Implementing Distributed Intellectual Property Rights

The Distributed Intellectual Property Rights environment described here is a sophisticated content identification system which also grants minimum copying rights to digital objects within the system. As I have demonstrated above, granting of these copy rights will, overall, benefit the creator by providing more sales and a wider distribution of identified content. At the same time it eliminates all the problems of trying to define a digital manifestation of a product and the almost impossible task of tracking objects as they flow through the digital environment leaving footprint copies as they go. It also avoids some of the proposed, technically expensive and complex, 'big brother' systems where the rights holder continuously controls and authorises file copying no mater where the user is located.

Current Copyright gives exclusive rights to the creator to use or authorize others to use their works. This includes rights to prohibit or authorize copying, broadcasting, performances, translations, and adaptations. The Distributed Intellectual Property Rights system does not change this area of copyright law. When the creator releases their work into the DIPR environment they authorize the unrestricted copying of that identified digital product on behalf of that identified user. Note that the PRD becomes part of the product and the ‘PRD plus product’ becomes a new unique manifestation of the product.  As just copying digital products for their own sake, with no other rights granted, serves no practical purpose I propose that issuing the PRD identified product might also grant the licensee some basic rights to personal use of the product, such as; read the e-book, listen to the music, watch the film, read the play (but not perform it in public), follow the instructions to make something for their own use (not for profit), or use the software on a non-commercial basis. In this situation the following conditions might apply:

Unrestricted copying, distribution, and individual use of the product while it remains in the Distributed Intellectual Property Rights environment but that is all. The following are some of the limitations that apply:

• Modifying the intellectual product or its PRD is not allowed in any way.
• The product is not allowed to be separated from the PRD.
• The product, which includes the PRD, can not be traded in any form. This, I believe, would be a departure from current copyright law where copyrighted work can be sold-on or lent. This 'first-sale' article was enacted to promote the dissemination of information. In this digital age there are not the same problems of distributing information as there were 200 years ago.
• The content, including PRD, is not allowed to be broadcast or used for any commercial purpose.
• The digital product can be converted form one digital medium to another providing both mediums support the PRD structure and the intellectual content and its PRD are not modified in the process.

(Obviously the creator/rights owner can authorize any of the above or other activities but these would be negotiated separately to the rights granted in the DIPR environment. This is where ECMS’s  would come into their own and provide efficient, automated, access to a full range of rights.)

Legal treaties should be updated with new norms to protect artists, distributors, and users who use the new system and implement penalties for the removal of or tampering with PRD fields. Note, again, the change in legal priorities when it concerns digital products under the DIPR’s system:

• It should not be illegal for an individual to copy the product but it should be illegal to modify the product or the Property Rights Descriptor without the creators permission. (Article 12 of the WCT already covers the removal or altering of electronic rights management information).
• It should also be illegal to sell a product, or charge for any services related to that product, unless you are the creator, their agent, or legal rights owner.

Also the 'rights' and 'licence offices' would need some legal protection against fraudulent use or attack:

• Rights Offices would have a legal responsibility to register only products which have a legal owner and record only the valid licence ID's they are given during a transaction.

• Licence Offices would be required to only licence products to their own registered users and record only the valid product and rights information which is given to them during a rights transaction. Licence Offices would not subsequently be allowed to change the owner of individual products.

• Both offices would be required to hold personal and commercial information in confidence.

Security – avoid cheats cheating other users. Security of PRD fields:

• Removal of PRD from product – This would result in an illegal product if it was previously part of DIPR system but, of course, there will then still be the problem of identifying the product with no product ID. I believe there are already organisations working in this area so there may be ways of tackling this in the future. As it becomes the norm to always have a PRD combined with a product it will become easier to track illegally modified products. A prerequisite for this situation is that creators giving away free copies of a product should be encouraged to use the DIPR system and, in fact, an established DIPR system would provide incentives for registering a product, even a free one.
• Change of part of PRD – Either of the main fields of the PRD could have been removed, modified or corrupted. It would be easily established as a corrupted or illegal product by checking with the Rights or Licence offices and there would be the possibility of finding a legal version from the remaining PRD.

There is a well established legal tradition of  protecting patented and copyrighted materials throughout the world and WIPO has been rapidly extending these rights to cover digital information in various forms through new international treaties. It would make sense that WIPO should establish a negotiated set of treaties for a Distributed Intellectual Property Rights system with all its new priorities.

The PRD identifiers, especially the Rights Office identifier, would also play an important role in directing the public to product metadata and the source of additional rights and, again, this is where the link to a sophisticated Copyright Management Systems ( CMS ) will be so important.

No transfer of owners of DIPR licensed products will be allowed. If the rights owner agrees to a change of ownership of a product a new PRD should be issued in the name of the new user. If a user wishes to change the 'Office' which holds their list of licensed products the new Licence Office is bound to register the same owner and owner details.

There are built in incentives to use the DIPR system over unidentified digital files which include; reduced number of viruses transmitted with legally obtained versions, and a route to obtain replacement or updated versions of the product. There is also scope to add environmental pressure which will make legal products with PRD's more successful and therefore more attractive. Some systems for producing this change is discussed in the following section on Business Models.

Normally there is a time limit placed on intellectual property rights but I believe the PRD identification should stay with the product indefinitely, either as the original existing PRD, or maybe a better solution would be to have a Rights Office available to issue free PRD's to products with lapsed copy right status.

The products or information in the Distributed Intellectual Property Rights system has no need of encryption (encryption would even be counter productive) but any transfer of quantitive or descriptive data between two parties should defiantly be protected. Data which represents money, an identifying signature, exchange of ID’s for issuing a PRD, consumption of a physical resource, etc, should be protected against errors or fraud. I see the development of secure digital payment systems to be essential for the expansion of the distribution of digital products and these systems should allow for small payments which are not handicapped by a fixed minimum transaction charge or proportionally large commission charge. The potential for owners/creators to earn many small payments (micropayments) for many products is part of the principle behind the distributed trading environment.

The necessity to establish a large set of new protocols will require a major effort but these are no more complicated than any of those already in place on the Internet today and certainly no more complicated than some of the secure digital environments being proposed today. The following development, testing, and implementation of software programs to make the system work will also require considerable effort but the same effort, or more, will be required for any Electronic Copyright Management System (ECMS) and the DIPR system would form the basis for all the more extensive CMS's.

A large public awareness campaign will be required to establish in people's minds the legal and social rights of artists to be paid for their creativity and work.

There are many other technical issues which would also have to be considered in order to implement this system. These include; increased storage and processing for all the new product licences, an increased number of reliable servers with the capacity to store large quantities of rights information, and the eventuality of updating all file structures to include PRD fields.