Wendy M. Grossman, Digital Rights Manifesto revealed, The Inquirer, January 20, 2006. A good first shot at principles for making DRM compatible with user rights. Excerpt:
DRM should respect the public domain. That means [DRM on copyrighted works] should automatically expire, leaving the content freely accessible, on the date when the work enters the public domain....When a work is in the public domain, companies wishing to claim copyright in the design, formatting, typography, layout, and graphics they include in something like an ebook should be required to make it plain in their clickwrap licenses that the public domain work is not included in the copyright, and should be required to design the product so that the raw text may be copied or circulated freely....Circumventing DRM should not be a crime (as of course it is under the US's Digital Millennium Copyright Act) in and of itself.
Comment. Most OA literature lacks DRM. If there's an exception, it's for what could be called "harmless DRM" that doesn't block access or authenticate users but merely measures anonymized traffic. (Some wouldn't even classify this as DRM.) Hence, most copyright holders who consent to OA thereby consent to dispense with DRM. Grossman's principles are for the other copyright holders. Her principles are intended to restore user rights repealed by unbalanced laws or violated by overreaching technologies. Hence their uptake should not depend on copyright-holder consent (though that would be nice) but should be legislated and enforced. A good start. Now, which party really wants to represent consumers?
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/21/2006 03:05:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
