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Follow UsSujay V Sarma
You buy an e-book or a sound track online and there is an attached condition that you can read the book for a whole year (a year being defined in the software as 365 solar days from the time you activated your purchase) or transfer your music to any other device a total of 5 times.
In the beginning, you might think that everything is hunky-dory, till you find that there were 500 pages in the e-book and you're on the very last page when your book reader software harshly prohibits you from reading it because you just ran out of licensed time. Or, you cannot transfer and play your favorite melody in your car stereo because the limit for the number of transfers has been reached.
While the experiences detailed above may resemble what's been your own personal experience, they have caused the anti-IPR activists to demand a saner world for 'rights protected' content. Digitized content like the traditional (non-digital) content is subject to similar if not worse issues of copyright, DRM, licensing issues and so on. But are the woes of RPC (rights protected content) so much that the purpose of rights protection seems cruel and unjust?
Protected content
There are various ways to protect your content. When it comes to the digital world, the issues are slightly more complicated.
Consider this: if I buy a hard bound book and give it to you, I have physically transferred the book to you. And with it goes my ability (or 'right') to read that book. Now I may photocopy the pages or the whole book and so on, but that's a different issue (called piracy). When I buy a digital version of the same book, say as a PDF file, I can easily give you a copy of the book, retaining a copy for myself. Such copying is the bane of digital content rights management. The number of issues that we pointed out at the beginning of this discussion stems from methods being adopted to prevent such 'unauthorized' copying.
Similarly encrypted DVDs prevent their being copied for legitimate uses-like someone creating a backup of his favorite movies on another medium. Activists like the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) term this as unilaterally eliminating the public's fair use rights.
To eliminate infringements, one must also consider why that occurs. For instance, if one were to take the case of computer software, then price is the main culprit. After all, who wants to pay tens of thousands of rupees for software that will be outdated in less than a year? For instance, even before Microsoft released the latest edition of their Visual Studio .NET 2005 (a developer environment), they started work on its successor codenamed 'Orcas,' which is already into its first beta! Similarly, in the entertainment industry, the reason maybe more of getting your hands on a new release early enough.
The cost of printing copies on a global scale is prohibitive to let the content publishers(like movie houses and record labels) release something worldwide. So, they do it in a staggered fashion. And, by the time it reaches some countries, it maybe a few months later. At that time, the novelty of having seen or heard it has long worn off. How many times have you seen the 'latest' Hollywood flick only to be told hours later by a friend or colleague that he has already seen it in the US the previous October?
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Fashion players in the EU are so worried over counterfeiting that all passengers at EU airports are being randomly sampled for counterfeit goods they may have purchased. So, if you bought an imitation Gucci bag at Palika Bazaar (or any other imitation goods market), do not carry it with you if you're planning a trip to one of the EU countries. Penalties are severe and even include imprisonment. Illegal tourist street traders (ones that sell you fake watches and cameras at popular tourist spots) in Italy are fined up to ten thousand Euros on the spot.
The key question is what recourses are available to the creators of an IP when an infringement occurs. The Indian industry and foreign analysts believe that the IT Act of 2000 was a step in the right direction. It gives the law enforcement some teeth and adds penalties against violators. One necessary element of such protection is the ability to inspect premises and seize evidence at will (on suspicion).
This privilege has been granted to the Indian law enforcement agencies via the IT Act. However, this act does little to let law enforcement agencies raid a location suspected of being the venue for the Bhai-ka-adda, where scores of software copies are created sitting over gunny bags. Known Supreme Court advocate Pavan Duggal made exactly the same argument at a presentation to the FICCI in April 2004.
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What is needed?
Something more concrete and something that's enforceable. Countries like Malaysia and Hong Kong have adopted something called an OML (Optical Media Law). The OML has provisions similar to what the IT Act gives us for cyber crimes-the right to inspect at will and seize and destroy IPR violating goods. The model OML also seeks to license and control (via de-licensing or stopping) entities involved in optical media piracy activity. They legislated on optical media than something else because it is the most popular method of information distribution today. You get software and entertainment material on CDs and DVDs (and soon on HD-DVDs and dual layer discs).
That said, the industry agrees that optical media will be imminently displaced by networked downloads. While they are not sure if the bandwagon would be specially crafted delivery sites, P2P downloads or content sharing mechanisms (like YouTube), they do agree that this is the way you will see content distributed (and pirated) in the future. Traditional forms of trying to prevent piracy include various forms of disc encryption and adding signals that are transparent to the human eye but destroy quality of input to a recording device.
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The WIPO
WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) is a self-financing UN organization with a special interest in IPR and IPRE. To draw benefits from WIPO resources and commitments, a country needs to be a signatory to the WIPO treaties. WIPO administers an international bureau that accepts and processes IP registrations and applications. The organization is tasked with developing international IP laws and standards, providing IP protection services, promoting the use of IP for economic development, educating users and bringing members together for discussions on intellectual property rights and their protection.
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Internet Treaties
Finding information and hiding it is equally easy on the Net, but tracking usage of that information (which can happen in the offline world) is a very difficult task. WIPO offers a combination of two different treaties: WCT (copyright) and WPPT (performances and phonograms). There are new methods of recording, copying, distribution and control. The Internet is the most common method fordistribution today. For this reason, the duo of WCT and WPPT is referred to as the Internet Treaties.
IP can include traditional cultural expressions, knowledge and genetic resources of a geographical region. To protect all this, currently, WIPO administers 24 international treaties that include 16 on industrial property and 7 on copyright issues. The US DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and the EU Copyright Directive are two well known implementations of the WCT and WPPT.
At the time of writing this piece, India is not a signatory to the WIPO treaties although we have participated in many forums involving WIPO proposals, drafts and discussions.
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Anti-Protection
What infuriate the user community against protection mechanisms and checks and measures are the sometimes strange uses of copyright or licensing laws. In one instance, Microsoft had invoked the DMCA against Slashdot posters, who had published the specifications of Microsoft implementation of the Kerberos Protocol. Criticizing the move, Georgetown law professor Julie Cohen contended, “A publisher can prohibit fair-use commentary simply by implementing access and disclosure restrictions that bind the entire public.
Anyone who discloses the information, or even tells others how to get it, is a felon.” See the box elsewhere in this story for extracts from a speech from noted activist Cory Doctorow, delivered at a Microsoft briefing on digital rights management.
Similarly, HP resorted to region-coding their ink cartridges, and software that's embedded on the cartridge reported the unit to be empty even if it still had ink, after a preset time interval. The region coding prevents use of those cartridges in printers belonging to different regions, similar to DVDs with the same technology.
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Final word
Copy protection and DRM are good things to prevent unauthorized usage and duplication of creative art. But, there must be the limits defined and protection techniques should stay within those limits. When protection technologies start preventing fair use, then users will complain and find ways to break the chains and locks. Let the person coming to the cash clerk withdraw his money in peace. The moment tedious or complicated red tape is introduced, he will find ways to rob the bank to get his money.
Source: PCQuest