Alan Cunningham

Rights expression on digital communication networks: Some implications for copyright

Systems are being developed with the aim of managing the use of copyright protected works within the digital communications network. Such rights management systems are considered integral for the commercial exploitation and control of protected works within the new media. A central technology in such systems is rights expression languages, computer languages used to define and represent legal rights and relationships central to protected works in electronic licences. An electronic licence constructed with a rights expression language, however, may have difficulty in adequately representing and implementing legal rights and relationships central to copyright law. This difficulty is illustrated by examining how mandatory copyright exceptions under UK law for databases and computer programs might be incapable of proper representation and implementation. The particular difficulties for databases and computer programs might be representative of a larger theoretical difficulty with the digital management of legal rights and relationships. In particular, the abstraction and distillation of rights and relationships by rights expression languages recalls difficulties encountered by developers of legal expert systems. Discussion of formalism and legal expert systems might be of assistance in appreciating the shortcomings of rights representation objectives, and, in a broader sense, the difficulties in using technology to represent legal rights and relationships.

Copyright, Rights Management Systems and the Device Paradigm

Abstract Rights Management Systems rely on, and utilize, copyright law in a (necessarily) formal and technological fashion. In doing so, however, such systems exhibit a use and consideration of copyright law as a mere device, a phrase used by Albert Borgmann to describe technologies that focus only on the end of any technological process, as opposed to involving both the important means and ends. This consideration and use of copyright law is damaging because law is generally, and should be, a focal thing, a phrase used by Borgmann to describe technologies that incorporate both the means to an end and the end in itself. An additional problem with Rights Management Systems is that the subject matter with which they are concerned, digitized information goods, also experiences a shift in their consideration and use, from being considered and used as a focal thing to being considered and used as a device.