Surmounting the Copyright Hurdle: the SEDODEL Project
Jan Engelen, Filip Evenepoel
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Kardinaal Mercierlaan 94
B-3001 Leuven
Heverlee, Belgium
tel: + 32 16 32 11 23
fax: + 32 16 32 19 86,
email: Jan.Engelen@esat.kuleuven.ac.be
Filip.Evenepoel@esat.kuleuven.ac.be
Tom Wesley
University of Bradford
BD9 4JL, Bradford
United Kingdom
tel: + 44 1274 233902
fax: + 44 1274 546866
email: t.a.b.wesley@bradford.ac.uk
1. Summary
This paper explains why problems associated with copyrights in electronic documents are a major hurdle to more widespread access to information for visually impaired people. It then describes the approach being taken by SEDODEL, Secure Document Delivery for Blind and Partially Sighted People [Reference 1], to surmount this hurdle.
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2. Introduction
The growth of the information society is creating dramatic changes in the accessibility of information for blind and partially sighted people. Electronic documents can be transformed into a variety of accessible formats, such as braille, synthetic speech, large print. Furthermore, the Internet and the World Wide Web allow blind and partially sighted people to access information relatively cheaply and provide greatly enhanced service delivery opportunities for organisations of and for the blind and partially sighted.
However, the very properties of electronic documents which are so valuable for the blind and partially sighted also underlie one of the biggest hurdles, that of the copyright problem. Publishers are reluctant to provide electronic copies of their texts to organisations of and for the blind or to individual users because of legitimate fears about losing control of their intellectual property rights. Without very clear safeguarding of intellectual property rights, and in particular, a well developed mechanism for collecting payments for the use of such rights, it is doubtful whether publishers will be willing to provide easy access to electronic versions of their publications.
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3. Access to information
The key enabling technologies for increasing access to information for blind and partially sighted people are structured electronic documents and the developing infrastructures of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Within Europe, the results of the EU TIDE Programme projects, CAPS and HARMONY [Reference 2] have greatly contributed to this consensus. The state-of-the-art can be summarised:
- Electronic documents can be transformed into a variety of accessible formats: braille, synthetic speech, large print. These transformations can be made at a fraction of the cost of transcription from the printed word.
- Sighted people obtain much information by rapid visual scanning of the visible structure of a page. Blind and partially sighted people have little or no ability to scan visually, so such structural features must be present explicitly in the electronic document.
- The most significant form of structuring electronic texts is by using SGML - the Standard Generalized Markup Language. Documents on the World Wide Web are generally structured using HTML—the HyperText Markup Language, which is part of the SGML family. The Extensible Markup Language (XML), combining much of the rigour of SGML with the essential simplicity of HTML, has recently emerged as a candidate for structured document interchange on the Web [Reference 3]. Blind and partially sighted people can gain greatly enhanced access to information when using structured electronic documents.
- The developing infrastructures of the Information Society, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web are of immense significance to blind and partially sighted people. For the first time, it is possible to have online access to global information by using relatively cheap off the shelf components. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has recognised this significance and has created the important Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) [Reference 4]
- These infrastructures of the Information Society can provide organisations of and for the blind and partially sighted greatly enhanced service delivery opportunities for providing access to information. A good example of this is the Sigtuna project which aims to make use of digital audio technology on-line via the Internet [Reference 5].
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4. Copyright and the Information Society
There is a clear recognition that the development of the Information Society is being affected by issues relating to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in general, and copyright in particular. As a background document [Reference 6] on Electronic Commerce in the European Commission’s IT Programme explains:
‘The new digital environment which sustains the emergence of the Information Society dramatically changes the economics of content. The Internet is one gigantic copying machine. All copyrighted works can now be digitised and, once put on the Net or on any particular off-line medium, copying tends to be effortless, costless, widespread and immediate. In the past, copying intellectual works has been time consuming and the reproductions most of the time worse than the original. Digital technology has changed this: copying is straight-forward and the quality of copies is as good as the original. The idea that intellectual property in a digital environment can lose its value is of great concern to owners and creators.
‘While the primary objective of copyright laws was the widespread distribution of thoughts, profit is the fuel that carries ideas into the public. Intellectual property represents a huge business where many modern products sell, not for what the physical object costs to make, but for a price that reflects heavy research costs, ingenious ideas or creative content. The revenue generated by Intellectual Property is threatened by this new environment. ... Besides threats on existing or emerging market applications, new innovative applications, likely to generate new markets, could be created if IPR owners were confident that their property is appropriately protected against piracy and misuse. Such novel applications will start to shape the economy of the future where most human exchanges will be virtual rather than physical and where relationship will take more importance than possession.
‘Controlling the distribution and the usage of IPR protected digital material has become a major concern to the emergence of electronic commerce applications dealing with immaterial goods. Techniques, partly developed in ESPRIT projects, are emerging to build interoperable Electronic Copyright Management Systems (ECMS) fitting a variety of business models. ECMS now need to be integrated into real electronic commerce applications that will generate new opportunities for the Information Society.’
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5. The requirement for secure document delivery
Although the developing Information Society promises much for the visually impaired, its full realisation for them will not be possible without secure document delivery systems:
- For electronically published information, the generally distributed forms may not be accessible, and are unlikely to be ideal for accessibility. More accessible formats will need to be delivered in a secure environment.
- Most information under copyright protection, while produced electronically, is still published in traditional paper formats, inaccessible to the blind and partially sighted. This is particularly significant in the case of book publishing: so far, the overwhelming majority of books do not appear on the Web and therefore remain almost totally inaccessible to the blind and partially sighted. Although the internal electronic formats are not intended by the publishers to be distributed, they would greatly increase the efficiency of producing specific accessible versions for blind and partially sighted people.
- Organisations of and for the blind and partially sighted can often negotiate specific agreements with a publisher to make an accessible hard copy version for a particular group of people. Because of the copyright problem it is rarely possible to reach agreement when the version is electronic and certainly not when it is desired to make this available to other people, and in different countries of the European Union.
- To gain the cooperation of those who own the information in the publishing chain for the use of electronic documents, a fully featured ECMS system will be necessary. Only such a system can provide the trusted environment for securing all the rights and obligations of all actors—including provision of payments.
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6. Intellectual Property Rights Management
IPR management of electronic information is technically achieved by Electronic Copyright Management Systems. These cover a wide range of IT systems which aim at providing authors, publishers and distributors of digital works with tamper resistant mechanisms for identifying and tattooing copyrighted materials and monitoring access to and usage of these materials in such a way that copyright holders can legitimately receive their royalties.
CopySMART [Reference 7], a leading state-of-the-art Electronic Copyright Management System, allows the originator of digital copyrighted material to specify appropriate licensing conditions. It then tightly links these legal technical conditions of use (for example, which actors are allowed to copy or to print) with the material itself. This seamless link persists even if the material is transmitted, sub-licensed or inserted into other digital material; the material is useless if the attached links cannot be deployed properly. The CopySMART based ECMS provides the end-user with client software which can deploy the packaged material, monitor access to its content and monitor usage operations performed on it according to the privileges the user is granted. These functions record accesses and operations performed by the users as well as detected attempts of illicit usage. This data is used for billing the user when the performed usage operations are payable, and for keeping proofs of transactions which take place on the protected material, in order that royalties can be paid.
CopySMART’s end user software is implemented on a standard Windows PC with a smart card reader. Individual users have their own smart cards, which contain identification and authentication of the user together with the use rights granted by the service provider.
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7. Smart cards and people with special needs
The TIDE project SATURN: Smart Card and Terminal Usability Requirements and Needs [Reference 8] studied the needs of disabled and elderly people in relation to systems accessed by smart cards. SATURN developed a set of data structures which can be coded on a smart card to define specific user preferences for aspects such as text size, colour and use of braille. These data structures can then be used by the system application to modify the user interface to suit a particular user’s special needs.
Many of SATURN’s concepts are incorporated into a new Draft European Prestandard issued by CEN [Reference 9]. If this Draft successfully becomes a formal European Standard in time, SEDODEL will modify the CopySMART smart card format and associated software to incorporate the standard in its final form.
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8. The constraints of copyright legislation
While technology developments can provide the basic enabling functionalities they are not, in themselves, sufficient. The underlying copyright legislation, by not explicitly recognising the special needs of blind and partially sighted people, acts as a major constraint for the provision of increased access to information.
While there are detailed differences in laws in the fifteen Member States, generally there is an implicit (but incorrect) assumption that everybody can use printed materials.
Many organisations of and for the blind and partially sighted think that European Copyright Legislation should take into account the specific needs of the visually impaired. This would allow the legislation to act as a positive force for increasing the integration of blind and partially sighted people, rather than, as at present, acting as a negative constraint. The United States has recently enacted such changes to its copyright legislation so that the permission of publishers or copyright owners is not required if an authorised entity reproduces or distributes works in a specialised format (such as digital text) for the exclusive use of blind persons [Reference 10].
SEDODEL recognises that a technology only approach is not sufficient to make real progress in the integration of visually impaired people in the information society. Therefore, in parallel with the development, evaluation and demonstration actions, SEDODEL will produce recommendations for appropriate changes to be incorporated into European legislation.
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9. Features of SEDODEL secure document delivery
SEDODEL will pilot an innovative service for the distribution of information to blind and partially sighted people. This will be based on a set of generic applications created by the integration of existing and developing technologies. The system’s main features are:
- Electronic information will be transformed into accessible formats by converting into members of the SGML family.
- The accessible information will be wrapped in a secure envelope by using the CopySMART ECMS system. This secure envelope can include digital identification such as tattooing to ensure ownership, data integrity and traceability together with encryption for privacy.
- The contractual conditions relating to the information are bound together with this securely wrapped information. These conditions are specific for a particular information distribution service and are developed by creating a business model which covers the roles of actors in the service.
- The securely wrapped accessible information is distributed to the end user. This may involve the mediation of organisations of and for the blind and partially sighted, or may be direct from producer or publisher. The technical mechanisms for information delivery are independent of the CopySMART application; possibilities include physical media (for example CD-ROM) or open networks such as Internet and the World Wide Web.
- The information is accessed by the end user on a CopySMART enabled PC running Windows. The end user’s access rights are encoded on a personal smart card which the application reads and interprets. The application unwraps the information and allows the user to access the information only in accordance with the specific user rights.
- The SGML based information will be accessed by a Document Reader developed for the SEDODEL system. This will enable visually impaired users to read information in an easy manner using their own access technology such as screen readers, braille displays and large print systems.
- Usage of the information will be monitored by the CopySMART application which deals with access control, clearing of rights, traceability, audit files, proofs of usage and handling of payments.
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10. Conclusion
The anticipated results of SEDODEL include: practical experience in the implementation and operation of a secure delivery system for accessible electronic documents for blind and partially sighted people; the extension of the CopySMART ECMS to the needs of blind and partially sighted people; recommendations for appropriate changes to be incorporated into European copyright legislation which will address the specific needs of the visually impaired. Above all, the secure service should give publishers the confidence to release to organisations of and for the blind and partially sighted (and to end users directly) electronic copies of their publications, thereby greatly enhancing access to information.
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Acknowledgement
SEDODEL, Project DE4001, is part funded by DGXIII of the European Commission under the Disabled and Elderly Sector of the Telematics Applications Programme.
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References
- The members of the SEDODEL Consortium are: University of Bradford, Coordinator (UK), British Library (UK), EURITIS SA (FR), INSERM (FR), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (BE), Open University (UK), Royal National Institute for the Blind (UK). The two year project will complete in March 2000. URL: http://www.arttic.com/projects/SEDODEL/
- CAPS: Communication and Access to information for People with Special needs, TIDE Projects TP 136 and TP 218. HARMONY: Horizontal Action for the Harmonisation of Accessible Structured Documents, TIDE Project TP 1226. URL: http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/teo/DocArch/da.htm
- SGML: ISO 8879 : 1986 Information processing—Text and Office systems—Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). International Organisation for Standardisation; HTML URL: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/; XML URL: http://www.w3.org/XML/
- Web Accessibility Initiative URL: http://www.w3.org/WAI/
- DAISY, Digital Talking Book System URL: http://www.daisy.org/daisynew.htm
- Electronic Commerce Issues: Intellectual Property Rights, Dominique Gonthier URL: http://www.ispo.cec.be/ecommerce/ipr.htm
- CopySMART: ESPRIT Project 20517. URL: http://www.arttic.com/projects/Copysmart/
- SATURN (TIDE TP 1040): Smart Cards—Interfaces for People with Disabilities, J. M. Gill (ed.) ISBN 1 86048 007 1, RNIB. URL: http://194.70.69.3/ethos/tap/tap/2a3e_3a6.htm
- Identification Card Systems - Man–Machine Interface Part 4: Coding of User Requirements for People with Special Needs, European Prestandards, Draft prEN 1332-4, 10 October 1996, CEN.
- United States Public Law 104-197, section 316
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