For Mumbai-based Lumina Datamatics, the proposition for its Rights Platform started with the desire to help publishers to untangle their backlist rights challenges. It means digging into publishers’ dusty boxes and paper files to find out what rights they had in terms of text, images, and rich media, which licenses need to be extended, and what content should be replaced. Then the process continues with the creation of rights trail designed to mitigate litigation risk and various analyses, including those on rights risk and fair use.
Now Rights Platform is getting more effective with the inclusion of blockchain solution RapidRightsChain. Shorter rights acquisition time and lower costs are the main advantages coming out of this new upgrade.
“For dozens of years, our publishing clients have hired photo researchers and data processors to find images, negotiate rights, and manually enter those rights into spreadsheets and databases,” says Vidur Bhogilal, vice chairman of Lumina Datamatics. “With blockchain technology, we can now automate all the steps of requesting, creating purchase orders, and creating grants with all parties in the transaction-receiving ledger entries and verifications.”
Using RapidRightsChain, Lumina Datamatics’s Rights Platform can now unlock the ability for instant transactions. Authors, editors, and designers—or anybody with limited knowledge of rights and permissions—can utilize RapidRightsChain to quickly and easily approve their image, send their rights request with one click and receive their licensing grant without leaving the system or additional data entry.
“This dramatically lowers the cost of acquisitions and increases the control of creators in the process,” says Bhogilal, pointing out that “the role of the rights researcher becomes more sophisticated and are only reserved for the most difficult of licensing negotiations.”
Lumina Datamatics is also in the final stages of adding instant payment features through the cryptocurrency LightPayCoin to its Rights Platform. This has to potential to greatly lower transaction fees, provide instant payments to rights holders, and allow them to swap tokens for their country’s fiat.
Adds Bhogilal: “Rights transactions are increasingly sophisticated, taking place across many countries with dozens of deliverables included. The transaction mechanism needs to be instant and needs to accommodate all the demands of international business exchanges.”
For Bhogilal, Rights Platform with RapidRightsChain (and later with LightPayCoin) “enables creators to participate from any place in the globe and continue to have their content monetized. Education and content creation are global, and we at Lumina Datamatics understand this very well.”
Attendees at the upcoming London Book Fair can have a preview of Rights Platform with RapidRightsChain solution at booth 3B29
