Top10Media, an active group of content companies (see coverage here), is launching a new copyright registration and management service for blogs called Lisensa on Monday.
Lisensa is not helping bloggers find splogs and other copyright infringers (see Copyscape and the upcoming Sentinel for help in that area). Rather, like BlogBurst, Lisensa will help bloggers syndicate out their content, with or without a fee, to third parties who would like to use it legally.
Lisensa makes it easy for bloggers to choose an appropriate Creative Commons license, and select specific terms for non-commercial and commercial use. Republishing fees can also be resent. Lisensa handles the license agreement and collection of payments. The basic service is free; Lisensa takes 10% of any fees generated.
The basic idea is a good one, although if the end-game is to generate an additional revenue stream for bloggers, I think BlogBurst is taking a better approach. BlogBurst isn’t about copyright management – rather they’ve created very good buyer tools to encourage use (content suitability review by humans, APIs for syndication, etc.), and have closed deals with prominent print publications (Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, etc.) who really need access to cheap content to fill out their publications. Ultimately, Lisensa needs to help enforce copyright laws against infringers as well as promote paid use to be of much use to bloggers.
