October 09th 2007 | Jens C Brynildsen

License your work from Adobe Bridge

Today, Adobe announced a deal with licensing provider Imagespan. What's in it for you as a content provider / producer? Imagespan allows you to license and resell the work you have created, be it images, video of Flash files. It also allows you to track usage of these assets and that may be especially interesting for game developers.

by Jens C. Brynildsen Today's deal is about LicenseStream, a simple-to-use content licensing service offered by Imagespan. It works by plugging into Adobe Bridge, the Media Manager that comes with all CS3 software. Flash developers have probably never opened this program, but Flash designers may have. Bridge offers a simple way to organize, browse, locate and view creative assets such as images, video and Flash files. Up until now, it's mostly been used by photographers and hobbyists as a way to organize images.

You an however do more. Bridge is also host to several Services from Adobe such as Adobe Stock Photos, Acrobat Connect and creative resources such as Tutorials. LicenseStream will be added to this list of services in an upcoming update. We talked to Iain Scholnick, chief executive officer of ImageSpan to learn more about the service offered and how Flash users could benefit from the new service.

The service is twofold, content licensing and content tracking. All kinds of static (or compiled) files can be licensed through the solution. Licensing is different from Copyright, so by licensing your content through the service, you also say "this content is created by me / belongs to me". The basic service of licensing your content is free of charge. It can also act as a proof of "ownership" to some extent, so if someone are illegally using a photo you took some years ago, you can say "This image is mine and you must pay a license to use it".

This is where Imagespan will make it's money. Any asset that is licensed through the system, can also be sold through it. For $39, you'll get access to a simple to use e-commerce system for selling content, advanced creation of license terms, history and tracking of Flash content. What if a New York magazine want to use images from a video you have created. How much do you charge? What if they also want to use it on an international TV broadcast? The service can offer pricing advice based on industry standards and statistics.

If you're a professional photographer, you'll also want to keep track of who has used each image. Iain had a couple, good examples of how this tracking can come in handy. If the image have been used for promoting tobacco, alcohol or maybe Playboy Magazine, it may be important to know this for a client. The most interesting part of this package is however the Flash content tracking. By adding a short code snippet to your SWF file, you'll get access to full usage statistics (just as with Mochibot). If someone illegally copies your Flash game and put it up on their own site, you will know. This will make it possible to track intellectual Flash-property and enforce the licensing of it. Imagespan has partnered with Internap to ensure that every file is tracked even if your game becomes immensely popular.

For extra fees, Imagespan also offers to handle the licensing deals for you, reselling your content. Through partners, they also offer services that scour the web, looking for illegal use of your content. Iain also told that Imagespan are working on an AIR widget that can be used as an alternative to the service in Adobe Bridge, that will use AIR features to automatically add Metadata about your content.

Visit the Imagespan site to read more