1. Centralized administration and management. Most rightsholders seek arrangements with service providers because they cannot manage the multitude of uses and user requests for their works effectively. Centralized administration eliminates the burden of large volume/ small rights licensing from the rightsholder. The marketing of content, negotiating of licenses, collection of fees, and distribution of royalties are all administered by the provider with economies of scale that decrease both costs and risks.

2. Extensive marketing and distribution channels. Strong marketing capabilities expose a rightsholder’s work to new and larger audiences. Increased exposure results in more users and uses for the intellectual property, which translates into greater royalty potential. Providers also offer effective distribution channels that help rightsholders get their works to users in the form and manner they request.

3. Monitoring uses and pursuing infringements. Service providers monitor intellectual property use to determine fee structures and royalty distributions, as well as to ensure compliance with the terms of use. Some providers have devised complex monitoring schemes or use new technologies to facilitate this process. In addition, service providers often have the resources available to take a more vigilant stance on infringement, and are motivated to do so because infringements erode their income stream as much as they do the rightsholder’s. Rarely do rightsholders have the resources to undertake these tasks on their own.

4. Services and tools. Providers routinely offer rightsholders special services such as market and sales advice, assistance with developing and improving the documentation of their works, knowledgeable staffs, and efficient office infrastructures. Many providers offer educational opportunities (e.g., workshops, seminars) to increase awareness about rights issues, and advocacy services to monitor or support policy decisions that may affect their rightsholders’ interests.

Recently providers have started offering productivity tools to help rightsholders make decisions about potential market opportunities. For rightsholders who rely heavily on royalties from their intellectual property as a main source of income, or who want to develop such a revenue stream, these tools can be an important incentive. With them, rightsholders can view all their materials in a provider’s repertoire, including licenses, usage patterns, and revenues associated with each work. Rightsholders can use this information to make determinations about markets and audiences, and can refine their intellectual property management strategy and create new works that take advantage of opportunities on the horizon.

Other tools in development include those that allow rightsholders to link their electronic publishing projects to a service provider’s repertoire, and discipline-based search and retrieval tools that allow more effective use of the repertoire database. Image Directory offers an example of the latter with its inclusion of search and retrieval tools such as the Art & Architecture Thesaurus and the Union List of Artist Names.

5. Favorable terms and conditions. Service providers may offer a particular rightsholder more favorable terms and conditions than are generally offered to others. Some of the more commonly offered incentives are higher royalties or advances, input into uses and license fees, and lower operating costs. Favorable terms may be offered to a particular rightsholder for any number of reasons: The provider may be eager to have the rightsholder’s content because it contributes substantially to the repertoire, or the rightsholder offers important name recognition that reflects well on the provider. Interested but reluctant rightsholders may be offered favorable terms as a means of persuading them to affiliate with the provider, and as a bargaining point in negotiating an agreement.

6. Economic incentives. The potential for income from royalties is the major economic reason that rightsholders enter into an agreement with a service provider. Advances (against future royalties) are often offered as an impetus for rightsholders who cannot afford to pay upfront fees or other participation charges. Some providers will grant a higher percentage share of the licensing fee to rightsholders as an economic incentive. For rightsholders’ collectives, a strong incentive is found in the ability to keep more royalty income in a particular community (by eliminating middlemen and their fees).

7. Access to the repertoire. Access to works in a service provider’s repertoire is an incentive to rightsholders who also are frequent users of content. JSTOR offers all its rightsholders access to its digital archive of journals. AMICO and MDLC plan to offer rightsholders access to their digital libraries as well.

8. Organizational affiliation. A service provider’s affiliation with a parent or founding organization may be an incentive for certain rightsholders. The credibility of parent organizations lends an unofficial imprimatur to the service provider’s efforts, which, in turn, offers a measure of trustworthiness and security to rightsholders. The experience of parent organizations also provides expertise and stability that is sought by rightsholders.

9. Experimentation and exploration. Rightsholders may choose to work with a particular service provider because they want to explore or clarify areas in which they have a stake and gain experience for future initiatives. The MESL project, for example, offered museums and universities a unique opportunity to explore how museum images would be used in higher education, and clarified what the technological, administrative, and usage issues might be. Publishers like the Johns Hopkins University Press (sponsor of Project Muse) and Elsevier Press (sponsor of TULIP) initiated their projects, in part, because they wanted to explore the costs and issues associated with the distribution of electronic journals.2

10. Access to technology. Many rightsholders do not have the resources to exploit new technologies and media that can help them expand the market for their works. Service providers using these technologies successfully for promotion, monitoring, and distribution are attractive to these types of rightsholders. Picture Network International, a large stock photography agency, attracted its participants (small stock photography agencies) in this way. By offering a sophisticated technological and administrative infrastructure that smaller agencies could never develop on their own, PNI successfully recruited these smaller agencies to participate in its service.3