GeoConnections

What is Rights Management?

1. A mechanism to specify, manage, control and track geodata distribution within secure, open and trusted environments;

2. A system of operating agreements and interoperable technologies needed to enable broader distribution and use of geodata while protecting the rights of producers and users; and
3. A system that is dependant on Information Security technologies to provide the trusted infrastructure for Rights Management, including e-commerce, to address the financial transactions necessary to procure rights for geospatial content.

Digital Rights management is a popular term for a field that emerged in the mid-1990s when content providers, technology organizations and policy makers began to address the imbalance of technology and laws caused by the effect of the Web infrastructure on the distribution of copyrighted material in digital form.

A fair amount of work has been done in the industry regarding data ownership and rights management. The main objective of the Open Geospatial Consortium GeoRM Working Group is to coordinate and mature the development and validation of work being done on rights management as they apply to the geospatial community.

The goal of the GeoRM effort in the OGC is to make sure that a larger market has access to geospatial resources through a well understood and common mechanism that enables more than today's "all or nothing" protection. A major motivation for this effort is the need to manage the "ownership obstacle to data sharing" in spatial data infrastructure scenarios.

The GeoDM Reference Model defines the framework for web service mechanisms and rights languages to articulate, manage and protect the rights of all participants in the geographic information marketplace, including the owners of intellectual property and the users who wish to use it. A key aspect of the GeoRM Reference Model is that it is abstract, or general, rather than specifying implementation details about types of agreements. Such agreements might range from an open content sharing model to a cost-recovery program of a public or government organization or a full commercial vendor license model.

The OGC membership will use the GeoRM Reference Model in developing OpenGIS Implementation Specifications for open interfaces and encodings that will enable spatial data infrastructures and diverse systems to participate in transactions involving data, services and intellectual property protection. More information about GeoRM activities can be found on the OGC Technical Committee's GeoRM Working Group page.