Intellectual property conservancies

D-Lib Magazine

Volumn 6, Issue 12, 2000, Pages

  Bearman, David ^a  

^a Archives and Museum Informatics

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 3042644271     PISSN: 10829873     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1045/december2000-bearman     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. The concept of The Knowledge Conservancy was originated by John Ockerbloom while he was a director of the Universal Library Project at Carnegie Mellon University. John is presently at the University of Pennsylvania where he continues to maintain "The On-Line Books" page, (http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/index.html ). The Knowledge Conservancy was developed further by Robert Thibadeau, another director of the Universal Library, who has focused on exploring frameworks for publishers (such as National Academy Press) to make content available for free online use. Dr. Thibadeau has spent the last six years developing ways in which free-to-read can be shown to enhance revenue, not detract from it.
2. Cliff Lynch noted, in reviewing these ideas in an earlier draft, that there is not now any real way for an intellectual property owner to 'put it in the public domain'. By donating it to an IPC, an IP owner could contractually do so, and users would not have to rely on an assertion on a web page to give them the right to make use of the content for free.
3. The "Artist-Museum Partnership Act", S. 2781, was introduced June 23, 2000, by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Robert Bennett (R-UT) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT).
4. Note that while offering free-access in perpetuity is a means for an IPC to obtain content, it is also a major liability and risk for the IPC.
5. Analogous levels of functionality for sound recordings or motion images can also be developed. Stereophonic sound of a single track may be a minimum functionality while CD quality sound, with liner notes and visuals, searchable lyrics, etc., could represent the high-end functionality. While experience in negotiating with IP owners will be required to determine what is possible and desirable, it will always be necessary to monitor the ability of a digital delivery system to automatically provide a given level of contractually agreed access from a complete file held in escrow.
6. It is worth noting that if tax benefits are eventually provided for intellectual property donations, such a progressive release could potentially realize on-going business and tax benefits to the donor since it would increase the usage benefits to the readers, and decrease the residual value of the intellectual property held by the donor. Importantly, the actual levels of functionality might be dictated by defined tax benefits at a particular time.
7. Functionally, this control is the same as is required by rights management and permissions systems, in particular those applying to medical or archival environments where the identity of the users defines what content they are permitted to see.
8. The Constitution's Commons, an IPC proposed by Lawrence Lessig in the fall of 2000, does intend to collect patent rights. Details about how it might make them available or develop them further are not clear to me as of this writing.
9. This experimental system can be found at .
10. For example, see the recently released American Association of Publishers OpenEBook standards
11. The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) reference model can be found at .
12. The Open Archives Initiative open metadata harvesting protocols will be made public at a meeting scheduled for January 23, 2001.
13. The distinction between content, context and structure was introduced in a series of articles by the author which are collected in "Electronic Evidence: Strategies for Managing Records in Contemporary Organizations" (Pittsburgh, Archives & Museum Informatics, 1994) and in "Metadata Requirements for Evidence" (see co-authored with Ken Sochats). They are echoed in most current archival reports on recordkeeping requirements, for example National Archives of Australia "Corporate Memory in the Electronic Age - Statement of a Common Position on Electronic Recordkeeping" or Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland and Philip B. Eppard, "Preserving the Authenticity of Contingent Digital Objects: The InterPARES Project," D-Lib Magazine, July/August 2000 .
14. The distinction between content, context and structure was introduced in a series of articles by the author which are collected in "Electronic Evidence: Strategies for Managing Records in Contemporary Organizations" (Pittsburgh, Archives & Museum Informatics, 1994) and in "Metadata Requirements for Evidence" (see co-authored with Ken Sochats). They are echoed in most current archival reports on recordkeeping requirements, for example National Archives of Australia "Corporate Memory in the Electronic Age - Statement of a Common Position on Electronic Recordkeeping" or Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland and Philip B. Eppard, "Preserving the Authenticity of Contingent Digital Objects: The InterPARES Project," D-Lib Magazine, July/August 2000 .
15. The distinction between content, context and structure was introduced in a series of articles by the author which are collected in "Electronic Evidence: Strategies for Managing Records in Contemporary Organizations" (Pittsburgh, Archives & Museum Informatics, 1994) and in "Metadata Requirements for Evidence" (see co-authored with Ken Sochats). They are echoed in most current archival reports on recordkeeping requirements, for example National Archives of Australia "Corporate Memory in the Electronic Age - Statement of a Common Position on Electronic Recordkeeping" or Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland and Philip B. Eppard, "Preserving the Authenticity of Contingent Digital Objects: The InterPARES Project," D-Lib Magazine, July/August 2000 .
16. The distinction between content, context and structure was introduced in a series of articles by the author which are collected in "Electronic Evidence: Strategies for Managing Records in Contemporary Organizations" (Pittsburgh, Archives & Museum Informatics, 1994) and in "Metadata Requirements for Evidence" (see co-authored with Ken Sochats). They are echoed in most current archival reports on recordkeeping requirements, for example National Archives of Australia "Corporate Memory in the Electronic Age - Statement of a Common Position on Electronic Recordkeeping" or Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland and Philip B. Eppard, "Preserving the Authenticity of Contingent Digital Objects: The InterPARES Project," D-Lib Magazine, July/August 2000 .
17. For more on authenticity and its challenges, see David Bearman and Jennifer Trant, "Authenticity of Digital Resources: Towards a Statement of Requirements in the Research Process," D-Lib Magazine, June 1998 .
18. For example, in planning The Knowledge Conservancy we explored how TKC could offer "Large-Type" or "Spoken" editions of any intellectual properties donated to it outright, or provided under a free-to-read license or deed which permitted this.
19. Potential for confusion exists with for-profit entities that look to be doing some aspect of the same thing, such as Questia or Octavo; non-profit, academic, digital libraries like the Universal Library at Carnegie Mellon University, the "Online Books Page" at the University of Pennsylvania, the Electronic Texts Center at the University of Virginia, and advocacy organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Freedom to Read Foundation, the Long Now Foundation, or the National Security Archive.