Introduction

Distributed Intellectual Property Rights is a system for identifying copyrights of intellectual properties in today's electronic environments where intangible digital products can be copied and distributed at high speed with no perceptible loss of quality. Employing a distributed structure, Distributed Intellectual Property Rights is ideally suited to the Internet and could form the basis of sophisticated Copyright Management Systems (CMSs) of the future. It also protects the free distribution of information and guards the privacy of the creators and users of this information.

I will first discuss the shortcomings of today's distribution, tracking, and copyright systems, exemplified by the mass copying of music files in MP3 format, and then describe how a digital trading environment is created by establishing a system of 'rights offices' on the Internet. The advantages of this new system will be analysed in an empirical fashion and then submitted to a theoretical analysis using evolutionary theory of replicating units.

Finally I will discuss the issues involved in implementing such a wide ranging system, how it changes current thinking on copyright in a digital environment, and how this system can form the basis of Electronic Copyright Management Systems of the future.