Twenty-nine major news and information companies have signed on as initial investors and participants in NewsRight, an independent digital rights and content licensing organization led by former ABC News President David Westin. NewsRight aims to support original news reporting by facilitating the use of published news content and data analytics with the permission of publishers.

Wiley-Blackwell announced its participation in CrossRef's CrossMark service, which aims to clarify among different versions of scholarly articles being discovered by readers online. The service standardizes the way readers can identify and locate the most up-to-date version of the content.

Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC) announced that academic institutions using its Pay-Per-Use Services would be able to obtain reuse rights for entire books, including some that are commercially unavailable. CCC enables publishers to offer reuse rights for their books.

The latest version of Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP), the publisher-led project to develop tools for online copyright permissions information, was presented at International Press and Telecommunications Council's (IPTC) Business Meets Technology Day in Berlin. Version 2.0 of ACAP targets business-to-business content syndication, with a special focus on the context of licensing newspaper stories and the exchange of video content by news agencies.

Cintas Corporation, a secure document management service provider, launched its Digital Vault Exchange (DVX) solution, a robust online system that backs up all databases, operating systems, and corporate email systems. Offering businesses 24/7 data security and compliance, the solution instantly recovers data if it is deleted or corrupted, and can save files for a fixed amount of time to comply with a business' retention policy.

From encrypted passwords to firewalls, a company will expend immeasurable amounts of energy and money to protect its information. Just keeping data safe from outside assaults is an on going task, but company outsiders are no longer the only ones who pose a threat. Insiders with unlimited access to sensitive data can cause just as much damage to an organization as the average hacker. On July 13, 2010, Imperva, a data security company, aims to mitigate the problems that accompany securing sensitive information with the release of SecureSphere File Security.

OnCopyright 2010, a 1-day event held at the Union League Club in New York City and sponsored by the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), tackled the issue of copyright from four vantage points: art, society, technology, and law. The 19 experts from these four sectors provided insights into the changing parameters of remixing, mashups, collaboration, and disruptive technology.

For social network junkies-and companies that rely on sites such as Twitter and Facebook to interact with clients-Aug. 6 was a bleak day. A massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack targeting a single pro-Georgian blogger drastically slowed or stopped five major sites: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LiveJournal, and Fotki.

This year, when Proofpoint, Inc., an email security and data loss provider, conducted its annual study on outbound email and data loss prevention issues, it had an additional question in mind: Is the recession creating an increased risk? By the time "Outbound Email and Data Loss Prevention in Today's Enterprise, 2009" was released in July, Proofpoint had found the connection it was looking for.

Everybody is doing it: "tweeting," that is. Yet like so many other things that are all the rage, Twitter has a bit of a dark side. No, I'm not talking about users who detail their entire day via the microblogging site. Recently, concerns about hacking and "maltweets" have plagued users of the popular free social networking site and others.

The recent proposal of the Commercial Felony Streaming Act, and the uproar over the potential it holds to send artists like Justin Bieber to jail for copyright violation, has put the subject of intellectual property and copyright on the front page. The following is an excerpt from a chapter in the book, Dancing with Digital Natives: Staying in Step with the Generation That's Transforming the Way Business is Done. The full chapter is titled: "Ethics, Technology, and the Net Generation: Rethinking Intellectual Property Law" and is written by Albert M. Erisman. The book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers in e-book and print format.

In October, The Wall Street Journal reported that several popular Facebook applications had been transmitting users' personal identifying information to literally dozens of advertising and internet tracking companies. While Facebook maintains that there is "no evidence that any personal information was misused or even collected as a result of this issue," not all observers have been appeased.

The question bellows this year from every podium, in every digital media conference panel, and in reams of articles. Will users finally start paying for their online content when so many alternatives crowd a search-driven, user-generated, all-you-can eat buffet of free? Well, we'll spare you the suspense. The short answer is: Online, users already pay for content.

Social networking sites and online collaboration tools make it easier for employees to collaborate and share their knowledge. Add email and instant messaging (IM) to the mix and the result is a knowledge-sharing system that can bolster communication and productivity throughout an enterprise.

With so much enterprise information now residing online and in overlapping applications both inside and outside firewalls, with employees and contractors dispersed in offices around the globe, and with software as a service becoming an everyday part of enterprise architecture, the need for flexible and secure identity and access management has become of foremost importance for any organization.

A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report titled "Trial by Fire," found that in a global survey of 7,200 senior managers responsible for information security, not one reference to the problems arising from search security are to be found. Securing search should be a key concern in search implementations, however.

Dear Warner Music Group Executives:

The BBC reports that 20 million people wanted to purchase tickets to the historic Led Zeppelin show held at the O2 Arena on Dec. 10, 2007. Needless to say, with only 20,000 tickets available, there were many disappointed fans who couldn’t be there when the band took the stage for the first time in 19 years.

The opening of the 2006 Winter Olympics was a picture of postmodernism. The athletes pointed still, phone, and video cameras back at the world watching them. It is interesting so many chose to be chroniclers of the moment rather than simply experience the fact they are living history. Yet, as each Olympics offers a time-lapse look at how humans push the boundaries of physical achievement forward—for me embodied in the women’s halfpipe snowboarding competitors, who only four years ago barely met TV cameras head on and now soar high above them—they provide similar insight into the way technology and the coverage of the events changes as well.

Cut and paste culture might be all the rage on the creative side of the entertainment business but is often an anathema to the business side. While the latter will gladly pocket Gorillaz’ green, a team of lawyers probably frets over every echo of another artist’s work. At this year’s Entertainment Technology Alliance conference, I moderated a session called “Can Content Remain King?” in which—as usual—DRM surfaced as the highest hurdle for widespread entertainment digital content delivery.

As content management systems add functionality to serve the enterprise, one of the more important capabilities is digital rights management (DRM). For Web publishers with large content databases, how and whether they restrict access may be a life-or-death decision. If a company charges for content, its revenue stream is threatened by anyone duplicating its information.