as regular readers of the site will know, a “personal feed” that re-syndicates the content of your other feeds is a cause for concern, especially considering that it might be a target for scraping down the road. Though this is mitigated a great deal by the fact that the feed only displays partial content and can be disabled on a per-source basis, it is something that has to be turned off manually.

Still, many will likely find use for this feature and RightsAgent is looking at possibilities to let uses monetize this feed down the road.

Conclusions

Currently, RightsAgent is a very new service and its creators admit that it does not currently live up to its full potential. As one might expect, it is still building out new features, securing partnerships and trying to find how to best serve all involved parties.

However, the potential of RightsAgent should be easily evident to anyone who follows content licensing. It solves many of the problems associated with Creative Commons Licensing, including those both real and perceived, and it does so in a user-friendly way that fits in with nearly every site, no matter what license they’ve chosen for their work.

Considering that the system is free to use, RightsAgent only collects a small fee on transactions and when you try to withdraw credits on paper checks and when users add credits to their account, there is little reason to not at least experiment with the system. It can help you keep track of who is licensing your work, protect you against abusers and provide you with at least some non-repudiation as to your copyright ownership.

I’ve made the decision to add the buttons to my sidebar, at least on a trial basis, and would encourage others who are curious to do the same.

After all, if clear licensing systems such as RightsAgent became the norm, many of the ugly copyright-related incidents would be avoided.

Let us hope that, if RightsAgent is not the answer, that the real one does come along very soon.