The delightful task of ensuring Stòr Cùram manages digital rights appropriately, legally, etc. etc., has fallen to me. Luckily for us the company we have purchased our digital repository software from, Intrallect, are soon to become renowned experts in digital rights management for learning object repositories (not that they aren't already pretty clued up). This is because they have recently won a JISC contract to carry out a six-month study into digital rights management for UK HE & FE. Their methodology will include gathering use cases (or narrative scenarios that we envisage coming up within Stòr Cùram involving digital rights- we'll post some here later) and getting folk like us to fill in a detailed questionnaire. The benefit for Stòr Cùram will be utilising their expertise in developing a use case format to tease out our own issues, and to talk with them about solutions, which they wuill be researching. I feel truly blessed (well, relieved, mainly).
Here's a brief overview to start with. You'll see I have plagiarised heavily from other people's research- the JISC-funded JORUM digital repository project has done a lot of good work researching this area, as have James Dalziel from Macquarie University and the IEEE LTSC.
Why Digital Rights Management?
“As with other industries that rely on the digital content, a major obstacle facing e-learning is the vulnerability of intellectual property to improper and undesired use. Motives for ensuring proper use include avoiding adverse legal actions, ensuring payment, ensuring proper attribution, and ensuring the intellectual fidelity of content.” (Friesen et al, 2002).
For Stòr Cùram, this matter is not simply about legal requirements. It is important, in terms of the success of the project and its impact on social work education in Scotland, that users creating, depositing and delivering the materials are happy from the outset that their rights, and those of their institutions, are being protected. It is also important that they are confident that they are using materials from the repository legally and in accordance with the rights of the other parties involved.
We must also be aware of privacy issues. Due to the nature of reusable learning objects and the possible requirement for the use and storage of personal details (to determine and record who has rights to do what), it is important that it be flagged as part of this discussion.
What are Digital Rights?
“Digital rights determine who can do what under which conditions”, with regard to digital resources. They are “governed by intellectual property law and contract law. They can be licensed, sold, or assigned to others with conditions attached.”
(Friesen et al, 2002)
What is Digital Rights Management (DRM)?
This term generally refers to technological means of managing digital rights.
DRM “is the process of recording, transmitting, interpreting and enforcing digital rights. The goal is to prevent unauthorized use and to preserve the integrity of digital information. Achieving this requires standardized ways of communicating digital rights as well as systems that can be trusted and are capable of abiding by the rights expressed.” (Friesen et al, 2002).
Digital Rights Expression Languages (DRELs)
DRELs are ways of expressing digital rights information so that computer systems can record, understand and process them, as well as share them with other systems. This last idea requires the creation and adoption of standardised DRELs across e-learning. This process is indeed under way, with such languages as ODRL (Open Digital Rights Expression Language).
Digital Rights Management Solutions
DRM solutions can be roughly divided into two categories: supportive and restrictive (Halliday, 2003).
Supportive:
• Usually manage access by user registration.
• Rights expression and so forth by means of a licence (as with when you buy new software).
• Compliance is not enforced. Use can be restricted to those with an ac.uk email address.
• Examples: SeSDL, and the current JORUM.
• There is also the US-based Creative Commons model, which allows creators to specify what they will allow rather than restrict by what they won’t. There is some doubt about the applicability of Creative Commons licences under UK/European intellectual property law. The JISC is investigating instituting a similar licencing initiative for UK HE & FE, provisionally called Share-Alike - see also the above-mentioned study by Intrallect.
Restrictive:
• Controls access to materials and use of materials after accessed.
• Involves not just expression and communication of rights information, but also enforcement.
• May be achieved by encryption, watermarking, fingerprinting, or, as with the COLIS demonstrator project, a system which both enables or disallows access and/or particular kinds of use according to a users’ rights, and records a ‘chain of evidence’ for each object as to what use has been made, should a rights holder later require it. (Dalziel, 2002).
• Generally very expensive, and probably unsuitable in the UK HE context.
Stòr Cùram Context
We will be dealing with two broad categories of learning objects: those which the project commissions itself, and those which are deposited in the repository, but were created elsewhere. In the latter case, we are beginning by sourcing objects ourselves for inclusion in the repository, but there is also the possibility that in the future users will be able to deposit materials themselves. Further down the line is the issue of repurposing of objects from Stòr Cùram, in either category, and possible re-depositing of the new objects.
References
Dalziel, J. (2002) Reflections on the COLIS (Collaborative Online Learning and Information Systems) Demonstrator Project and the ‘Learning Object Lifecycle’. In A. Williamson, C. Gunn, A. Young & T. Clear (Eds), Winds of Change in the Sea of Learning: Proceedings of the 19th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education. Auckland, New Zealand: UNITEC Institute of Technology. Also online at: http://www.colis.mq.edu.au/projects/demo/docs/dalziel.doc
Friesen, N., Mourad, M., Robson, R. et al. (2002) Towards a Digital Rights Expression Language Standard for Learning Technology. A Report of the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee Digital Rights Expression Language Study Group, Presented at the Meeting of the IEEE LTSC, Copenhagen, 9—11 December 02, http://ltsc.ieee.org/meeting/200212/doc/DREL_White_paper.doc
Halliday, L. (2003) The JISC Learning Materials Repository Service JORUM Scoping and Technical Appraisal Study. Volume VII, Digital Rights Management. http://www.jorum.ac.uk/vol7_fin.pdf
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