Call for papers

[tribble@xanadu.com (E. Dean Tribble)]

                         Call for Papers

  
 "Technological Strategies for Protecting Intellectual Property 
            in the Networked Multimedia Environment"


          Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 3-5, 1993

                          sponsored by:


               Coalition for Networked Information
   
               Information Infrastructure Project
Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, Harvard University

               Interactive Multimedia Association
       
        Program on Digital Open High Resolution Systems,
              Massachusetts Institute of Technology




This workshop will map the territory between security issues and 
the need for practical, user-friendly systems for marketing 
information resources and services.  It will survey the 
technological landscape, evaluate the potential benefits and 
risks of different mechanisms, define a research agenda, and 
frame related implementation and policy issues.  The workshop 
will give special attention to how and where within the overall 
infrastructure different technologies are best implemented.  It 
will present and analyze models for explaining protection systems 
and strategies.

Papers are invited on the foregoing and on the capabilities and 
relationship of the following technologies and strategies:

     -- billing servers 
     -- type of service identifiers, header descriptors, and 
          other forms of labeling and tagging 
     -- fingerprinting
     -- digital signatures
     -- contracting mechanisms and EDI licensing of intellectual 
          property 
     -- copy protection and serial copy management
     -- authentication servers and site licensing
     -- software envelopes 
     -- encryption 
     -- display-only systems
     -- concurrent use limitations 
     -- structured charging
     -- technology assessment and risk analysis 

The workshop will be held at MIT and Harvard on February 3-5, 
1993.  Participation at the two-day event would be limited to 35-
40 invitees, but the papers will be revised for publication as 
part of Information Infrastructure Project's publication program.
                          
Abstracts of proposed papers should be sent to: 

Thomas Lee
DOHRS/CTPID
MIT
E40-218
Cambridge, MA 02139
tlee@farnsworth.mit.edu
617-253-6828
Fax: 617-253-7326 or 617-253-7140
________________________________________________________________


The global Internet offers the beginning of a networked, 
multifunctional, multimedia environment for both resource-sharing 
and marketing information products and services.  Although 
underlying technologies may change, the applications and 
practices developed now are shaping the universal broadband 
infrastructure of the future.  

However, concern for copyright protection remains a major 
impediment to private investment in information resources and 
services.  Owners of information resources are fearful of 
releasing proprietary information to an environment which appears 
lacking in security and has no accepted means of accounting for 
use and copying.  Complex library systems may be designed and 
developed around nonproprietary information, but until there are 
mechanisms to accommodate proprietary information, the utility of 
the systems will remain limited by the nature of the material 
made available.  

Information technology enables the vision of a distributed, 
interoperating multimedia environment in which information from a 
universe of different sources can be combined and recombined to 
meet specific user needs.  Ironically, the vision is threatened 
by the absence of systematic controls.  

Mindful of this problem, Congress directed that the National 
Research and Education Network (the follow-on to the federally 
funded portion of the Internet) -- 
 
     (1) be developed and deployed with the computer, 
     telecommunications, and information industries....

     (5) be designed and operated so as to ensure the 
     continued application of laws that provide network and 
     information resources security measures, including 
     those that protect copyright and other intellectual 
     property rights....

     (6) have accounting mechanisms which allow users or 
     groups of users to be charged for their usage of 
     copyrighted materials available over the Network.... 
     [15 USC 5512(c)]

The Act also requires the Director of the Office of Science and 
Technology Policy to report to Congress by the anniversary of the 
Act (i.e., December 9, 1992) on "how to protect the copyrights of 
material distributed over the Network...." [15 USC 5512(g)(5)]

Despite this statutory language, federal agencies have yet to 
address these issues.  Many believe that the protection of 
intellectual property on the NREN as on any network is a private 
sector problem which needs to be addressed at an applications 
level, not within the design of the network.  Indeed, these 
intellectual property problems are not new; to a large extent, 
they represent traditional copyright problems which have been 
exacerbated by electronic technology, digitization of 
information, personal computers, and less advanced forms of 
networking.  But the prospect of pervasive, high-bandwidth, 
interconnected wide-area networks presents the problems in the 
most complete context.

There is a tension between the goals of protection, on the one 
hand, and interoperation and usability, on the other, that has 
defeated technological solutions in the past.  ADAPSO's proposed 
hardware lock failed to gain industry acceptance, and software 
copy protection has been abandoned except in certain high-value 
niche markets.  The microcomputer software industry has come to 
rely on the threat of lawsuits in the vulnerable corporate 
environment as a means of copyright enforcement.  Nonetheless, a 
hardware-secured environment incorporating serial copy management 
has been mandated (as an amendment to the Copyright Act) for the 
next generation of digital audio technology.

In the emerging environment, the conventional distinction between 
products and services breaks down.  Products are networked, and 
network-accessible services are linked to products.  Rights must 
be acquired to cover all forms of delivery, because multiple 
delivery paths are likely and the dominant technologies and 
markets cannot be predicted with confidence.  On the other hand, 
the control and security offered by different technologies may 
also determine the choice of distribution paths.  For these 
reasons, the workshop will look at the networked multimedia 
environment as a whole, from mass-market products to specialized 
services.