PUBLIC DESIGN WORKSHOP

NYU LAW SCHOOL, SEPTEMBER 13-14,- 2002

Jean Camp
(jean_camp@harvard.edu)
Kennedy School of Government
L 213 79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA
617-496-6331

Title of Presentation: Replacing Paper with DRM

Digital Rights Management standard are being developed for a global ubiquitous market for digital content. Yet the question remains, what problems are the systems trying to solve? Most systems are explicitly modeled on copyright and use the metaphors of piracy and author's moral rights to define the design goals. In this work I begin with a return to copyright and consider the functions fulfilled by copyright. I argue that the brilliance of copyright is that it provides attribution, access, and a definition of a fungible right thereby enabling epistemological surety, literacy, and a functioning information market.

Thus I propose that an examination of the origin of copyright and the relationship between copyright and technological change defines a set of requirements for any system which would recreate copyright. This paper is framed by the Western European experience of copyright.

After returning to the creation of copyright and offering a few illustrations of copyright's response to technological forcing functions I turn to various digital rights management systems. I examine each system with respect to its ability to support attribution, access and a fungible right. I close by examining three systems: Giovanni, CSS, and ICE. I conclude that while each has elements of copyright, none solves the set of problems which copyright solved for the dawn of the print age. I conclude by suggesting that the most promising digital rights management system may be the least secure: ICE. I argue that the archival function of Giovanni is its most appealing and unique feature, but none offer the power of copyright. information systems.

Professor L. Jean Camp's core interest is in the interaction of technology, society, and the economy. It was this interest that led Prof. Camp from graduate electrical engineering research in North Carolina to the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon, and it remains her core research interest at the School. Before joining Harvard University Prof. Camp was a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. At Sandia National Laboratories her work focused on survivability.

Professor Camp is a contributor to the emerging discipline of design for values. Her research in electronic commerce, civil liberties, governance and universal service shares the common thread of the extraction of economic, political and social implications of technical design decisions. Examining the economic, social and political implications of communications protocols requires reading engineering specifications with an eye to economics and policy.

Professor L. Jean Camp is winner of an NSF CAREER grant for Design for Values. She is the author of Trust and Risk n Internet Commerce, published by MIT Press among other publications. She is on the Board of Directors of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, Senior Member of the IEEE, and incoming Chair of the IEEE USAB Committee on Communications and Information Policy. See http://www.ljean.net/cv.html for more detailed information and full text of various publications.

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