Carsten Orwat, Digital Rights Management in Public Science, the report of the 4th INDICARE Workshop (Brussels, December 8, 2005). There were plenty of unsurprising suggestions for using DRM to block access to non-OA content. But here are some of the ideas for using DRM to enhance OA content and to mitigate its harms:
Instead of the publicly perceived definition of DRM ? mainly as a measure used by publishers to restrict access and control usages ? Mark Bide (Rightscom) pleaded for an understanding of DRM as an essential element of a trustworthy network computing environment. He also suggested talking about “Digital Policy Management” instead of Digital Rights Management, since not all digital policies are based on intellectual property rights. In his view, Digital Policy Management is about defining, describing, communicating and enforcing policies, which control access to and use of networked resources. This would be needed unless one would believe that all networked resources should be available for anyone to do anything they want. Thus, Digital Policy Management will be fundamental for the trusted identity of resources, people and organisations, and for the certainty in defining ways in which resources may be used. He saw this necessity for the future management of the network even in an era of “open everything” including open access, open archives etc....
In public debates the terms ‘DRM’ and ‘open access’ are often treated as oppo-site models of scientific publishing. In the following, however, the question is raised what role DRM can play in Open Access publishing models. One opinion on the careful and limited use of DRM in Open Access models was brought in by Ulrich Pöschl from the Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry and from the Open Access journal ‘Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics’. From his perspective (mainly as a researcher), DRM for scientific publications especially from publicly-funded research can be desirable and acceptable only to a very limited extent, for instance, to assure authenticity as well as correct referencing of documents and sources of information. He warned that, by no means, the successful and future development of Open Access should be inhibited by DRM....
Furthermore, in discussions of the workshop another DRM application in open access was mentioned: in ‘green road’ models of open access authors can choose the open access condition for single articles. Thus, it is no longer possible to use common licensing agreements for the whole journal, but the licensing and use rights has to be specified for individual articles. Therefore, there could be a need to attach rights information to single documents, what is understood here as digital rights management....
To mitigate the [many problems caused by DRM, Manon Rees from] CPTech propose[d] the registration of DRM systems and TPMs before their implementation in practice. Within registration it should be checked if DRMs meet with public standards such as regarding to the ex-haustion of copyright protection, enabling private copying or archiving. DRMs should not be protected by law from circumvention unless they meet public standards.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/27/2006 11:43:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
