I am in a state of siege. Attacks on Net Neutrality, I equate with the Wallace’s fight for freedom. The commercial over-reaching of copyright enforcement and the mass sending out of DMCA take down notices, I see on a par with the Empire’s Stormtroopers, searching out Rebel bases, who must be resisted with whatever guerilla tactics come to hand.
The villain in these pieces is invariably large corporations and the governments they have bought and paid for. I probably see it as an axiom that rampant commercialism, left unchecked, will eat itself and all of us with it.
Having said that, there is clearly an issue with protecting the rights of creators over their creations, versus the usage rights of the public.
I have heard creators claim that their ownership rights cannot be usurped and any attempt to do so is tantamount to stealing. Such claims, however, ignore the fact that it is the public that owns the market place and if you want your product to exist there, you must play by the public’s rules. This is not a straw man argument but merely an attempt to lay bare the underlying conflict and separate it from the law and legalistic shenanigans made by companies eager to protect a dwindling bottom line.
Indeed it would very much be mother’s milk for me to go off on a rage about corporations having so devalued the law with petty constraints and suing grandmothers that piracy is made more acceptable and not less so due to their efforts. I know that whenever I see the anti piracy advert that precedes many a purchased movie, I feel a vague compulsion to steal someone’s bag, snatch their mobile phone and nick a policeman’s helmet. I even felt vindicated when the FBI was put in its place after sending a DMCA type takedown notice to Wikimedia over the use of the FBI shield. Wikimedia Counsel nicely slapped the FBI down, saying: “while we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version”. The shield remains on Wikimedia.
But all that would be too easy as there are so many cases. Giving vent to my spleen might feel good but it seems more realistic to look at how the needs of both owner and public can be addressed in practical terms. In this vein I propose the below idea.
Automatic Digital Rights Changes Based on Real World Conditions
That heading is as close to a précis as I could get for what I am describing. I call this system a Rights Management Exchange or RMX for short and it is designed to better handle software locks.
Software locks are used to restrict or enable how software can be used. A prime example of this is Digital Rights Management which can be used to prevent access to digital files except by the person who has purchased that file.
One of the problems with DRM is that in many cases it becomes invalid, and perhaps even illegal, for a file to continue to be locked once the DRM has expired. This can happen, for example, when digital books are no long in copyright. While in copyright, the DRM should be effective, when out of copyright, the file should be unlocked and no longer restricted by the DRM.
Using DRM presents us with a simple example of the data an RMX would need to manage. The lock itself would be recorded in the RMX along with the constraints by which it operates:
- Reference ID – This should allow the file(s) to be identified on the system.
- Country or defined Region – Different regions may have different rules.
- Creator/Author/Owner Details (Birthdate, Date of Death,etc) – This handles variables relating to the party who has set the lock or claims the right to set the lock.
- Type of Lock/Usage Change – The thing being locked or unlocked.
- Lock/Unlock Parameter – Details about how the lock/usage should be changed. This parameter can be an absolute value, like a date, a relative date based on a variable related to the Lock, or a function.
In this case the idea might be to ensure DRM files can be checked against this system and, if necessary, have it’s DRM altered as a result of it being X years after the Creators death. The beauty of this is that a single RMX entry can manage any number of actual files and the system could even be extended to handle variations of the same content that operates by the same constraints.
It should also be possible using the system to change different features at different times so that printing of a DRM file may be allowed at one time while making the file fully open might happen at a different time.
This idea also extends to the opposite implementation in which a facility has been provided subject to a possible expiry period or set of expiry constraints.
An example of this might be the use of a car with a navigation system in which the navigation system is only supported by the car manufacturer for 1 year. After that year, the service may need to be discontinued. In such cases, it is advisable to notify the system user of the expiry process and period as well as a method for extending the usage period. Such reverse systems may need to transfer the extension process to a Software Developer’s internal system for charging.
This entire set of processes act as an Rights Management Exchange and is meant to provide a balance between overzealous software constraints that hobble end users and improved interaction with the end user. This system should also provide protections for end users in cases where the original developers become bankrupt or are no longer able to support the product. Such a constraint could be included as a variable that allows the software to become fully unlocked in such a case.
The RMX would initially consist of the following parts:
- Database as outlined above.
- Interface for software developers / content owners to update the system.
- Interface whereby digital files can check and alter their status.
I do not think that such a system would solve all the issues that parties have with software locks but it does start to constrain the misuse of DRM and similar systems that have driven so much piracy.
