Is Newscom About to Acquire Digital Railroad's Assets?

Some fast-breaking developments in the Digital Railroad implosion...

The liquidation company that now controls Digital Railroad, Diablo Management, says it has received a letter of intent from a company that wants to purchase DRR's remaining assets. This according to letter we just obtained from a Digital Railroad member (pasted in full below). The letter also confirms that DRR's servers could be cut off "as early as midnight EST, October 31, 2008." This has the potential to create a huge headache for photographers and agencies who relied on Digital Railroad's technology. (Related PDN story.)

Who is the unnamed company that wants to take over DRR's hardware and software? This guess might be wrong, but some clues in the letter strongly point to Newscom. See the parts we've emphasized in bold below.

Instant analysis: Newscom could use Digital Railroad's technology to expand its editorial offerings from independent photographers. Newscom has a built-in customer base that would match the kind of customers who used the Digital Railroad Marketplace service. Newscom is not really in the business of offering storage for individual photo archives or individual photographer and agency Web sites, however.  If Newscom absorbs these elements of the Digital Railroad business, that would be somewhat disappointing for PhotoShelter, which had been trying to take over Digital Railroad's customer base.

Here's the text of the letter (emphasis ours):

"To Digital Railroad Members and Customers; 
 
Digital Railroad (DRR) has been attempting to keep its servers up and running for as long as possible. However, given DRR’s current cash position, it can no longer keep these servers operational. Therefore, as early as midnight EST, October 31, 2008, the DRR website will be closed and the images located on
the DRR servers will be inaccessible. DRR apologizes for difficulties and inconvenience that this creates, however, without additional capital investment, DRR has no other recourse. 
 
These images will be preserved on the existing hardware in anticipation that at a later date they can be retrieved by their owners.
 
Digital Railroad has received a letter of intent (LOI) to purchase the assets of DRR, specifically its hardware and application software used to store and retrieve images with the desire to continue providing services to DRR members and customers with as little disruption as possible. The Intellectual Property (IP) stored on these servers and owned by members would in any case be preserved. After the completion of an asset purchase agreement, the acquiring company will contact owners of the images to determine their disposition. The acquiring company will have no right to sell or distribute these images without the owner’s prior approval.
 
The company that has submitted the Letter of Intent is a twenty-year fixture in the industry with ongoing close relationships with the preeminent players in the worldwide information business. It owns a multi-agency digital media marketplace composing more than twenty-five million images, news stories, and video clips which it licenses to five thousand customers who purchase content on a daily basis for insertion into the world's most prominent newspapers, magazines, web sites, and broadcast services.
 
Please check the Diablo Management website www.diablomanagement.com regularly for updates." 

 

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Now, here's some text that appears on Newscom's "about us" page:

"Established in 1985, Newscom is a marketplace for more than 25 million photos, graphics, illustrations and stories from more than 150 of the world's top publishers and content creators.... Newscom uses the latest in content-delivery technology to provide up-to-the-minute news and visuals to more than 5,000 customers in 106 countries. And, new content is added around the clock, ensuring that Newscom customers have access to the latest news, the freshest images, the most current information."