The Right Track
Notes on the Right Track
as presented
to the 22nd Chaos
Communication Congress (22C3), December 2005.
Today I want to present my 'Private Investigations' into copyright
and its future in the digital world. Is Copyright on the Right Track?
Summary:
- First I want to give short introduction to copyright and where
we are today.
- Then I want to present Intellectual Contributions which I see
as a use model for examining how the copyright regime works and
how society wants it to work
- Third, I talk of the Rights Office system, this is my proposal
for dealing with copyrighted works in the digital world without
the need for strong DRM and TPMs, levies, or control of copies.
- RIGHT ON - finally I want to ask if a rights system is the way
forward and what needs to be done to achieve this. I ask you wait
and ask questions at this time.
- CC - note the symbol at the bottom of the page - might this
be part of copyright's future? I will come back to this. [Back
to slides]
Copyright is part of our
Intellectual
Property regime that includes:
Movie - Copyright history by
Rick Fulkerson:
Thanks to Rick Fulkerson for letting me use this. It raises three
important points:
- This is a very American view but it could end up being true
for the rest of the world?
- Will DRM produce a total lockup of digital content in the future
and what can we do about it?
- Were all those clips copyrighted? Can I claim 'FAIR USE' to
show this film because it demonstrates the problems of using works
in the digital world? This is a very fuzzy area we need clear
rules.
Despite Rick's pessimistic view of copyright I believe that analogue
copyright has worked well for 200 years - See all the books in
the world that are distributing information and rewarding authors
- however it needs careful shepherding for a successful future.
[Back to slides]
DRM, in particular Technical Protection
Measures (TPM), are seen by some as the only way to protect copyrighted
works in a digital environment. At the other extreme there are those
who follow Jefferson's words to the letter and think all intellectual
content is and should be free of any restrictions.
I will argue that there is more to it than the above, that authors
and artists still need to be rewarded for their work, that society
actively needs to protect the flow of ideas and information, and
so we should look closely at how copyright can serve us in the
future. [Back to slides]
Lawrence
Lessig - Calls for balance between Technology / copyright /
laws:
-
"The balance of IP regimes is a function of the technology
of the time...... As the technology of copyright has changed
so to have the laws."
-
"The problem here is not the technology, not something
called copyright, the problem here is a law, a regime,
not fit to the technology."
(Library of Congress - The Digital Future - C-span)
[back to slides]
I'm with Lessig here - we need to consider how we can change the
regime to fit the technology. But before we consider this I would
like to put forward another factor that influences our thinking
in the area of copyright -
Intellectual Contributions:

When we think of books we think of physical property
- the physical book.
The name of the regime Intellectual Property (IP) reinforces
this thinking.
What happens if we started thinking of Intellectual Contributions
(IC)?

What happens if we start thinking of all the other works and ideas
that came be the book as contributions to the book? Let's think
IC for a few minutes.

An author writing a new book relies on all the books and ideas
that came before and these all contribute to her new work. In the
field of science contributing works are usually cited. By the way,
I am using books as the example here however I believe the same
is true for all media - music, films, etc.

And talking of citations, they can be considered as contributions
to the preceding works even if after the fact.
Many scientists are judged by how often their work is cited.
Looking at more of these reverse contributions:

Taking the broadest view there are many contributions to a work
- Recommendations, reviews, quotations and, perhaps most important,
payments in money although I maintain that all these contributions
are an important part of the copyright model.
Now to take a more formal view of these contributions.
The distribution of content and remuneration::
In the top half (green) you see the authors and artists at work
and these works are intangible at this stage. In the bottom half
(purple) these works are reproduced in tangible copies and it is
mainly via these copies - the transition from intangible to tangible
and back- that the contributions are passed from one creator
to the next and payments for tangible goods made.
Intangible - you can't get hold of the idea or expression
in the author's head for instance.
Tangible - once produced in physical copy (the book) you
can get a hold of it.
And I go further to distinguish the economic 'goods' in this model:
Private goods (square boxes) an economic term for a good
that is rivalrous and excludable. A loaf of bread, for example,
is a private good: its owner can exclude others from using it,
and once it has been consumed, it cannot be used again.
Public goods (round boxes) goods that are hard or even
impossible to produce for private profit, because the market fails
to account for its large beneficial externalities. By definition,
a public good possesses two properties:
* Non-rivalrous its benefits fail to exhibit consumption
scarcity; once it has been produced, everyone can benefit from
it without diminishing other's enjoyment.
* Non-excludable once it has been created, it is very difficult,
if not impossible, to prevent access to the good.
When I am presenting my ideas to you they are public goods
for instance. I can't talk to one half of the room and tell the
other half not to listen. OK I have managed to put the back half
of the room to sleep already and they are not hearing me but that
is a different argument.
If we look at the intellectual goods of
the analogue world the potentially public 'expression' becomes a
private good in the form of a book, say, and the intangible is tied
to the tangible and so the contributions are always effective as
private goods are traded:

Unless you have a printing press handy books are hard to reproduce
and so the average person would just buy a book from the publisher.
The books being a private good (excludable and rivalrous) allowed
for trading.
Notice this self-regulating effect of analogue books - mostly
people can't reproduce them and hence only a small amount of enforcement
is required.
What happens when we move to the digital
environment:

Digital copies of the content suddenly appear to be public goods
and intangible in addition. The loss of the transition to and from
the tangible world destroys many aspects of the contributions chain
and at the same time the self regulation of copies disappears.
DRM SYSTEMS attempt to reverse this trend by locking up
copies with ciphers and instigating central control of the copying
process thus trying to restore tangible control. Even if with, enough
regulation and technical control, you could make this work then
there are still problems as far as the Intellectual Contributions
model is concerned:
- The system is no longer self regulating and this has an impact
on privacy and freedom of use.
- Potentially the feedback chain is disrupted -fair use:
- Recommendations
- Quoting
- First sale
Levy Systems just want to let the content go and put taxes
on services and hardware. This also poses problems to the contributions
model:
- Do all the artists get properly rewarded for their work?
- The content needs to be properly identified for the feedback
contributions to work.
So, analogue copyright appeared to work digital implementations
appear to have problems.
Is there another way that society can regulate intellectual
contributions in a digital world?
The answer I believe is to recognize where the real private
goods are. It is these goods that should be traded and remunerated.
As I have said, with analogue books the private goods (books)
were widespread and with digital they all but disappear.
Looking at the model above, there remains
one private good - the square boxes - the author's work in bring
the contenr to life and the consumer's consumption. I propose
that we apply the regulation regime at this level and we
do this by granting rights to all the players in the system:
What if each author is granted rights (already is under copyright)
to their private good - their work - and each consumer is granted
rights when they obtain legal access to the content.
The trading of these rights in a regulated system thus could introduce
a new tangible layer into the model where contributions, including
exchange of money, can have their full effect. Each exchange of
rights represents a transition to the tangible and hence a contribution.
To recap so far:
- Copyright has worked well - don't abandon it.
- All contributions to the author's work are important.
- Property distorts our thinking - where is the property in digital
bits?
- DRM/TPMs try to reintroduce the physical, tangible, excludable
goods status to content in the digital environment - is this the
best way to go?
- A new regime to suit the technology might be to regulate the
remaining private good - the author's and users rights.
- Now I suggest a distributed system on the Internet that can
achieve 'rights' regulation without central control while protecting
the freedom, privacy, and rights of everyone.
Rights Office System:

Fisrt I will explain the basic operating principles
and then the results that it produces:
- Distributed system of secure servers / databases on the
Internet that I call 'Rights Offices'.
- There will be many of these Offices.
- Some Offices represent primary rights holders (authors) some
represent secondary rights holders (consumers).
- I just use Authors and Consumers here as a simple example. There
could be chains of offices representing different players in the
system. i.e. publishers, distributors, libraries. I emphasize
that middlemen are not necessarily excluded from the system because,
for clarity of the process, I talk of authors and consumers.
- The rights offices and users wll exchange information using
secure protocols.
Process of transferring rights and
issuing identifications:
- Consumer buys intellectual work from Author.
- Author Rights Office (ARO) generates a unique identification
(ID)
- Consumer Rights Office (CRO) also generates its own
unique ID.
- The ARO and CRO exchange these IDs and keep a record of the
transfer.
- The Identifications are opaque - that is the offices
are identified but not necessarily the individual users.
- Both of these IDs are attached to the content as it is transferred
to the consumer to conclude the exchange.
- From then on the Rights Offices will confirm valid content
and IDs and confirm the rights of access to content by the rights
holders.
To emphasize that there will be many offices all interacting with
many users:
Here is a closer look at the identified content:

The PRD produces a tangible private good related to a piece
of content because the PRD can't be changed without both rights
holders agreeing.
The Universal Resource Locators (URLs) should be persistent -
maybe part of the handle system.
Notice where the symbol at the bottom of this presentation comes
in! It identifies mine and your rights to this presentation (expression)
of my ideas.
Rights Office System
-
Numerous independent, secure, Rights Offices
-
Exchanging secure information
-
Numerous unique, persistent, pairs of IDs
-
IDs are opaque - Identifying:-
-
office, content, rights
-
but not users.
Rules for Identified Content:
- Removing or corrupting the identifications (PRDs) makes
the copy illegal.
- Anyone who owns one of the PRDs can make unlimited copies.
- Only someone holding 'identification rights' can issue
new PRDs
User Rights: Typical rights
-
Common Rights
-
Anyone can consume content with valid ID
-
Author's Rights
-
Consumer Rights
-
Private Rights / Public Sharing
-
Commercial Rights
As with any copyrighted work the author owns all the rights to
the work for a limited time. In the Rights Office system this
would include:
- The right to issue new identifications (PRDs) to their content
and distribute copies.
- The right to grant rights to others.
Everyone else would have one basic right - The right to consume
the content if a properly identified copy is made available to
them.
Once the work moves to the public domain (after the lapse of
copyright say) anyone can freely use the content but they still
can't claim it as their own.
The rights of individual consumers to the content depends upon
what rights are licensed to them by the primary rights holder.
The typical minimum right for an average consumer might be:
- Private Rights - unlimited copies for their own use - transfer
copies to known acquaintances
A second general right for some content might be:
- Public sharing - transfer copies to anyone.
Commercial rights for publishers and distributors would be more
complex but would probably include 'identification rights'; the
right to issue PRDs.
Results of Rights Office
System:
-
Rights Offices store transactions - a contract
-
All users can confirm rights - retrieve content
-
System is self-regulating:
-
Offices confirm / duplicate each other's registrations
- and it is in the interests of each office to protect
the rights of it's users.
-
Malfunctioning office can be bypassed just like any
other faulty node.
-
Every copy is identified - no reason to remove IDs
- All players have unique records of the transactions stored
in their rights office - a form of contract or license.
- Enables them to retrieve content even if they have lost
all copies.
- Users can confirm their rights to content but are not
identified by the Identifications (PRDs).
- The system is self regulating:
- The rights offices confirm / duplicate each others registrations
- it is in the interests of each office to protect the rights
of its users.
- A Rights Office that is malfunctioning can be bypassed
just like any other faulty section on the Internet.
- Every copy of the content is identified by the two IDs
(PRD) that identify the legal source of the work and there
is no advantage in removing these identifications. Why make
the copy illegal by removing the PRD when anyone is allowed
to hold an identified copy?
Advantages:
Some of the advantages of the DIPR system would be:
- Clearly defined rules for using identified digital products.
- Registered consumer rights to intellectual products.
- Protection of all personal information.
- Protection of the common right of access to intellectual works
for education and social purposes.
- Automatic and permanent archives of intellectual works.
- Avoidance of technically complicated and expensive centralized
access control systems - device transparency
- Avoids the need for systems of nondiscriminatory taxes on
digital media and services.
- Many new marketing strategies for the rights holders who can
form peer-to-peer partnerships with consumers.
- A technical framework to support all other rights management
and metadata systems.
Business Models:
-
Registered rights allows ongoing partnership:
-
future products
-
upgrades
-
recommend content to others - earn refunds
-
pre-sale of rights
-
Use of P2P networks
-
Micropayments - Rights Offices / Bank
The registered partnership between the primary rights
holder and the consumer allows for business models that reinforce
the advantage of having bought rights to the content. e.g.
- discounts on future products,
- upgrades,
- even a model where the consumer could be encouraged to recommend
the content to others and receive a partial refund if the third
party purchases their own copy.
Pre-sale of rights to a work could be an option to cover
production costs for the artist or author for example. As soon
as the work is complete all registered rights holders would have
instant access to the work.
P2P - because we now don't care where the content is or
how many copies there are we are 'free' to put identified content
on P2P networks and the rights in the RO system will determine
who has a right to copy the content.
Micropayments - Secure Rights Offices could become banks
The above are business models for distributing content but in
addition there are business opportunities for Rights Offices:
- Offices and services
- Download on demand
- Rights management
- Banking
Why will the Rights Office system work?
-
Magnatunes - shareware for music
-
Marillion - fanbase
-
EU consumer survey - 63% would pay more
-
Software shareware models
-
-
Creative Commons
-
Self regulatin
I can't say for certain it will work, I have not proved
the system with any tests, however there are already
some businesses out there using some aspects of the model and
they are already sucessfulso this is encouraging:
- Magnatunes - uses a shareware
model for music but is still earns
more that the average asking price. "Our empirical
analysis shows that the average payment is $ 8.20, far more
than the minimum of $ 5 and even higher than the recommended
price of $ 8."
- Some music groups such as Marillion
are supported by a strong fanbase and have put up the albums
for pre-order.
- The EU, Indicare
consumer survey, found that 63% people say they would pay
more for 'a song you can do whatever you want with.'
- And of course you all know of the software shareware model.
- Creative Commons - A system like this could add buzz
to CC licensees The one big problem with a CC license is that
it is issued to the work and hence that license is available
to everyone. Rights Office licenses are for individuals.
All these businesses would only be improved with a formal rights
system backing them up.
Self Regulation - As I said before, the Offices will have
an incentive to work within the rules or they will be bypassed
by other offices and in turn offices will want reliable users
and vice versa.
Could go for gradual implementation and work with other schemes
Feasibility:
Study by Dhamija & Wallenberg
- Technically feasible?
- Incentives to circumvent
- Burden of monitoring
- Efficiency of funds distribution
- Privacy and fair use
- International?
What incentives to buy?
This is a question of balance; will there be
sufficient remunerated use compared to the unremunerated use
of the product?
-
Direct Benefits:
- Permanent right of access
- No limit on number of copies
- Rapid access anywhere
- Freedom to creat derivative works
-
Moral Advantage:
- Demonstrate rights to content
- Demonstrate support of artist
-
Dynamic Benefits:
- Distribution chain established
- Consumers can share in success of Author
The issue of incentives in the Rights Office system is not a
simple question to answer. It is a question of balance;
will there be sufficient remunerated use compared to the
unremunerated use of the product? Analogue copyright relied
on this balance, will enough people buy their own copy of the
book from the right holder compared to the second hand sales and
lending of the book.
There is also the enforcement side of the copyright rules
to ensure that a third party did not take advantage of the right
holders work and start illegally printing and selling copies.
The reproducer and distributor of unauthorized copies of the book
could be prosecuted, if discovered. Note how, for a long time,
in the analogue world this tended to be self-regulating; it was
difficult for most people to start printing books and fairly obvious
when they did so.
The Rights Office system also relies on balancing remunerated
and unremunerated use and on legal enforcement of some rules but
the dynamic of the digital world is different and hence the rules
and balancing act are different. For example, one physical copy
of the book cant travel too far but digital copies can multiply
around the world in hours.
The new rules in the Rights Office system are:-
1) Dont remove the rights identifiers (PRD) from the manifestation.
2) You cant do anything with a manifestation if you dont
own an identifier.
These rules will need to be enforced by legal means but they
will also tend to be self regulating. For rule 1), why remove
the identifiers when you can legally hold a copy of the manifestation
with the identifiers attached? Regarding rule 2), someone can
pass on a copy of the manifestation without owning an identifier
but this copy will tend toward having no value therefore
why would the perpetrator risk punishment for an illegal transfer
when there is nothing to be gained from it. This concept, that
copies tend to have no value in the Rights Office system, is difficult
to grasp for most people coming from the physical world of copyright
but it is a fundamental point. As mentioned in the original article,
another tendency in the Rights Office system is that all copies
will always identify the right holder, another important feature.
So much for the rules, now the balancing:-
The new balance that has to be struck in the Rights Office system
is between the incentives to own rights to a work compared to
having access to a work for which you have no rights. The incentives
to own rights to the work can be listed as follows:
A. Direct Benefits:
1. Permanent right of access to the work a long-term investment.
2. No limit on number of copies made to provide access.
3. Peer-to-peer networks can be used to provide best access for
rights holders.
4. Freedom to create derivative works. (The rules can be extended
for commercial use of these works.)
B. Moral Advantage:
1. Ability to demonstrate a right to the work.
2. Ability to demonstrate support for the artist.
C. Dynamic Benefits:
1. A distribution chain is established for providing future updates.
2. A model is established where consumers can share in the success
of the right holder:
There is potential for a referral model. If a consumer
persuades a friend to buy a copy the original consumer could obtain
a small referral refund. On a larger scale, imagine a reviewer
who attracted a large consumer following for a new work this reviewer
could potentially earn more than just a refund on the original
purchase price.
A pricing model based on the number of manifestations sold.
Early buyers would initially pay a commercial rate based on predicted
sales. When the work outperforms this sales figure the early buyers
could start earning a refund thus sharing in the success.
Reductions on follow up works from the same right holder.
Reductions on associated products. On concert tickets for
instance.
3. Pre-buying An independent artist could pre-sell their
work during the production phase and so cover some of their costs.
A major feature film could be pre-sold before releasing it to
the private market to ensure a reasonable distribution level.
4. Innovative schemes such as microrefunds
and the "don't pay" button (Brad Templeton)
could be established.
The peer-to-peer structure of the Rights Office system supports
these dynamic models which are probably the most important aspect
of the intellectual property system. Although to work to maximum
advantage the offices would need to support the funds transfer
aspect of the contributions model. The contributions model identifies
the creative effort of the author as the valuable commodity in
the contributions chain and this effort is probably not limited
to one work but to a series of books, songs, or other works. Therefore
the dynamic effects where a satisfied consumer comes back again
and again can be used to maximum advantage in the Rights Office
environment to promote remunerated use over non-remunerated use.
In summary:-
Whereas analogue copyright relied on the limitations of physical
property to provide the conditions for the incentives to pay to
operate the Rights Office system relies on a self regulating legal
and economic model to limit the distribution of illegal copies
and on a dynamic, ongoing, partnership between right holders and
right consumers to generate the incentive to pay. Will these benefits
to the consumer paying for an identified work out way possible
free access without any of these benefits? I cant
give a guarantee or a ratio of remunerated to unremunerated works,
the original sale price of the work will have an influence on
the equation, but I believe it is worth investigating further
considering the other benefits to society identified in the original
article.
The same question can be asked of DRM systems, what is the ratio
of remunerated to unremunerated copies? If this number proved
to be similar between Rights Office and DRM systems then the technical
and social benefits of the Rights Office approach might make it
look very attractive.
Right on:
Reference:
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