IGF Hyderabad, Workshop 27:
WIPO Workshop on Digital Identifiers and IPRs: Enabling Access to Content
Online distribution of content offers challenges and opportunities for providers and users of digital information, including content that is protected by intellectual property rights (IPR), principally copyright. This rapidly-changing scenario raises questions in areas such as licensing and management of IPRs, and more specifically regarding the technologies used to identify, distribute and manage content on the web.
The WIPO workshop at the IGF in Hyderabad had the objective of surveying, from a multi-stakeholder perspective, existing and emerging technologies for identifying digital content, the ways that digital identifiers can facilitate access to content on a global scale, and emerging issues in the widening use of identifier technologies. Speakers at the workshop included Mr. Nic Garnett of Interight, Mountain View, California, an entertainment- and technology-industry veteran; Ms. Caroline Morgan, General Manager of the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL), Sydney, which collectively manages and licenses the rights of authors and publishers of text-based works in the Australian market, including for digital uses; Mr. Eddan Katz, International Affairs Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, San Francisco, which advocates civil liberties and user freedoms in the development and deployment of ICTs; and Mr. Richard Owens, Director, Copyright E-Commerce, Technology and Management Division at WIPO, who served as moderator.
The 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty establish legal protection of digital identifiers under the framework of “rights management information” (RMI). WIPO has been active for several years in promoting awareness of RMI, which is not the same as ‘technical protection measures’ that are used to condition access to and copying of content (more commonly known as DRM). DRM has had a checkered experience and met with consumer resistance, particularly in the online delivery of music content, leading to partial or in some cases, total abandonment by rightsholders.
By contrast to DRM, RMI technologies for identifying content have been improving in recent years through growing sophistication in metadata schemes and standards, enabling users to customize searches, find and access the content they need, and where appropriate, enter into flexible licensing agreements. During the workshop, it became clear that an array of digital identifiers is available or coming online to facilitate content location and access, from watermarking and fingerprinting technologies to tools like the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), the International Standard Audiovisual Number (ISAN), the Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) and the metatags that support Creative Commons licenses. Some identifiers, like the International Standard Text Code (ISTC), are ISO-approved international standards. As was noted during the workshop, digital identifiers can provide users with information about copyright ownership and terms and conditions of use of digital works, and, when effectively deployed, to help identify and access content that is in the public domain. In the words of Caroline Morgan of CAL, “RMI is about content and finding content, not about copyright.”
Despite recent progress, all speakers at the workshop acknowledged that much work remains to be done by both public- and private-sector stakeholders towards a digital environment that combines sustainable levels of accessibility, openness and authenticity of content from a users' perspective. In particular, the need for standards to ensure interoperability among different digital identifiers, including multi-stakeholder involvement, was stressed. It seems clear that, as market actors more actively promote the use of digital identifiers in online content delivery, governments and international organizations like WIPO have a corresponding role to ensure that use of these technologies furthers cultural and democratic objectives. In the words of the EFF’s Eddan Katz, “we need a public voice and the users’ side to be represented” in the creation of metadata standards.