Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters (CLM)

Report from the WIPO Conference on Electronic Copyright Management Systems (ECMS), December 14-15, 1998

by Ingrid Mauritzen, Legal Adviser, National Library of Norway

Venue: WIPO headquarters, Geneva
Time: December 14-15, 1998

At this WIPO meeting, WIPO functions as a forum to contribute to the discussion of questions concerning ECMS. WIPO's task in this forum is to promote international norms regarding these questions. It is left to the private parties to establish ECMS organisations.

The expert group consisted of Dr. Daniel J. Gervais, Director of International Relations, Acting Director of Rightsholder Relations, Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) USA; Catherine Kerr-Vignale, Director General, SESAM, France; Tarja Koskinen-Olsson, Chairman, International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO), Finland; Benoit Müller, Legal Counsel, International Publishers Association (IPA), Geneva; Professor Mikiko Sawanishi, Deputy Director, International Copyright Division, Japan Copyright Office, Tokyo. The experts informed about various ECMS systems.

Dr. Daniel J. Gervais introduced the concept of rights management as it applies to copyright and related rights, the changes brought by digital technology and possible areas of applications of ECMS.

Copyright management systems are basically systems that can identify the content, the author and other current rightsholders making it possible to authorise the use of the work. The mandate to authorise third parties may come directly from the rightsholders, under a voluntary system, or it may follow from government regulations, non-voluntary system.

With the development of digital information-systems, the systematic information becomes an electronic content and rights database in an ECMS environment. Today clearance of copyrights are mainly done manually through internal systems. Full electronic implementation of an automated licensing function into an ECMS, online availability and searchability of catalogues, are desirable and are under development.

Mr. Gervais distinguished between two main type of users fee. The "blanket license", where the user pays an annual fee to use the entire repertory. The second type is "transactional access" where a user requires a license to use a specific work or manifestation for a defined purpose. The "transactional access" is a more controlled system where the use and the fee is accurately defined. That demands high requirements for the protection of privacy and confidentiality. ECMS mostly provides for "transactional access".

Mr. Gervais pointed out several issues and obstacles concerning the ECMS which have to be dealt with:

• who owns the rights?
• which rights are involved?
• under the law of which country?
• how will the moral right apply in an ECMS environment?
• how to respect privacy and confidentiality?

Metadata plays an important role regarding managing ECMS. The crucial question is which data are needed to identify multimedia documents. Libraries were mentioned as key players in respect to the question of metadata.

Mikiko Sawanishi from the Japan Copyright Office introduced a study on a national copyright management database system, J-CIS. J-CIS aims to establish a comprehensive clearance system, with minimum transaction cost.

Mrs. Kerr-Vignale, Director General, SESAM, Neuilly sur Sein, France introduced SESAM. SESAM is a clearance system which identifies the work, distinguishing between the work and the rightsholder and identifies as comprehensively as possible who is managing the rights. It was emphasised that rights management must be regulated by professional ECMS.

Mrs. Koskinen-Olsson, Chairman, Intemational Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFRRO), introduced the VERDI project. The VERDI project is a multimedia rights clearance system (MMRCS). Mrs. Koskinen-Olson also gave an outlook of the Indecs program by Info 2000. The project aims to facilitate cross border rights clearance. Rather than trying to achieve world wide harmonisation, it aims for interoperability. It is important that every country trade their own intellectual property rights.

Mr. Müller from API gave an outline of the DOI-project. DOI is a mute identifier. It can identify parts of the content and locate it. It also identifies the users. The metadata used needs to be interoperable.

The DOI-foundation has members from the publishers, information technology companies and collecting societies.

Dr. Wittkötter from Secondata introduced the Brain Shield Encrypting system. This is a system to encrypt the content of the work. The aim of this system is to verify the authenticity of the work.

Conclusion:

ECMS is at the starting point. There are a lot of questions and obstacles that have to be dealt with. It is no longer a question which electronic copyright management system that will be the one and only solution. The aim is to build systems adjusted to the need of each country, and to make these systems work together. The key word is interoperability, encouraging different systems that will work with the same standards, CIS common information system.

The importance of metadata was emphasised, and the libraries are seen as an important cooperator in this respect.

WIPO will make available the documents from the conference. This first WIPO session was used to build a platform for the next session in 1999. WIPO recommends to have one or two more conferences to follow up on these issues. Future work on these issues, organised by WIPO, was supported by the participants.

ECMS systems will be of increasing relevance to libraries and will play a main role regarding electronic access to information. It is important that libraries follow the development closely to ensure that the library privileges are not overruled by licensing and ECMS. Consequently it is important that IFLA contribute to these issues by participating at the WIPO meetings.