Copyright Management and Control Systems: Metering

Metering systems allow copyright owners to ensure payment to or at the time of a consumer's use of the work. Those technologies include:

Hardware Devices

Those have to be acquired and installed by the user. For example under a debit card approach, the user purchases a debit card that is pre-loaded with a certain amount of value. After installation, the debit card is debited automatically as the user consumes copyrighted works.

Digital Certificates

Hereby a certification authority issues to a user an electronic file that identifies the user as the owner of a public key. Those digital certificates, besides information on the identity of the holder can also include rights associated with a particular person. Vendors can so control access system resources, including copyrighted files, by making them available only to users who can provide a digital certificate with specified rights (e.g. access, use, downloading).

Centralized Computing

Under this approach all of the executables remain at the server. Each time the executable is used, the user's computer must establish contact with the server, allowing the central computer to meter access.

Access Codes

Access code devices permit users to "unlock" protective mechanisms (e.g. date bombs or functional limitations) embedded in copyrighted works. Copyright owners can meter the usage of their works, either by unlocking the intellectual property for a one-time license fee or by requiring periodic procurement of access codes.

Copyright Clearinghouses

Under this approach copyright owners would commission "clearinghouses" with the ability to license the use of their works. A user would pay a license fee to obtain rights concerning the intellectual property.


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Linking and Framing: Cases

Mormon Church v. Sandra and Jerald Tanner

In a ruling of December 1999, a federal judge in Utah temporarily barred two critics of the Mormon Church from posting on their website the Internet addresses of other sites featuring pirated copies of a Mormon text. The Judge said that it was likely that Sandra and Jerald Tanner had engaged in contributory copyright infringement when they posted the addresses of three Web sites that they knew, or should have known, contained the copies.

Kaplan, Carl S.: Copyright Decision Threatens Freedom to Link. In: New York Times. December 10, 1999.

Universal Studios v. Movie-List

The website Movie-List, which features links to online, externally hosted movie trailers has been asked to completely refrain from linking to any of Universal Studio's servers containing the trailers as this would infringe copyright.

Cisneros, Oscar S.: Universal: Don't Link to Us. In: Wired. July 27, 1999.

More cases concerned with the issue of linking, framing and the infringement of intellectual property are published in:

Ross, Alexandra: Copyright Law and the Internet: Selected Statutes and Cases.

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