European Commission welcomes industry collaboration

The European Publishers Council (EPC) has initiated a unique collaboration between different parts of the global creative industries and created the Linked Content Coalition (LCC), following calls in October 2010 from Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Commission, for 'Big Ideas for the Digital Agenda'.

The result is the publication of an innovative technical framework to make it possible to manage and access online rights information seamlessly across all types of media and content, whether text, image, sound or audiovisual.

The LCC Framework includes the innovative rights reference model (RRM) together with radical best practice principles for using identifiers and communicating information about rights through supply chains. This marks a significant development that brings together for the first time licensing data models and languages for all kinds of content.

The release of the Framework marks the completion of the first stage of the LCC's work. LCC also plans to use the Framework to create standards that will help enable millions of individuals and small companies who now add content directly onto the Web every day to identify and manage their own rights much more effectively.

Robert Madelin, director general of DG Connect for the European Commission, said: 'This important step to make cross-Europe license use easier and faster is a welcome demonstration that innovative thinking and innovative data management are combining. It is good that Brussels could help catalyse this endeavour first through the Digital Agenda and now with EU Research funding for the all-important test phase, but all credit to the tenacity and good will of the private sector in making this happen.'