Really Strategies Blog

RSuite CMS provides loud and clear answer for Audible.com

We are often asked by publishers to describe the real business impact RSuite CMS has on our clients. Along with my previous post on Blood-Horse Publications, Audible.com is another client that has leveraged the power of RSuite to realize its business goals.

Audible, Inc., an Amazon.com, Inc. subsidiary, is the leading provider of premium digital spoken audio information and entertainment, on the Internet.

In early 2007 Audible.com launched an aggressive project to revamp their entire metadata program to better manage and process the metadata files they receive from their publishing partners.This program had the following business objectives to meet:

• Ensure error-free metadata by using publisher or publisher aggregators as the source of data, and by developing new tools to drive, search, browse, and publish to store functions off this sourced data.
• Ensure the ability to identify Audible products on partner sites by providing ISBNs that correspond to the downloadable digital binding with each product in feeds to partners, wherever and whenever possible.
• Reduce the occurrences of human error by automatically populating data into web site databases, from the sourced data.
• Improve findabilty, searchability, and marketability of products by standardizing keyword, category, authors, contributors, and publishers.
• Improve royalty systems by making contract entry a requirement for any product being pushed to an Audible site.

During a 4-week proof of concept (POC), RSuite was configured to prove out several use cases:

1. Leverage RSuite’s workflow tool to ingest ONIX feeds and audio files
2. Apply additional metadata (both manually and automatically)
3. Distribute the appropriate content packages to target delivery sites.

During this stage many business rules were also documented that were applicable to improving Audible's business opportunities. After a successful POC, Audible.com selected RSuite for its metadata and aggregation solution.

RSuite became the framework upon which Audible crafted solutions to meet all its requirements: workflow, business rules validation, content aggregation and delivery. In 6 months, RSuite was configured and implemented to become Audible's workflow tool, which enables seamless transfer of content from publisher feeds to web site-ready files.

Now after using RSuite for over a year, Audible has realized its goals of integrating a tool that would satisfy the business objectives and show a return on investment quickly. As Art Zegarek, director of data architecture told our team, “RSuite has become a very critical system very fast!" It is satisfying to know that RSuite is helping an aggregator such as Audible.com meet its business objectives every day.

Certified Content Rights Manager (CCRM) Course

Yesterday I had the good fortune to take part in the SIIA's Certified Content Rights Manager Course. I've long been interested in copyright issues and permissions and am glad to see an organization like the SIIA offer a certification course on this topic. The course covers copyright law, infringement, and content licenses and then delves into managing and maintaining a content rights management plan within your organization.

Content rights management is a relatively new concept and term, although the protection of intellectual property certainly is not (see Constitution of the United States, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8). I believe that most companies obey copyright law and would not intentionally pirate content or break a license agreement. But I also believe that some employees might not consider some of their actions as copyright infringement:

• sharing passwords
• emailing
• peer-to-peer software
• DRM circumvention

Employers should be pro-active with content rights management. It's important to remember that employers are responsible for employees' actions and  ignorance is not a valid excuse. I've heard people claim that the fair use doctrine will cover "negligible" acts (though there is little that is negligible with the activities listed above). But it's risky to think that  fair use can be used as a defense in any business context. And only a judge can determine fair use after a copyright suit has been brought to trial.

Two slides in the presentation particularly illustrate the financial costs associated with copyright infringement (click on images to enlarge):

The SIIA actively enforces corporate anti-piracy and offers a great list of FAQs that every president and CEO should take a minute to read. Also interesting are three high-profile  legal cases involving copyright infringement within an organization:

• Lowry's Reports, Inc. v. Legg Mason, Inc.
• American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, Inc.
• Wall Data Inc. V. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department

Educating employees about content rights and taking the time to conduct a copyright inventory should be on everyone's to-do list this year.

Click here to learn more or register for the class.