The International Press Telecommunications Council is happy to announce that RightsML, IPTC’s Rights Expression Language for the media industry, has been updated to version 2.0.

RightsML allows publishers and media owners to express rights permissions and obligations based on geographic, time-based, and monetary restrictions.

This version contains major updates: it is now based on W3C’s Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) version 2.2 which became a W3C recommendation in February 2018.

ODRL allows content providers to “express permission, prohibition, and obligation statements to be associated to content.” RightsML extends on that base to provide standard expressions for geographic and time-based constraints, on a requirement to pay fixed amounts of money for use of the content, 

An example RightsML model which expresses that EPA (Example Press Agency) grants its partners geographic rights to distribute a content item in Germany is as follows:

Policy:
  type: "http://www.w3.org/ns/odrl/2/Set"
  uid: "http://example.com/RightsML/policy/idGeog1"
  profile: "https://iptc.org/std/RightsML/odrl-profile/"
  permission:
    - target: "urn:newsml:example.com:20120101:180106-999-000013"
      assigner: "http://example.com/cv/party/epa"
      assignee:
        type: "http://www.w3.org/ns/odrl/2/PartyCollection"
        uid: "http://example.com/cv/partygroup/epapartners"
      action: "http://www.w3.org/ns/odrl/2/distribute"
      constraint:
      - leftOperand: "http://www.w3.org/ns/odrl/2/spatial"
        operator: "http://www.w3.org/ns/odrl/2/eq"
        rightOperand: "http://cvx.iptc.org/iso3166-1a3/DEU"

This content model can also be expressed in XML or JSON. See the RightsML Simple geographic Example for more information.

More examples are on the RightsML 2.0 Examples page on the IPTC developer site.

IPTC has also created tools to help implementors understand and implement RightsML 2.0, including a generic guideline flow for evaluating ODRL documents and a RightsML policy builder tool.

For more details and help on implementing RightsML within your organisation, please join the IPTC RightsML mailing list. Membership of the group is open to the public. For discussion on developing further versions of the standard, please use the IPTC RightsML-dev list, open to all IPTC members.

By Jennifer Parrucci from IPTC member New York Times

The NewsCodes Working Group has been tirelessly working on a project to review the definitions of all terms in the MediaTopics vocabulary.

The motivation behind this work is feedback received from members using the vocabulary that some definitions are unclear, confusing or not grammatically correct. Additionally, some labels have also been found to be outdated or insensitive and have been changed.

Changing these definitions and labels is not meant to completely change the usage of the terms. Definition and label changes are meant to refine and clarify the usage.

While reviewing each definition the members of the working group have considered various factors, including whether the definition is clear, whether the definition uses the label to define itself (not very helpful) and whether there are typos or grammatical errors in the definition. Additionally, definitions were made more consistent and examples were added when possible.

Once these changes were made in English, the French, Spanish and German translations were also updated.

Currently, updates are available for three branches of Media Topics:

• arts, culture and entertainment
• weather
• conflict, war and peace

Updates can be viewed in cv format on cv.iptc.org or in the tree view on show.newscodes.org.

The working group plans to continue working on the definition review and periodically release more updates as they become available.

An updated version 2.27 of NewsML-G2 is available as Developer Release

•  XML Schemas and the corresponding documentation are updated

Packages of version 2.27 files can be downloaded:

• All XML Schemas plus full documentation (about 60 MB) from https://www.iptc.org/std/NewsML-G2/NewsML-G2_2.27.zip 
• The same without XML Schema documentation in HTML (about 3 MB) from https://www.iptc.org/std/NewsML-G2/NewsML-G2_2.27-noXMLdocu.zip    
• From the newsml-g2 repository on GitHub as a Release: https://github.com/iptc/newsml-g2

All changes of version 2.27 can be found on that page: http://dev.iptc.org/G2-Approved-Changes

The NewsML-G2 Implementation Guidelines are a web document now at https://www.iptc.org/std/NewsML-G2/guidelines

Reminder of an important decision taken for version 2.25 and applying also to version 2.27: the Core Conformance Level will not be developed any further as all recent Change Requests were in fact aiming at features of the Power Conformance Level,  changes of the Core Level were only a side effect.

The Core Conformance Level specifications of version 2.24 will stay available and valid, find them at http://dev.iptc.org/G2-Standards#CCLspecs  

The new Video Metadata Hub Recommendation 1.2 supports videos as delivered by professional video cameras by mapping their key properties to the common properties of the VMHub – see  https://iptc.org/std/videometadatahub/mapping/1.2 – the new mappings are shown in columns at the right end of the table.

IPTC developed the Video Metadata Hub as common ground for metadata across already existing video formats with their own specific metadata properties. The VMHub is comprised of a single set of video metadata properties, which can be expressed by multiple technical standards, in full as reference implementation in XMP, EBU Core and JSON. These properties can be used for describing the visible and audible content, rights data, administrative details and technical characteristics of a video.

The Recommendation 1.2 adds new properties for the camera device use for recording a video and for referencing an item of a video planning system. All properties are shown at https://iptc.org/std/videometadatahub/recommendation/1.2

An updated version 2.26 of NewsML-G2 is available as Developer Release

•  XML Schemas and the corresponding documentation are updated
• the Structure Matrix Excel sheet is updated

Packages of version 2.26 files can be downloaded:

• All XML Schemas plus Structure Matrix (about 60MB) from https://www.iptc.org/std/NewsML-G2/NewsML-G2_2.26.zip 
• The same without XML Schema documentation in HTML (about 1MB) from https://www.iptc.org/std/NewsML-G2/NewsML-G2_2.26-noXMLdocu.zip    
• New: in the newsml-g2 repository on GitHub: https://github.com/iptc/newsml-g2

All changes of version 2.26 can be found on that page: http://dev.iptc.org/G2-Approved-Changes

Reminder of an important decision taken for version 2.25 and applying to version 2.26 too: the Core Conformance Level will not be developed any further as all recent Change Requests were in fact aiming at features of the Power Conformance Level,  changes of the Core Level were only a side effect.

The Core Conformance Level specifications of version 2.24 will stay available and valid, find them at http://dev.iptc.org/G2-Standards#CCLspecs  

An updated version 2.25 of NewsML-G2 is available as Developer Release

•  XML Schemas and the corresponding documentation are updated
• the Structure Matrix Excel sheet is updated

Packages of version 2.25 files can be downloaded:

• All XML Schemas plus Structure Matrix from https://www.iptc.org/std/NewsML-G2/NewsML-G2_2.25.zip 
• The same without XML Schema documentation in HTML: https://www.iptc.org/std/NewsML-G2/NewsML-G2_2.25-noXMLdocu.zip    
• New: in the newsml-g2 repository on GitHub: https://github.com/iptc/newsml-g2

All changes of version 2.25 can be found on that page: http://dev.iptc.org/G2-Approved-Changes

An important decision was taken: the Core Conformance Level will not be developed any further as all recent Change Requests were in fact aiming at features of the Power Conformance Level,  changes of the Core Level were only a side effect.

The Core Conformance Level specifications of version 2.24 will stay available and valid, find them at http://dev.iptc.org/G2-Standards#CCLspecs  

The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) released the new Video Metadata Hub Recommendation (VMHub), a comprehensive solution for video metadata management that allows exchange of metadata over multiple existing standards.

The VMHub supports various technical solutions with the key goal of storing and exchanging metadata in a safe and reliable way, with a universal metadata schema.

“Users of videos of different standards told IPTC they need a common ground in metadata for efficient workflows,” said Michael Steidl, managing director of IPTC, at IPTC’s Autumn Meeting in Berlin, during a day devoted to video. “This is what we deliver now with the Video Metadata Hub.”

Diverse video technology methods have made standardisation challenging – the various approaches for embedding metadata and rights information. There are also many different metadata schemas for video, many of them somewhat limiting.

“Organisations and individuals can benefit from implementing the VMHub because it helps to streamline workflows, with guidelines for organising metadata of videos from different sources and standards in a common way,” said Steidl, who is also the lead of IPTC’s Video Metadata Working Group.

Likewise, the VMHub supports workflow, exchange of metadata, and search functions across existing standards, and provides mappings to Apple Quicktime, PBCore, MPEG7, Schema.org, and IPTC’s NewsML-G2.

“The Hub also supports organisations switching from an ‘old’ to a ‘new’ standard by providing a stable metadata schema and gives the ability to search across videos from different standards,” Steidl said.

IPTC’s Video Metadata Working Group – which consists of delegates from news organisations, system vendors and experts in the metadata field – collaborated for two years to review technical elements, rights and administrative information, and metadata terms for describing audio-visual content, to ensure IPTC’s VMHub was a comprehensive solution for video metadata management.

Documentation & Specification

• Specification, technical implementation, and mappings to Apple Quicktime, MPEG 7 (ISO 15938-5), IPTC’s NewsML-G2, PB Core and Schema.org.
• The recommendation documents are available at www.iptc.org/std/videometadatahub/recommendation/1.0, and include specifications of the properties of the metadata schema and their technical implementation by EBU Core, for stand-alone documents, and XMP, for embedded metadata.

Questions? Contact us.
Twitter: @IPTC
LinkedIn: IPTC

For the new version 2.23 of NewsML-G2, the specification part of the Annual Release is now available and can be downloaded from the NewsML-G2 Release Section of the IPTC Developer Site.

The NewsML-G2 standard provides state-of-the-art XML format metadata to combine rich functionality, ease of use, compactness and compatibility with the Semantic Web. It is a single format for exchanging text, images, video, audio news and event or sports data – and packages thereof.

This specification part of the Annual Release of NewsML-G2 v2.23 includes the XML Schemas and the Structure Matrix document. The updated Quick Start Guides, Implementation Guidelines and full specifications will be released in October. This is part of an ongoing incremental development of NewsML-G2, as providers expand their content use-cases.

Three changes/improvements in version 2.23 are:

1. It allows the addition of further Rights Expression properties <rightsInfo> and now covers these Rights cases:
   –       Allows embedding or referencing a rights expression
   –       Allows use of XML or JSON as format for embedding
2.  It allows address properties (locality, area, country, etc.) to include a World Region.
3.  It allows the addition of facets to the Item Class property, this provides for more flexibility.

Please visit the IPTC Standards Page for a full list of the available IPTC standards.

The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) released SportsML 3.0, the recently approved comprehensive update of the open and highly flexible standard for the interchange of sports data.

Developed by the Sports Content Working Party of IPTC, which includes organisations from eight different countries, SportsML 3.0 is designed to be easy to understand and implement, and covers the full gamut of sports events. Sports Markup Language is the tech-industry standard XML vocabulary for Sports scores, lineups, schedules, standings and statistics.

SportsML has been adopted by many international news organizations, including the BBC (UK), NTB (Norway), TT (Sweden), APA (Austria), AP (USA), and more. It has been applied to results from the Olympics, European football competitions, as well as the major North American sports leagues, for team, individual and head-to-head sports.

“We’ve had 12 years of input from sports experts at news organizations since SportsML 1.0,” said Paul Kelly, Chairman of the Sports Content Working Party and Director of Software Development at XML Team Solutions, a sports-focused agency. “SportsML 3.0 addresses the requirements of anyone handling sports results and statistics and will save the time and cost of developing an in-house format. Companies can also defend against vendor lock-in caused by adopting proprietary formats.”

Highlights of the new SportsML version include the public release of 113 sports-related controlled vocabularies (CVs). “The most important thing we did was design SportsML to play well with the current generation of semantic technologies,” says Kelly. These CVs cover the statistical properties, player positions, on-field actions, infractions, etc., of 11 sports plus 37 CVs that cover all sports. These will be available publicly as a package.

These terms can be combined with SportsML 3’s new generic stat structure to incorporate both IPTC and external properties, such as those published by the IOC or any other vendor. “You can easily add new properties and continue to process gracefully using the powerful vocabulary-management the IPTC has devised,” says Kelly. “That’s usually missing from even the most prominent sports formats.”

The specification and documentation can be downloaded from https://iptc.org/standards/sportsml-g2/. Additionally, the IPTC Developer Site provides technical information about SportsML, and the SportsML Users Forum is used to share experiences and raise questions, and also connects companies, organizations and vendors.