M. Wellman and the UMDL/IPE Working Group
*Draft* of 17 April 1995
comments solicited
As a first step in developing facilities for managing intellectual property (IP) rights in the UMDL, we need a language for describing such rights. The following is the beginning of a top-down design of such a language. We put it forth this proposal to initiate comments and contributions from the UMDL/IPE group members.
We focus initially on specifying what an IP right *is*. This is separate from how such rights are obtained, on what authority they are generated, and how they can be enforced by a technical or legal system. We of course must address some of these issues eventually. (Note that other proposals we have seen, including Stefik's and Borenstein's, attempt to cover all of these bases at once.) But for now we postpone such consideration by positing the following premises:
We start with the concept of a "digital work" [can anyone think of a better name?], an object with some intellectual property content. A digital work has one or more "owners", which are original rights-granting authorities as mentioned above. A "holder" of a digital work is an agent that "has" the digital work and can potentially do things with it. What it is authorized to do is determined by what "IP rights" it possesses for that digital work. A "right" is intended to capture authorization to perform certain operations on that digital work. Note that a holder may have any number of rights associated with a digital work.
All rights can be qualified by the following features:
We define three basic categories of IP rights: "usage", "redistribution", and "derivative".
Usage rights specify the authorized operations relevant to direct, final "consumption" of the digital work. In addition to the generic qualifications enumerated above, a usage right specifies the following features:
* usage type
The basic categories are "print" and "play" (in Stefik's terminology), istinguished by whether the digital work is copied onto a medium beyond he system's control (print), or is experienced within the system play). For example, play may include browsing a text digital work on creen, listening to an audio clip, etc. There will be a taxonomy of sage types, some specific to particular digital work forms. Usage type may also be qualified by attributes such as: fidelity (e.g., display resolution) (Other ideas?)
* usage amount
A count, or other quantified measure of how much usage is authorized. For example, "play 5 times", or "browse for up to 1 hour". Note that this is different from temporal extent of the right itself (above), which is independent of usage.
* Redistribution Rights
Redistribution rights specify the authority of a holder to make other agents into holders. (In plain English, to make and distribute copies.) In specifying a redistribution right, we need to specify the scope and extent of distribution allowed, and what rights, if any, the holder can confer on the new holders.
* Derivative Rights
A derivative right is the authority to make specific use of the digital work in creation of another digital work (i.e., a new intellectual property). The simplest examples are permission to quote or cite. Particular derivative rights must specify the nature of quotes allowed, and could perhaps even specify the context in which quoting is authorized.
More complex derivative rights would include authority to summarize, abstract, tabulate, etc. Describing these can become arbitrarily complex, and we should probably focus on only a few canonical examples. At what point a derivative becomes a wholly new work is quite a murky topic, and one that we cannot hope to define with absolute precision.
* Other Issues
Exclusivity. Exclusivity is not a right itself, but a restriction on the rights-granting authority in promulgating subsequent rights.
Scope of rights. Some rights may apply to parts, rather than whole digital works. For example, a holder of an article may have the right to redistribute the abstract, but not the full text. We can express such rights in the scheme above by specifying the abstract as itself a full-fledged digital work. Parts and wholes may simultaneously be considered works with potentially differing rights.
Bases for rights. Holders often have rights by virtue of group membership (e.g., being a student). Here we separate the right itself from the method of acquiring the right, and so we need not associate this basis with the right.
Other rights. The enumeration of specific rights should not be taken to preclude the exercise of other rights not specifically mentioned. For example, fair use.
The foregoing describes the main categories of rights, and some of the important attributes that specify rights. At this point we have not specified a specific syntax, although our intent is to keep it simple. The main effort will be in identifying all of the important categories of attribute specifiers (e.g., the range of usage types).
Information Goods Specification Language
Where does this fit in within our larger problem of specifying information goods? IP rights are one special type of good, which may be exchanged separately or in conjunction with other goods and services. Defining a rights specification language is thus one major component of a comprehensive specification language for goods in general.
Comments or questions may be sent to: UMDL.INFO@umich.edu