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The Interactive Media Industry, Intellectual Property Rights, the Internet and Copyright: Some Lessons from the TrustDR Project
Please send comments to: trustdr@uhi.ac.uk
Distributed under a Creative Commons License - Attribution 2.5 UK: Scotland
This copyright in this work is owned by: Distributed under a Creative Commons License - Attribution 2.5 UK: Scotland Under the following conditions: For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
Limitations of Indemnity Note this article assumes some familiarity with these concepts: Learning Objects, Metadata, Educational Standards for Technical Interoperability, Digital Repositories and Learning Design. For a useful quick introduction to each of these concepts please follow these web inks: Learning Objects (Content Packages) & Learning Design Metadata Educational Standards for Technical Interoperability: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/static/standards.html Digital Repositories
Table of Contents
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“The economic contribution of creative industries, that is those industries for which copyright protection provides the basis, has become increasingly important to developed nations and the protection of such intellectual, creative assets, a matter of renewed focus”. (Withers, 2006 p14) |
A study from Consumers International (CI) recently looks at access to educational materials in developing nations, and contends that their copyright laws should take advantage of flexibilities under international treaties to allow public access to material for teaching purposes. It examines the provisions available, and finds that all of the 11 countries studied, including China, India and Malaysia, have given copyright owners far more protection than the intellectual property treaties they have signed up to require. “An important objective of this report is that it should serve to inform policy makers of the options available to them” (CI, 2006). The report also notes:
“A variety of efforts have been mounted to ensure that the public ‘right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits’ are given effect. These efforts include… the work of the Creative Commons in making available flexible copyright licences for creative works” (CI, 2006) |
One way of radically reducing transaction costs and risk in using material
delivered on the Internet is the application of a standard licence to
convey how the work may be used. Until recently licences were time-consuming
and expensive to create and institutions or individuals were unlikely
to be able to create suitable agreements covering use of their material.
Now, however, there is a range of ‘off-the shelf’ ready-made
licences in use covering creative content including learning material.
The Creative Commons (CC) movement builds on traditional copyright and is based on the notion of “some rights reserved”, providing a balance between creators and consumers of intellectual property. A set of licences allows rights to be offered under certain conditions, with “Attribution” being a base right for all. These licence terms are projected by presenting symbols and logos with distinct meanings along with the work, and referring to the full legal code. The intention is for the symbols to become widely recognised and so ease the uncertainty prevalent in using copyright material. These licenses are now widely used by individuals and institutions on the Internet.
A recent report (Barker, 2005). commissioned by public sector organisations in the UK has concluded the Creative Commons licences are suitable for use by the public sector as well as commercial organisations. The benefit of using licences to protect your work is that they have the power of contract law and are easier to enforce, a recent court ruling has shown that they are enforceable [4].
The main Creative Commons website has information on the range of licences available and tools to help publish your work online with a CC licence. A specific licence is available for developing nations [5]
“The Developing Nations license allows, for the first time,
any copyright holder in the world to participate first-hand in reforming
global information policy. The fact is that most of the world's
population is simply priced out of developed nations' publishing
output. To authors, that means an untapped readership. To economists,
it means "deadweight loss." To human rights advocates
and educators, it is a tragedy. The Developing Nations license is
designed to address all three concerns” |
In common with all CC licences, it provides attribution and copyright protection for authors. Additionally it provides freedoms to be exercised within developing nations, for example to allow translation of the work.
The TrustDR project is looking at how Creative Commons licences (and other solutions) may be applied to the sharing and reuse of digital learning materials in the UK education sector.
The TrustDR framework for managing IPR in e-learning
The 6 layers of the framework describe the components of a typical DRM
system - these are briefly described below:
These first three stages all address the creation of a DRM policy.
• Recognition of rights is the stage at which staff, employers and suppliers (e.g. publishers) all need to be aware of who the rights holders are and what uses they might be licensed for.
• Assertion of rights is provided by a legal framework in which people and organisations can assert their rights in a form that is defendable under law.
• Expression of rights has traditionally involved only a copyright statement in a human-readable form. While this is still important it is also essential to take account of machine-to-machine (m2m) communication when considering digital rights management.
The final three stages concern the projection of a DRM policy.
• Dissemination of rights ensures that wherever a resource is described its rights are also described.
• Exposure of rights is the stage at which a user will see the rights information associated with a resource. This will often be when searching for resources.
• Enforcement of rights includes both protective measures to ensure that rights are not infringed and steps to be taken when infringements are detected.
We can see that the first 3 layers (the creation of a DRM policy) are mostly concerned with the legal and socio-cultural (values, attitudes etc.) aspects of DRM. But as we move through the layers towards the centre and on to the final 3 layers (the projection of a DRM policy) we move more towards a concern with the technical factors involved in DRM. The arrows pointing toward the top and bottom of the diagram indicate this implementation continuum in DRM that encapsulates both the legal and socio-cultural aspects and also the technical issues.
Lying at the centre of the 6 layers is an area where the legal and socio-cultural aspects and the technical issues meet and have to communicate with each other for the DRM system to work. Because of this we have called this point the ‘Legal and Technical Nexus’, and it is at this point where the use of off-the-shelf licences such as those developed by the Creative Commons and possible derivatives of those used by JORUM [6] (the national UK learning materials repository) would exist. Because these licences are both human and machine-readable they can perform this ‘nexus’ function.
A useful concept to consider is how you would place yourself and your work on this 6-stage mode. If you regard the 6 stages as a continuum where would you place your needs? If it is in the first 3 or 4 levels you might not need expensive DRM technical enforcement measures.
Note: A useful analogy may be drawn between this diagram and the Open Systems Interconnection model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Systems_Interconnection--Reference_Model), which is used to simplify the description of complex computer network and communications systems by breaking them into simpler logical chunks. In a similar way our 6-layer model is used as a way of simplifying the DRM process for all those involved – so those involved in each stage of the model do not have to know about the other stages. The addition of the other elements to the 6 layers completes our TrustDR framework.
For us it has been essential to try and understand the ‘lifecycle’
of the content of
digital learning materials. Similar considerations will apply to the interactive
media industry. The key to success in IPR management is good record keeping
and administration, here are some ideas from our sector. The diagram below
shows our conceptual model for e-learning content production that we use
help identify rights holders – the ‘actors’.
Creation – where the materials are produced. The
ADDIE (Analyse, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate) model from the
Instructional Systems Design tradition is used for simplicity, but there
are many others that can be adopted.
Use – where the materials are deployed and used
with real teachers and students.
Maintain – where the materials are altered to keep
them up to date, to reflect changes in the curriculum and evaluation comments.
Archive – where the materials are stored in a digital
repository to await retrieval and reuse.
In these functions the actors and roles might break down into the following
actors’ functions / job titles:
| Instructional Designers / Learning Designers | Scriptwriters |
| Subject Experts | Examiners |
| Teachers /Lecturers | Usability Experts |
| Students | Accessibility Experts |
| Audio Designers & Editors | Instructional / Technical Authors |
| Video Designers & Editors | Evaluation Experts |
| Graphics Designers & Editors | Database Designers |
| Photographers | Project Managers |
| Web Designers | Project Administrators |
| Animators | |
| Desktop Publishing & Typography | |
| Programmers |
Here are a simple set of generic administration and record keeping tools
that we use.
| Media / Rights Tracker
Form |
|
| Production Title | Name of the Course or Project etc. |
Title / Description of the media item |
e.g. top bar navigation icons |
| Location / Place in Production | e.g. on all the content pages |
| Purpose in Production | e.g. Navigate through the instructional content part of the site |
| File Format | e.g. GIF & JPEG |
| Name and Location of Master File(s) Note: ‘path’ to the folder may do |
e.g. in the course_archive/icons/top bar/tb1.gif, tb2.gif, tb3.jpg |
| Created by (and employment status) | e.g. John Doe - freelance |
| Adapted by (and employment status) | e.g. Peter Perfect - staff |
| Content IPR (brief description and status) | e.g. Coca Cola bottle images from company web site and coke logo (copyright and trademark) – cleared, project permissions file ref. DMPP12 |
Form for identifying media content, description, location, purpose and IPR status
People / Rights Tracker
Form |
|
| Name | John Doe |
| Employment Status | e.g. Freelance |
| Role / Job Title | Graphic Designer |
| IPR Status | e.g. Copyright – Assigned e.g. Moral Rights - Waived |
| Contract ref. | e.g. standard terms of freelance contract and job spec – contract ref. No. |
Form for identifying and recording people and their IPR relations to the
content
| Rights Clearance Tracker Form |
|
| Title | e.g. 12 Angry Men |
Project Permissions File Identifier |
e.g. DMPP14 |
| Description / Synopsis and Use | e.g. Courtroom Drama. Useful for showing the importance of argument analysis and rhetorical skills |
| Media Type | e.g. video |
| Main Copyright Owner(s) | e.g. Broadcaster |
| Main Moral Rights Holder(s) | e.g. Director |
| Individual Content Rights Owner(s) | e.g. actors and performers, directors, producers (but not applicable under ERA) |
| Clearance Status | e.g. video free to use for educational purposes under the ERA licence scheme |
| Conditions / Restrictions | e.g. only for educational non-commercial use, with no time limit, only for and between institutions that are members of the |
| ERA scheme. Not for use off Campus Costs | e.g. institutional ERA license fees |
Form for identifying media content and its IPR status and history
In a networked society the means to communicate, share and collaborate
between human beings on a global scale has never been easier – at
least technically. Ideas, information, knowledge and cultural values can
now be transmitted digitally with an ease that would have been unbelievable
less than a generation ago. But the very ease of digital communications
makes it potentially much easier technically to violate the intellectual
property rights of authors, creators and the owners of intellectual works.
It is a truism to say that the world is changing increasingly faster and
that after many, many centuries of very slow and gradual change we are
now in the steep part of the exponential curve of change (McEvedy, 2002)
it can help to have some historical perspective.
We have been here before – the creation of the printing press revolutionised human communications and caused the same problems. Then, as now, this was followed by legislation to protect the intellectual property of the authors and publishers of books and printed materials in the form of the Statute of Anne in1610. Then, as now, this was accompanied by claims that illegal copying was causing great harm to the authors and publishers see the useful article by Ilkka Tuomi (Tuomi, 2004) that describes the development of IPR law. The introduction of the electrical telegraph in the first half of the 19th century made reliable high-speed communication available for the first time in human history. As Tom Standage (Standage, 1999) points out in The Victorian Internet:
“At the time, sending a message to someone over a 100 miles away took the best part of a day – the time it took a messenger travelling on horseback to cover the distance. This unavoidable delay had remained a constant for thousands of years: it was as much a fact of life for George Washington as it was for Henry VIII, or Charlemagne, or Julius Caesar.”
Tom Standage, 1999
It is hard to overestimate the considerable impact that the resulting explosion in high-speed communication via the telegraph had on established social and business structures of the day.
More recently the last great leap forward in human communications has been the arrival of the internet and its continuing development to the present day, with an impact arguably greater than the arrival of the telegraph due to its ability to encompass all the existing media and communication forms. Yet as John Naughton (Naughton, 2000) points out in A Brief History of the Future: Origins of the Internet this amazing development was made possible in an environment where the control of IPR was at a low level.
It is a commonly accepted orthodoxy that we are moving into the era of
the so-called knowledge economy where the creation, management and exchange
of information and knowledge becomes more important than that in traded
goods. We should be wary of accepting such orthodoxies, especially when
driven by the ‘spin doctors’ and hype merchants working through
to the commercial and political agendas of public relations companies.
In many western economies the idea of the knowledge economy could just
as easily be perceived as a thin rationalisation for de-industrialisation
and the replacement of mass employment by mass consumerism and a large
service sector with an accompanying sharp rise in economic disparity and
social insecurity. Such sceptical views can be at odds with prevailing
intellectual fashions but can provide illuminating and useful perspectives
nonetheless (Klein, 2001), (Hardt & Negri, 2001).
Unfortunately we now live in a legal IPR environment marked by increasing paranoia, aggression, and acquisitiveness. At the level of the individual we are presented by the attempts to turn civil offences under copyright (copying) into criminal offences (the EU Copyright Directive and the US Digital Millennium Act). We are also facing media campaigns that are attempting to conflate possible individual copyright violation with piracy, organised crime and terrorism. We are also faced with high-profile campaigns that seek to prosecute those involved in the illegal sharing of music such as those waged in the USA in 2004 and that starting this year in the UK. This forces commercial and public sector organisations to open their records to inspection and can cause considerable disruption.
At the business level we are seeing the aggressive use of patents (both
real and imaginary) to hold successful companies to ransom - this has
the potential for disruption and loss on a scale that dwarf the alleged
losses from personal copying. Thus, patent law has been accused of:
“Stifling innovation by allowing opportunistic companies to register business methods and software patents in the hope they can extract huge licensing fees from big technology companies at a later time” (Malone, S. 2006)
Four examples to illustrate this rapidly growing problem of ‘legalised piracy’:
eBay and MercExchange which reached the US supreme court on the 29th of March 2006. “MercExchange claims a patent on a technology that allows customers to buy products online at a fixed price while eBay made its name as an auctioneer with people bidding for goods, the alleged infringement occurred when it introduced the ‘Buy It Now’ Button.” (Malone, S. 2006)
A similar circumstance has occurred with ContentGuard, a company owned
by Microsoft, Time Warner and Thomson, has registered a patent for any
rights expression language / rights grammar. The consequences of such
a patent being upheld would be that no one else would be able to develop
a digital rights expression language (DREL) , an essential part of any
DRM system, without being obliged to pay ContentGuard for the privilege
(Vienna, S., G., & Brisbane, R., I., 2005). This has actually now
happened with the Open Mobile Alliance a consortium of large equipment
and content vendors(http://www.openmobilealliance.org/)
receiving a demand from ContentGuard (via the MPEG Licensing Agency) to
pay a levy for the right to implement a DRM system of their own invention.
A royalty payment of $1 is due for every device that is issued using the
OMA DRM specification and a further 1% of any transaction in which an
end user pays for delivery of a digital asset. This is despite the fact
that the OMA have invented their own DRM system!
(http://www.indicare.org/tiki-read_article.htm?articleId=90)
The case of the Blackberry is equally worrying as the vexatious claim of patent and demand for payment has been acceded to despite the US federal government objecting. The BlackBerry is a highly successful wireless handheld device introduced in 1999 which supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, web browsing and other wireless information services. It was developed by Research In Motion (RIM) and delivers information over the wireless data networks of cellular telephone companies. RIM was involved in a patent dispute with NTP, Inc., Virginia-based patent holding company which could have potentially forced RIM to suspend service to most Blackberry users in the United States. On 9 February 2006, the United States Department of Defense filed a brief stating that an injunction shutting down the Blackberry service while excluding government users was unworkable. The DOD also stated that the Blackberry was crucial for national security given the large number of government users. On 3 March 2006, after a stern warning from judge Spencer, RIM and NTP announced that they had settled their dispute. Under the terms of the settlement, RIM has agreed to pay NTP $612.5 million (USD). Story courtesy of Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTP%2C_Inc.#Patent_Litigation
Microsoft has lost a $ 521 million lawsuit brought by Eolas Technologies and the University of California. Ludicrous as it sounds, Eolas was given a patent “for the embedding of small interactive programmes such as plug-ins, ‘applets’ etc. To comply with the ruling Microsoft has had to change the code for its browser to comply with the ruling – resulting in possible widespread disruption worldwide for developers and consumers. (Source: The Guardian April 20th 2006)
It has become an orthodoxy that the ‘market knows best’ and will sort it self out over time to fulfil the needs to society better than any government imposed legislation. What these four examples show is that this is not the case; society needs protection from these short-sighted interest groups and so does the world of commerce.
One of the difficulties of digital material is the ease at which it can
be copied. The quality of the copy does not diminished with future generations
of the copy either. Images and text on the Internet are particularly vulnerable,
the simple act of ‘copy and paste’ is sufficient to infringe
the rights of the vast majority of images and text on the Internet. Screen
capture utilities can also be used to copy media such as animation, films
and audio.
In addition to this, peer-to-peer networks such as BearShare, Kazaa and Bit torrents mean distributing illegal content has never been easier, literally in hours media such as a music track can be distributed internationally to thousands upon thousands of users.
With copying never having been easier Digital Rights Management has never been more aggressively enforced. The table below shows some methods of Digital Rights Management used to protect popular media.
| Object to be protected Typical DRM mechanism | |
| Image on Webpage | Disabled right click |
| DVD | Content Scrambling System (CSS) |
| Computer Games / Programmes | Serial Codes Copy protection on CD / DVD |
| Audio Track | Various (No definitive method, but methods include Tracks with in built rights metadata) |
Table 1 DRM methods for popular media
The enforcement of Digital Rights (by this it is meant any mechanism used
to prevent breach of copyright) is a double edge sword. Those that wish
to infringe copyrights will attempt to, and invariably successfully obtain
a pre-cracked version of the work, saving themselves the time and effort
of overcoming increasingly complex DRM technologies. But those that want
to stay within the scope of the law will be burdened with the inconvenience
of Digital Rights management.
Companies have become so desperate to protect their media that they have
taken some questionably legal action. One such current case is Sony, who
developed a piece of software known as a rootkit, which hides running
processes, files or system data. The software it was hiding (Extended
Copy Protection) was software that would enforce DRM on music tracks on
PCs.
This software was not only allegedly installed without the users permission [7], but also stayed on the computer without the users knowledge. Security fears about the potential of hacker using the preinstalled rootkit for malicious purposes brought the saga to head when in late November 2005 a US rights body, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the state of Texas filed a class action against Sony BMG for violating the states Consumer Protection Against Computer Software act, seeking $100,000 per violation Aughton, S., (2005).
On a more international scale, Digital Rights Management has received some biting criticisms. “The first danger from DRM then is that technological measures used to restrict a work can override national development priorities as expressed in local copyright law. If your nation grants a sweeping exemption to copyright for works used to teach in rural schoolhouses, it will avail you naught in the face of DRM locks placed on works that admit no such exemption. … … domestic policy will not be able to stand up in the face of DRM” (Doctorow C., 2005).
Indeed an example of this can be found in the combination of the broadcasting industry and Windows Media Centre, a media delivery system written to focus primarily on media such as, music, TV and DVDs. The popular Sopranos television series broadcast in America by HBO, where mid series HBO trigger a flag preventing the series to be ‘taped’ to a local hard drive and then being burnt on CD. If an old-fashioned VCR system had been used, with no digital rights protection, the consumer could still have exercised their rights under fair use, however the DRM system has overturned the rights American law offered to them.
Some countries, such as America, have “Anti-circumvention laws that
have been used to silence and even jail researchers” (Doctorow C.,
2005) who have investigated DRM systems. With DRM system being placed
in a black box and carefully watched by anti-circumvention laws less people
are willing to explore the would be contents. This can be seen in DVDs,
where a teenager from Norway, Jon Johansen, wrote a program to override
the regional restrictions of DVD’s. Whilst Norwegian courts refuse
to convict him of any wrong doing Jon Johansen lost a sizable part of
his boyhood in the ensuing legal battles. DVDs have not developed much
since there original release. If DVDs are compare to CDs we can see that
CDs have new innovations such as filtering out vocal tracks for use in
karaoke, converting CDs to mp3s, read / write CDs, etc. We can see the
lack of innovation DVD market where they have remained largely unchanged
since their release.
The creative industries suffer from a conflict between their innate need
to be open conflicting with a closed model that is require to make money.
On one hand creative industries must promote and demonstrate their work
openly, but on the other it must close its gates to non-paying customers
in order to make money. However traditional models are starting to fade,
as people have culturally changed their attitudes to what they are willing
to pay for. The idea of a more open culture is not separate from one that
can sustain itself, perhaps even lucratively. This can be illustrated
by a number of examples.
The Artic Monkeys, the authors of the fastest selling debut album in British history, initially distributed their music for free over the internet before they had a record contract. This ‘free’ marketing helped to create a buzz and interest in the band. Defying the traditional business models helped them sell more than 360,000 CDs.
Another example is Magnatune (http://magnatune.com), an online music retailer, who offers music streamed over the Internet at no charge. The user can then choose to buy it. Purchased music can be moved to a portable device such as an i-pod. Typically the customer can chose how much to pay, usually ranging between 5-18 USD.
The emergence of the i-tunes online music store operated by Apple went against conventional commercial wisdom by selling individual tracks instead of complete packages and has been a runaway success story that has since been much imitated. Much of the success of this venture rests on the ease of use of the system – making it easy for buyers to buy the amount of product they want is an important business advantage. All this is despite the fact the store and Apple are using some heavy-duty DRM enforcement measures that are quite restrictive and causing increasing unrest amongst customers. The success of i-tunes to date is a result ease of use, of knowing your market and ‘marketing cool’, how it develops as that market matures will be an interesting story.
Innovation is not the exclusive preserve of the music industry, many software companies have chosen open models for example Skype, offers its internet telephony software for free. Skype is one of the fastest growing online companies (Day, J., 2006). Users can call each other’s computers at no charge or buy Skype credits to call landlines at a greatly reduced rate, with over 6 million users concurrently online the percentage of costumers that purchases credits can be extremely low for this low overhead venture to still make money.
MySql, the open source database, is free to download and deploy. In addition to the actual software it’s website (http://www.mysql.com) offers training and printed manuals for a fee.
An interesting twist is also found in the gaming industry, where online role-playing games are now being offered free. Games such as Kingdom of Drakkar (http://www.kingdomofdrakkar.com/) and Conquer (http://www.conqueronline.com/) are free to play and users can pay for additional items or landscapes in the game.
The key concepts examined in this report are:
• Copyright and Patents are extremely important in technological business models.
• Patent and Copyright legislation needs to be revisited to take into account the tendency towards monopoly and restriction to stifle innovation and competition
• DRM disadvantages those that mainly work within the law,
• DRM can override national laws
• Innovation requires open forums of discussion, experiment and peer review, however the black box tactics of DRM can be seen to stifle this.
• Consumer purchasing behaviour is changing and along with their expectations of what should be a free and what should be a charged for.
• More open business models might bypass and override the need for DRM
• Those vendors who pursue a strong DRM based sales strategy my end up losing their markets
On one hand we have the argument
“As you will see, the answer to ‘Which DRM will spur the most development in my nation?’ is ‘None at all’” (Doctorow C., P6 2005)
On the other we have the need to protect intellectual property and the rights of the producers. Without legal ownership of intellectual property it is hard to cultivate innovation. Without copyright the market could be flooded with distrust, intellectual theft and the impossible trading conditions of a piracy culture that might follow.
Protection for IPR is gained by the application of the law which in a
democracy has to be respected – it may be enforced in many different
ways, but current trends in DRM enforcement, left unchecked, is in danger
of drifting further into questionable legal waters. The solution requires
a balanced approach that will allow innovation to flourish within the
protective legal framework of copyright and other laws. For this to happen
it is important for the law (and hence the state) to reassert the concept
of the ‘public space and the public good’ which has been so
eroded by those trying to enlarge the rights of property owners in recent
years. We need to redress the balance between private and public property
as the Harvard professor of law Lawrence Lessig puts it "between
rewarding creativity and allowing the borrowing from which new creativity
springs"[8] .
The paradox and challenge here for free-market democracies (and it is not a new one – the history of 19th century America is instructive in this regard) is that they must roll back the unjust and unreasonable influence and control of a minority of property owners to help the majority become more innovative and competitive for the benefit of all. As one of the critical voices (Pilger, 2003) in this debate has pointed out, the anti-globalisation protestors are naïve in saying that the power of the nation state has declined. Rather it has increased but instead of serving the social interests of its citizens is now more aligned to an emerging digital plutocracy. Unless the world community can reverse these attempts to privatise knowledge and information we risk forfeiting the creativity and innovation that has brought us this far. One of the ways we can support this process is to assert more control over our own IPR, particularly by the use of licensing schemes and engage in the debate about the future development of IPR laws.
Aughton, S., (2005) US rights body and state of Texa file against Sony BMG PcPro [online] Available from: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/80457/us-rights-body-and-state-of-texas-file-against-sony-bmg.html [Accessed 19-04-06]
Casey, J. (2004) Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in networked e-learning: a beginners guide for content developers. JISC Legal Information. Available at http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/publications/johncasey_1.htm [Accessed 14.04.06]
Consumers International Asia Pacific Office. (2006) Copyright and access to knowledge. Consumers International. Available at http://digbig.com/4hckw [Accessed 14.04.06]
Day, J., (2006) Community websites top list of fastest-growing online brands Guardian [online] Available from: http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,,1693105,00.html [Accessed 19-04-06]
Doctorow C., (2005) Digital Rights Management: A failure in the developed world, a danger to the developing world Electronic Frontier Foundation [online] Available from: http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/drm_paper.pdf [Accessed 20-04-06]
Hardt, M., & Negri, A., (2001) Empire, Harvard University Press
Klein, N., (2001) No Logo , Flamingo
Laddie, Mr Justice (1996). Copyright: Over-strength, Over-regulated, Over-rated? European Intellectual Property Review (5):253-260
Madhavan, M. (2006). Intellectual Property Rights: An overview. JISC
Legal
http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/ipr/IntellectualProperty.htm
[Accessed 14.04.06]
McEvedy, C. (2002). The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History, Penguin Books, London
McCracken, R. and Gilbart, M. (1995). Buying and clearing rights: print, broadcast and multimedia. London: Chapman and Hall
Malone, S. (2006) eBay goes to the Supreme Court PcPro [online] Available from: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/85662/ebay-goes-to-the-supreme-court.html [Accessed 19-04-06]
Naughton, J., (2000). A Brief History of the Future: Origins of the Internet, Phoenix
Pilger, J., (2003). The New Rulers of the World, Verso Books
Standage. T., (1999) The Victorian Internet, Phoenix
Toumi, I., (2004). Knowledge Sharing and the Idea of Public Domain Paper presented at the Unesco 21st Century Dialog on "Building Knowledge Societies," Seoul, 28 July 2004 http://tinyurl.com/yrp3pn [Accessed 27-04-06]
Vienna, S., G., & Brisbane, R., I., (2005) Critical review of MPEG LA software patent claims [online] INDICARE. Available from: http://www.indicare.org/tiki-read_article.htm?articleId=90 [Accessed 16 January 2006]
Withers, K. (2006). Intellectual Property and the Knowledge Economy.
Institute for Public Policy Research. Available from
http://www.ippr.org.uk/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=340
[Accessed 14.04.06]
From the TrustDR project
An international perspective from the World Intellectual Property Organization
http://www.wipo.int/portal/index.html.en
TRIPS (Trade-related aspects of intellectual property)
http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/trips_e.htm
A European service providing information http://www.ipr-helpdesk.org
An official UK government source of information
http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk/
Information and advice for UK education from JISC Legal
http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/ipr/IntellectualProperty.htm
Lessig, L. (2003) Future of ideas. Random House
Explores the meaning of IP in the new high-tech digital age, addressing
the legal, social, and economic factors at work and provides a thought-provoking
argument that those qualities that have made the Internet a dynamic force
for creativity, freedom, and innovation could destroy the Internet's potential
The TrustDR project believes in the basic premise that creators, publishers
and consumers of intellectual property need to build and maintain trust
in order to take advantage of digital resources and technologies. In order
to increase awareness of both the tensions and potential opportunities
for balancing the rights of all stakeholders, this document sets out to
link to relevant literature. This first section points to a selection
of articles/reports in favour of reducing copyright restrictions:
Copyright and the law. (2005). The Economist [online] Available at
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4128994
[Accessed 18.01.2006]
Discusses the conflicts between media companies and technology developers
caused by application of copyright law, and argues for shorter period
of copyright protection to allow legal use of content.
Barker, E. et al. (2005). The Common Information Environment and Creative commons: Final report to the Common Information Environment Members of a study on the applicability of Creative Commons Licences. Intrallect and AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law. Available at http://www.common-info.org.uk/publications.shtml [Accessed 17.10.2005] or http://www.intrallect.com/cie-study/ [Accessed 18.01.2006]
Burkeman, O. (2005). Is it time for copyright law to change? Guardian
Unlimited [online] at http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,16488,1636058,00.html
[Accessed 18.01.2006]
The Guardian introduces the concepts of Creative Commons in this article
RSA. (2005) The Adelphi Charter. London: Royal Society of Arts. Available
at http://www.ipcharter.org/
[Accessed 18.01.2006]
The Charter on Intellectual Property promotes fair divisions of Intellectual
Property
McCreevy, C. (2005). Music copyright: Commission recommendation on management
of online rights in musical works. UK Presidency Conference on Copyright
and the Creative Economy. Available at http://europa.eu.int
[Accessed 18.01.2006]
This is a speech by the European Commissioner for the Internal Market
and Services, regarding the proposals for “introducing effective
models for cross-border licensing of copyright-protected content in the
online environment” and other work to remove barriers and encourage
creativity in the EU market.
Open Content Alliance website at http://www.opencontentalliance.org
[Accessed 18.01.2006]
The Open Content Alliance (OCA) “was conceived by the Internet Archive
and Yahoo! in early 2005 as a way to offer broad, public access to a rich
panorama of world culture”.
The Zwolle Principles are available at http://www.surf.nl/copyright/keyissues/scholarlycommunication/principles.htm
[Accessed 18.01.2006]
A document giving examples of University Copyright policies is useful
for viewing best practice when implementing policies in line with the
Zwolle Principles.
http://www.surf.nl/copyright/keyissues/scholarlycommunication/implem_Zwolle_principles.pdf
JISC, and its partner organisation in the Netherlands SURF have collaborated
to support an organisation known as the Zwolle Group. The group exists
to facilitate the balance between stakeholders in access to scholarly
work. SURF hosts a website “Copyright Management for Scholarship”
in order to disseminate guidance and good practice for academic institutions.
Downes, S. et al. (2004). Distributed Digital Rights Management: The
EduSource approach to DRM. Stephen’s Web at http://www.downes.ca/files/DDRM_19April2004.pdf
[Accessed 18.01.2006]
Presents a vision where DRM occupies a “middle ground” between
weak and strong DRM.
Europe4DRM aims to educate policy makers on emergent services and technologies in the digital content sector.
Briefing paper on Digital Rights Management systems from IPR-Helpdesk
Intrallect, suppliers of the UHI Digital Repository IntraLibrary, have carried out a number of studies including DRM for JISC
ContentGuard implements DRM in the commercial sector, and promotes use of XrML Digital Rights Language
CEN/ISSS (EU body for standards in ICT) published a DRM: final report
Robson, R. (2004). Digital Rights Management: a White paper for Alt-i-Lab
2004
Available at http://www.imsglobal.org/altilab/altilab2004/Altilab04-DRM1.pdf
[Accessed 18.01.2006]
This paper deals with real activities involving digital material in education and the implications for managing intellectual property in this context. It discusses DRM in a broad sense rather than purely technical measures for protection of content. The phenomenon of disaggregation of content and the changing nature of distribution platforms are highlighted as impacting on rights management. In discussing the impact of IP laws, Robson suggests that “the shift of responsibility for rights management from societal institutions to technological solutions will be accentuated” (p6) and this will require increasing standardization to allow interoperability.
The paper appears to illustrate the dilemma faced by attempting to transfer traditional models of rights management to the digital environment (which then requires technical measures), rather than creating new models for sharing resources.
