home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Internet Info 1997 December
/
Internet_Info_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1997.iso
/
drafts
/
draft_n_r
/
draft-reagle-pics-copyright-00.txt
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1996-11-27
|
6KB
|
168 lines
Joseph M. Reagle Jr.,
INTERNET-DRAFT MIT
<draft-reagle-pics-copyright-00.txt> December 1996 (Expires July 1997)
HTTP-WG
Using PICS for Copyright Notice and Control
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are
working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other
groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of
six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by
other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use
Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other
than as ``work in progress.''
To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please
check the ``1id-abstracts.txt'' listing contained in the
Internet- Drafts Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa),
nic.nordu.net (Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim),
ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West
Coast).
Abstract
This document presents an alternative expression mechanism
for the copyright status of Web resources. Specifically it
employs the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS)
[2] label format to associate web resources with their
copyright and usage information. This in turn can be used by
search engines, proxy servers, agents, clients, and users for
content selection or to aid in rights compliance. This
document employs the copy control system described in [1].
1. Introduction
Intellectual property on the Internet has been a contentious
topic for a number of reasons. These include (1) does the
nature of the technology require us to change the legal
status of copyright as it stands now, (2) what rights should
be associated with Web content, (3) how to express the
rights, and (4) should the expression of the rights be used
for notification, enforcement, or payment negotiation? This
draft only addresses the expression of rights and uses the
copy control method/rights found in [1]. We argue that PICS
is an effective method of communicating intellectual property
information about Web content.
2.1 Copyright Status and Control
How intellectual property rights should be expressed is
affected by the following questions. Are the rights human
readable, machine readable? Are the rights easily encoded,
efficiently encoded? Does this encoding change across
multiple media (ASCII, images, audio, video, etc.) where size
and speed considerations may be of importance? In this draft
we do not address these issues in detail, rather we use the
copy control system specified in [1] and use PICS to
associate the copy control information with Web content.
In [1], Daviel specified a system in which a Web document has
"Print", "Save", and "Quote" variables associated with it,
where ({0 = disallowed}, {1 = conditionally allowed}, {2 =
unconditionally allowed}). These permissions are associated
with a document by encoding them in an HTTP header, or HTML
META tag. PICS is a more effective means of associating Web
resources with their copyright status and control information
as demonstrated in section 2.3.
2.2 PICS Expression of Copyright Status and Control
Consider the case in which Mark Twain wrote the material at
http://www.twain.com/story.html . He also has a page
describing the copyright statement in fuller detail at
http://www.twain.com/IP-notice.html . He uses the copy
control system in [1] to create the following label:
(PICS-1.1 "http://www.wipo.org/v1.5"
by "Mark Twain"
labels on "1994.11.05T08:15-0500"
for "http://www.twain.com/story.html"
full "http://www.twain.com/IP-notice.html"
ratings (print 1 save 1 quote 2))
2.3 Benefits of Using PICS labels for Copyright Status and
Control
The benefits of using PICS labels for copyright status and
control include:
1. Detached labels can easily associate copyright information
with any web referenceable resource including audio and visual
content.
2. Multiple distribution methods (embedded within the document,
transported by the server, or distributed from a label bureau)
improve copy status and control management. Organizations can
control the use and access to their IPR from their server or
proxy. Organizations can also create "audit" spiders to
understand the distribution and use of their content on the
Internet.
3. Generic labeling (implicitly rates every URL for which the
specified URL is the prefix of) improves the management of the
copyright information, since one doesn't have to label every
document in a directory if the tree has a homogenous copyright
status.
4. Capabilities for digital signatures are provided in the PICS
format.
5. PICS is being widely used in other domains.
3. Security Considerations
This document does not address the integrity of intellectual
property assertions, cases of unauthorized disclosure, nor
enforcement mechanisms. However, PICS labels can provide the
basic information that the advanced functionality operate
upon.
Author's Address
Joseph M. Reagle Jr.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Laboratory for Computer Science
W3C, NE43-350
545 Technology Square
Cambridge, MA 02139
Telephone: + 1.617.258.7621
Fax: + 1.617.258.5999
mailto:reagle@w3.org
References
[1] A. Daviel, "Copy Control for Web Documents.", Vancouver
Webpages, INTERNET DRAFT, <draft-daviel-web-copy-control-
00.txt>, November 1996.
[2] PICS, "Label Syntax and Communication Protocols",
INTERNET DRAFT, "draft-pics-labels-00.txt", 11/21/95.
___________________________________________________________
Joseph Reagle Jr. Personal: http://rpcp.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html
Policy Analyst World Wide Web Consortium: http://www.w3.org