The Promise for Intellectual Property in Cyberspace

[Please see discussion page for some thoughts on how this part could be updated.]

It all depends on whether you really understand the idea of trusted systems. If you don’t understand them, then this whole approach to commerce and digital publishing is utterly unthinkable. If you do understand them, then it all follows easily.

Ralph Merkle, quoted in Stefik, “Letting Loose the Light” (1996)

Given the present code of the Internet, you can’t control well who copies what. If you have a copy of a copyrighted photo, rendered in a graphics file, you can make unlimited copies of that file with no effect on the original. When you make the one-hundredth copy, nothing indicates that it is the one-hundredth copy rather than the first. There is very little in the code as it exists now that regulates the distribution of and access to material on the Net.

This problem is not unique to cyberspace. We have already seen a technology that presented the same problem; a solution to the problem was subsequently built into the technology.¹ Digital audio technology (DAT) tape was a threat to copyright, and a number of solutions to this threat were proposed. Some people argued for higher penalties for illegal copying of tapes (direct regulation by law). Some argued for a tax on blank tapes, with the proceeds compensating copyright holders (indirect regulation of the market by law). Some argued for better education to stop illegal copies of tapes (indirect regulation of norms by law). But some argued for a change in the code of tape machines that would block unlimited perfect copying.

With the code changed, when a machine is used to copy a particular CD, a serial number from the CD is recorded in the tape machine’s memory. If the user tries to copy that tape more than a limited number of times, the machine adjusts the quality of the copy. As the copies increase, the quality is degraded. This degradation is deliberately created. Before DAT, it was an unintended consequence of the copying technologies—each copy was unavoidably worse than the original. Now it has been reintroduced to restore a protection that had been eroded by technology.

The same idea animates Stefik’s vision, though his idea is not to make the quality of copies decrease but rather to make it possible to track and control the copies that are made.²

Think of the proposal like this. Today, when you buy a book, you may do any number of things with it. You can read it once or one hundred times. You can lend it to a friend. You can photocopy pages in it or scan it into your computer. You can burn it, use it as a paperweight, or sell it. You can store it on your shelf and never once open it.

Some of these things you can do because the law gives you the right to do them—you can sell the book, for example, because the copyright law explicitly gives you that right. Other things you can do because there is no way to stop you. A book seller might sell you the book at one price if you promise to read it once, and at a different price if you want to read it one hundred times, but there is no way for the seller to know whether you have obeyed the contract. In principle, the seller could sell a police officer with each book to follow you around and make sure you use the book as you promised, but the costs would plainly be prohibitive.

Stefik describes a network that makes such unbundling of rights possible. He describes an architecture for the network that would allow owners of copyrighted materials to sell access to those materials on the terms they want and would enforce those contracts.

Footnotes

¹ See Joel R. Reidenberg, “Governing Networks and Rule-Making in Cyberspace,” Emory Law Journal 45 (1996): 911. Edit Delete

² In Shifting the Possible (142–44), Stefik discusses how trusted printers combine four elements—print rights, encrypted online distribution, automatic billing for copies, and digital watermarks—in order to monitor and control the copies they make. Edit Delete