What's Happening at iCopyright?

It has been such a busy Fall, we have not had much time to blog or post news releases. A number of colleagues have emailed us to ask what's going on. No news is usually good news, but so many things are happening these days, people want to know if we are keeping up. We like to think we are running ahead! Here's a brief summary of what we have been doing:

New Publisher Accounts
A major focus for the company is always on bringing new publishers live. New live accounts include Dow Jones Reprints, The Canadian Broadcast Corporation and Glacier Media. Many more publishers, large and small, are in the pipeline and expected to go live with iCopyright early next year. 

New (C)reator Accounts
Independent content creators continue to register and apply their free (c)reator tag to their works en masse. A sampling of creators that use the service are featured here.

Discovery Searches for Large News Providers
The launch of our content monitoring and infringement detection service, Discovery, has gotten a lot of publishers curious about where their content is being used on the web. How many people see it? How many people copy and republish it? We've been running custom searches for large publishers. They are impressed (often amazed) at the results, especially with the opportunity to better engage those readers and monetize those copies!

Support for Associated Press h-News Microformat
The Associated Press recently announced a new microformatting standard called h-News. The new format enables anyone producing news content to provide certain identifying information that search engines can find more easily, and communicate usage rights. iCopyright's Article Tools and Instant Licensing Services have been configured to fully support the new standard. Publishers that adopt the h-News microformat will be able to easily deploy iCopyright’s services without making any additional changes to their internal content management systems.

New Corporate Licensing Services
We continue to devote substantial resources to improve the iCopyright platform and pioneer all-new services for information publishers and the organizations that want to use their content. A suite of new services for corporations and universities is launching in Q1 2010. The beta of our "one click corporate permissions and billing service" is launching this week. More info on our expanded services for commercial users can be found here.

New Website & CMS Plug-ins
We are excited about our new website because it does a better job of showcasing what we do. The new site was created using Joomla. We are also creating sites in Drupal and Wordpress. Why do that, you ask? To test new plugins (some people call them "widgets," modules," or "extensions") that enable websites created with these CMSs to implement the iCopyright Article Tools and Instant Licensing System with a simple download and install. Over the last 12 years, the iCopyright technology has been geared towards large publishers with sophisticated and proprietary content management systems. The new plugins will allow a much larger number of web publishers to use iCopyright. Rah!

New Peer and Support Networks for Publishers and Creators
We recently launched peer networks for publisher clients and creator using the Ning social networking platform. The iCopyright Publisher Network is a private network for publishers that have implemented iCopyright. The network allows publisher rights and permissions staffs to network with each other; keep up on best practices, and interact with the staff of iCopyright. The iCopyright Creators Network is an open network for all independent creators interested in protecting, syndicating and monetizing their content.

Business Development: Global Copyright Network
We just returned from China, where we met with publishers, technology companies and government agencies about localizing iCopyright for the Chinese market. We are also working with prospective partners in Europe and Australia. We have long had the vision of an integrated global network for copyright protection and licensing. Any content, any language, any currency -- all enabled with a point-of-contact licensing capability. Wherever content goes, its copyright rules and licensing cash register go with it. Each year we move a step closer to that vision.

Whew, that's what we've been up to. How about you? We hope you have a fabulous holiday and a prosperous New Year!

P.S. Did we mention that iCopyright was named to the EContent Top List of 100 Companies that Matter Most in the Digital Content Industry -- for a third year in a row?