Re: call for input on digital rights management

["Charles E. Jones" <cejo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Forwarded at the request of the undersigned.

> Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2002 07:51:55 -0400
> From: Patrick Durusau <pdurusau@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> Greetings,
>
> I deeply appreciate Robin Cover's post to the list requesting DRM 
> requirements and would urge the academic community to response 
> appropriately, even given the rather short deadline for requirements 
> (7 August 2002).
>
> In terms of deciding to devote summer hours to this task, please 
> consider the membership of this TC:
>
> Hari Reddy, Chairperson ContentGuard
> Carlisle Adams, Entrust
> Bob Atkinson, Microsoft
> Thomas DeMartini, ContentGuard
> John Erickson, H.P.
> Brad Gandee, Secretary ContentGuard
> Bob Glushko, CommerceOne
> Thomas Hardjono, Verisign
> Hal Lockhart, Entegrity
> M. Paramasivam, Microsoft
> David Parrott, Reuters
> Harry Piccariello, ContentGuard
> Peter Schirling, IBM
> Xin Wang, ContentGuard
>
> While I am sure all the members of the TC will try to develop a 
> standard that represents the interests of everyone affected by the 
> DRM standard, I fail to see any representation of the academic, 
> library or other communities. That is not to imply any fault on the 
> part of the TC or OASIS, as a community academics have tended to 
> absent themselves from such discussions.
>
> The interests of the academic community in issues such as "fair use" 
> and allowing free (or at least non-commercial) use of texts and 
> research will not be well served by a standard that protects the 
> commercial rights in the "Lion King" and similar artifacts. Our 
> requirements are different and any standard for DRM should not 
> attempt a one size fits all solution. I am sure that the TC would 
> welcome academic input that would lead to a more nuanced standard 
> that meets a wide range of needs, one of the hallmarks of a 
> successful standard.
>
> Note that a DRM standard will eventually find its way into 
> hardware/software and it will be too late to complain at that point 
> that it does not meet the needs of the academic community.
>
> Please forward Robin's note (and my comments if you think 
> appropriate) to anyone you know who is interested in "fair use" or 
> more generally access to academic materials, since a DRM standard 
> will deeply affect both issues.
>
> Patrick
>
> >         Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2002 06:40:20 +0100
> >         From: Robin Cover         Subject: Request for DRM Requirements
> >
> > An OASIS Rights Language Technical Committee [1] has been
> > established to "define the industry standard for a rights
> > language" that would govern many application domains,
> > including (potentially) digital libraries and archive
> > projects.  The TC has is using an XrML markup language
> > specification from ContentGuard (Xerox and Microsoft)
> > as the basis for defining this common standard.
> >
> > Requirements are now being collected as input to the
> > standard's design. A request is hereby made for input
> > from the academic community, (digital) libraries,
> > museums, archive centers [etc], including persons
> > affiliated with ALA or RLG.  The relevant OASIS
> > subcommittee will collect requirements through
> > August 7, 2002.
> >
> > Current legislative proposals for incorporating
> > DRM technology and usage policies into computer
> > hardware, operating system software, and applications
> > level software raise the stakes for the humanities
> > community, especially as traditional notions of fair
> > use are being challenged as too burdensome to
> > implement in DRM systems.  The Creative Commons
> > Project [2] exemplifies the attempt of one group
> > to counter this trend, but the effects of a
> > government-mandated universal DRM technology are
> > of concern to a growing number of technologists [3].
> >
> > Any interested party having access to DRM specifications
> > or implementations, or otherwise motivated to help
> > in the submission of 'rights management' requirements for
> > humanities computing applications is invited to send email
> > expressing this interest.
> >
> > Robin Cover
> > robin@xxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > [1] http://xml.coverpages.org/oasisRightsLanguage.html
> > [2] http://www.creativecommons.org/
> > [3] http://xml.coverpages.org/patents.html
>
>
> --
> Patrick Durusau
> Director of Research and Development
> Society of Biblical Literature
> pdurusau@xxxxxxxxx