Libraries’ Requirements for Expression

1. Libraries’ Requirements for Expression Nathan D.M. Robertson Johns Hopkins University NISO Pre-Standards Workshop on Digital Rights Expression 18 May 2005 Denver, Colorado License Rights

2. But Licenses are Rights, Right? • Licenses define some rights • Law defines some rights • Interpretations of licenses and law define some rights • Licenses include non-rights-related administrative information that libraries want in “actionable” form, e.g.: • Completeness of Content • Confidentiality of Agreement • Uptime Guarantee • Maintenance Window

3. “Actionable” Licenses? What actions? • Communicate to users “Licensee shall instruct all Users using the Database or output therefrom to give proper attribution to Licensor for any data extracted from the Database as follows:” • Communicate to staff “[Licensor] grants Subscriber the right to use certain of the Subscribed Content as source material for interlibrary loans on an experimental, article-by-article basis and under the following conditions....” • Systematic action and calculation “Publisher may terminate this agreement ... in the event of a material breach by Licensee if such breach has not been cured within sixty (60) days of written notice from Publisher....” • Reporting

4. Okay, libraries want License Expression … but what about Rights? • Absolutely! • Eager to have a standardized way to capture rights, restrictions, and obligations so that our systems can communicate them to library staff and users. • Very useful to have a shared communication standard to share license & rights expressions with partners. • Absolutely Not! • No machine enforcement! And why not? • Machine enforcement requires absolutely explicit, very granular expressions.

5. What’s wrong with explicit expressions? • Licenses define some rights • Law defines some rights • Interpretations of licenses and law define some rights “[Adjudicating fair use] is not to be simplified with bright-line rules, for the statute, like the doctrine it recognizes, calls for case-by-case analysis.” [Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994)]

6. And ambiguity can be desirable! China Alters Language On Taiwan By Philip P. Pan Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, May 13, 2005 BEIJING, May 12 -- Chinese President Hu Jintao proposed new diplomatic language Thursday aimed at ending the decades-old state of hostilities between China and Taiwan […] Under the new language, Hu effectively agreed to open talks if Taiwan accepted the principle of "two shores, one China" while acknowledging that the two sides might differ on precisely what that term meant.

7. Not too granular? Must retain ambiguity? We can’t encode that way, can we? Of course we can . . . . . . if we can agree on a degree of granularity and a degree of precision/ambiguity that satisfies our needs.

8. Permission Values via RELs • Permitted (explicit) • Permitted (interpreted) • Prohibited (explicit) • Prohibited (interpreted) • Silent (uninterpreted) • Not Applicable …does not suffice • Very useful to have a shared communication standard to share license & rights expressions with partners. • Our partners include consortia with whom we need to share information about silence, and about interpretations.

9. Summary: libraries’ requirements for rights expression • Interested in more than just usage rights and obligations; we want additional elements from the license as well. • Welcome a standardized way to capture rights information so that our systems can communicate them to library staff and users. • Oppose expression that could undermine fair use protections. • Oppose expression that could undermine desirable ambiguity.

10. More discussion to come! Nathan D.M. Robertson Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University nate@jhu.edu