At FIAT/IFTA we continue our efforts to bring interesting and relevant publications of our members to a wider audience. The Value, Use and Copyrights Commission (VUC) has just published their second tool in the field of audiovisual (archival) rights management. The Media Contract Ontology (MCO, also known as Part 21 of the MPEG-21 standard) offers a structure to document the rights applicable on an audiovisual item in a flexible, unambiguous and machine-readable way. This way conditions for their exploitation otherwise locked in a non-machine-readable, narrative language can be steered, managed and applied in an automated way.

The publication is accompanied by a case study from RAI – Radiotelevisione italiana, in which it becomes clear how they apply the MCO in their rights management system. You can read all about the Media Contract Ontology here.