[Ecommerce] DRM discussion on p2pnet

[Manon Ress]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
http://p2pnet.net/story/6358

Copyright in a digital world
p2pnet Feature:- Nicholas Bentley is an interesting person - a
genuine renaissance man. He=92s a designer and eb=E9niste (cabinet maker)
living in France. But he spends all his spare time thinking about
intellectual property issues.

=93In my previous life I was a flight simulator engineer for British
Airways, and before that I was trained in information processing,=94 he
told p2pnet. =93Hence, I=92m an artist and engineer who always has the
sharing and communication of information in the back of my mind. And
this brings me to my current project of the last six years where I
recognise that DRM will probably never work satisfactorily (you
probably know all the issues), and that the Internet, technology and
services such as p2p offers great opportunities, but also that
artists and creators need to and ought to get paid.

=93Analogue copyright achieved a balance between the technology
(printing) and artists getting paid by limiting the production of
physical copies and hence gave copies a trading value that was a
substitute for the trade of intangible intellectual works. My
proposed 'DIPR Rights Office' system makes the rights to a work (to
reproduce it, to transfer rights, to trade rights, the right to
adsorb the work) the trading commodity and regulates this trade with
an infrastructure of peer-to-peer 'offices' on the Internet that act
as rights agents for producers, distributors and consumers. Once this
trade in rights becomes established copies become unimportant and the
technology such as P2P is free to optimise the transfer of copies to
whomever has the 'right' to access the work.

=93This is a complex philosophy that is not clear to many in the IP
field. Copyright lawyers and the DRM folks can't think of anything
other than regulating copies, it is called COPYright after all.

=93On the other side, the Creative Commons and the free software types
are sure I must be slipping DRM (ie, control of copies) into the
system somewhere and hence don't want to discuss it."

Is copyright still on the right track? - he asks. Are DRM systems and
Creative Commons licences the only solutions that can support
copyright in the digital world?

=93I=92d like to open up the discussion =85=85=94

Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>








************************************************
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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