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The objectives of the Distributed Intellectual Property Rights
system are listed below:
- Recognise that it takes work to formulate and present a new idea
or intellectual product and that the creator of that product has
rights over their creation: the right to have it identified as
their work, the right to trade in it with others.
- Help users to identify the product and its creator and the user’s
obligation to reward the creator for using the product.
- Protect the free flow of information.
- Use technology to make the legal route for obtaining the product
easier than the illegal
route!
- Protect the rights and privacy of all parties: creators, artists,
producers, distributors, and users.
- Allow the new system to evolve from the today’s practices
and standards in such a way that it can accommodate all current
digital products as well as new formats. If possible the new system
should include existing product identification systems and enhance
or extend current Electronic Copyright Management Systems.
- Use the open standards and interconnectivity of cyberspace to
maximum advantage.
When a user purchases rights to use an intellectual work which
is distributed in physical form, such as a book or record, a contract
is made between the rights owner and the user. The exchange of this
physical product for
a recompense completes the contract. Normally, one of the terms
of this contract is that the user has personal use of that one physical
copy only and may not reproduce it in any form. In an ideal world
the creator should benefit in some way if the physical product is
sold on or lent to another but this is not the case under the 'first
sale' rule in copyright law.
A digital product distributed in electronic
form has no permanent physical package and therefore the physical
exchange described above is impossible. Trying to bind the user
to only one digital copy is futile and even meaningless as this
product moves around a computer system from permanent storage to
active memory, to cached memory, to display memory, and to various
backup storage systems. As products get moved across the Internet
the situation becomes even less controllable.
The solution
Form the contract between creator/owner and user
by the exchange of unique identifications and make these identifications
part of the digital product. After this exchange has been completed,
allow unlimited copies in the name of this user, providing that
the identifications and the product remain unmodified and intact.
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