Protecting and Managing Electronic Content with a Digital Battery

I n the days before personal computers became commonplace, a simple and direct system ensured stable relationships among artists, producers, and consumers. An artist would create a work, then give it and certain accompanying rights to a producer. The producer would manufacture a physical artifact that embodied the work, then the producer or its representative would market this artifact, generating a revenue stream—and, incidentally , a measurement of the work's popularity. Finally, the producer would share the resulting revenue with the original artist in direct proportion to the work's popularity—or at least in proportion to a measurable indicator of popularity , such as the number of units sold. This system of rights, royalties, and limits on reproduction worked for books, records, motion pictures, and other physical media largely because of the difficulty and expense that reproducing them entailed. In the days of vinyl records, for example, few individuals had access to the equipment necessary to produce such recordings. Indeed, only recently have individuals gained widespread access to affordable CD duplicators. Likewise, gallery-quality picture reproductions required sophisticated photographic equipment well outside the reach of most individuals. Reproducing films in celluloid form encountered similar obstacles prior to the development of home videocassette recorders. Currently, Napster, Gnutella, and other peer-to-peer sharing services have stretched if not broken all these connections, posing such a dire financial threat to content providers that the Recording Industry Association of America and five recording companies have brought suit against Napster. 1 If a consumer can duplicate a digital artifact and share it with a friend, the producer loses any profit from the duplicated artifact and any way to measure the duplicated item's relative popularity. Without a revenue stream or a means for measuring popularity, a producer cannot offer artists appropriate remuneration. Without payment, artists have little incentive for creating new work. Concerns about generating and measuring revenue have led many to question the long-term viability of the recording, publishing, and video industries. Rampant unauthorized duplication also threatens many other smaller industries that deal in artifacts or ideas amenable to digital representation.