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The unique identifications for the Rights and
Licences offices would be in the from of a Persistent Uniform Resource
Identifier and the Handle
System appears to be the ideal global structure for them.
A rights protocol, to be defined and implemented,
will allow the administrative offices to exchange the rights identification
and licence identification which will complete the transfer and
logging of user’s copying rights. Both offices would keep a
transaction record including the date and time of the exchange which
would provide an audit trail. The user will receive the product
with a Property
Rights Descriptor (PRD) field which contains both the rights
and licence identifications.
The rights granted when the PRD is issued will allow unlimited
copying of the product throughout the Internet and on the licensed
user’s computer systems. As just copying the file serves no
great purpose I foresee that issuing the PRD identified product
to a user will also include the granting of basic personal use rights to that product
for the licensed user. For example, when users receive a MP3 music
file with a PRD licensed to them they will be allowed to play that
music as if they were playing a CD or record they had purchased..
There will be numerous rights and licence offices. Creators and
distributors will be able to choose which rights office will protect
their products or even set up their own rights offices. Users, likewise,
can choose a licence office to record the transfer of product usage
licence.
The duplication of the basic licensing and product information
in the rights and licence offices will provide redundancy in the
case of one of the offices' databases being lost. The lost database
would become truly virtual but, in theory, could be recreated over
time.
This description concerns only the basic copyright
licence transfer in the DIPR system
and takes no account of the distribution of the product itself and
the transfer of payments. It is feasible that one organisation could
deal with many aspects of the transfer - say, promotion and sale
of the product, distribution, Rights Office functions and additional
licensing through an ECMS.
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