Note the predicted increase of sales of the PRD
protected product over the other formats under the same market conditions.
Assuming the costs of the electronic MP3+PRD product are less than
any physically distributed intellectual products, such as CD's,
then the purchase cost could be reduced and you could expect even
more sales in the same market. Also, under the Distributed Intellectual
Property Rights system, most of the MP3 files shown in the last
line of the table would in fact include a PRD and so a least the
product would be identified and the creator known even if it was
not a purchased product.
If you were to perform this analysis on other
products which contain information which might be updated regularly
or software which is revised or improved regularly the desirability
coefficient could be much higher and the PRD identified product
would proportionally gain more of an advantage over a non-identified
product.
As I stated in my main paper, the
two fundamental components of the Distributed Rights System proposed
here are the Author Rights Office
(ARO) and the Consumer Rights Office
(CRO). These offices reside on the Internet and work in close collaboration
with human internauughts; creators with
the rights office and users with the licence office. This close
collaboration of the human mind, via the body, with the technological
environment has been described by Andy
Clark [40] as 'the cognitive equivalent of Dawkins'
vision of the extended phenotype'. A phenotype is the bodily manifestation
of a genes programming. An extended phenotype is an extension of
the genes influence to things outside the physical body.
Hence, a portion of the Internet environment truly
becomes an extension of the human operators mind and therefore the
brain/technology symbioses allows the Internet to be analyzed as
an evolutionary system containing many intelligent individual organisms
trading units of information such as the intellectual products described
above. The Offices act as unique agents for human users and these
agents are always available to act for their hosts. In this way
human society is truly extended onto the Internet.
Dawkins also describes an Evolutionarily
Stable Strategy (ESS), a theory developed
by Robert Trivers
[41], involving suckers, grudgers, and cheats and describes
how these societies evolve into stable states. Suckers are defined
as being too trusting and will continuously give away their services
regardless of how often they are cheated. Cheats will always cheat
others given the chance. Grudgers will retaliate if they are cheated
but will quickly forgive and make their services available again.
Dawkins then describes how some organisms thrive
and others become extinct. A population of grudgers or a population
of cheats are the two attractors of a dynamic differential system
such as this and he goes on to state that a population that stabilises
at the cheat equilibrium is more likely to go extinct. Grudgers
are basically nice guys who play by the rules but will react if
someone takes advantage and they are more likely to become the stable
population. There is selection between ESS's
in favour of reciprocal altruism. The prerequisite
of this society is that grudgers can recognise and remember other
individuals and therefore hold a grudge or not when necessary.
Therefore, to extend society's moral codes, particularly
reciprocal altruism, onto the Internet and into the digital age
each individual has a fundamental need for a permanent presence
(or agent) to act on their behalf and be able to recognise other
agents. Hence the need for each individual to have an
'office' in cyberspace representing
their interests. In fact I have proposed two types of office, one
for the provider (author rights
office) and the other for the user (consumer
rights office), instead of one generic type that could handle
transactions in both directions. The reason for the two types of
office is two fold; first it seems a natural distinction (provider
and user) and second, it greatly simplifies the structure of each
office and the type of transaction it handles.
I would like to believe that the society in which we live today
is truly altruistic and could be modelled as simply as I have done
above but even if this is not the case I believe this model does
point to the direction that has to be taken:
Both suppliers and consumers have to be represented and each
product manifestation has to contain a record of the transaction
between the two parties.
The ESS described above defines the physical donation
of services where there is one recipient; once the service is donated
that is the end of it except for the memory of it and the obligation
on the recipient to repay. In the case where the service is traded
immediately for money, goods, or services, the obligation is immediately
repaid.
The donation of an item of information is more
complicated! The initial trade between two parties can form part
of the ESS described above and the offices I have proposed for digital
information can directly aid an honest exchange. The complication
is that the information is not dissipated on exchange, as a physical
service is ‘used-up’, but is available to be passed on
any number of times and the initial creator, who put the work into
it, might well not know of future dissemination. The digital exchange
of information exasperates this situation. As we saw in the section
on replication above this information
'wants' to reproduce and spread and does so more easily in digital
from.
In the table below I analyze the different conditions
under which the information or a digital product could be transferred
and the levels of interaction between the creator and the user or
recipient:
|
Information transfer conditions
|
Creator gives permission
for transfer
|
Creator knows of recipient
|
Recipient knows creator
|
Level of interaction
|
|
1
|
True
|
True
|
True
|
A - best case for fair trade
|
|
2
|
F
|
True
|
True
|
B - possibility of fair trade
|
|
3
|
True
|
F
|
True
|
B
|
|
4
|
F
|
F
|
True
|
B
|
|
5
|
True
|
True
|
F
|
A - good case for fair trade
|
|
6
|
F
|
True
|
F
|
B
|
|
7
|
True
|
F
|
F
|
C – never able to trade
|
|
8
|
F
|
F
|
F
|
C -
|
Table A2.4 – Information Transfer Conditions
If the creator is always asked for permission
and knows whom the product is going to there is no problem, the
rules for reciprocal altruism can be applied (level ‘A’).
The worst case is if there is a transfer of a product without the
creator knowing it and the recipient does not know who created it
either, under these conditions no exchange payment can never be
made (level ‘B’).
An intermediate case (‘C’) is where
the creator has no knowledge of the transfer but the recipient knows
who the creator is. In this case there is always the chance that
some will play the game and pay up. The existence of the PRD,
attached to the digital product, allows for this possibility and
would always allow a recipient to register his or her own legal
copy. Remember, as I have shown earlier, the information with the
PRD is just as likely to spread as the information without the PRD.
There is no penalty imposed on the PRD identified product.
I should emphasise this point: No environmental
pressure should be applied that would inhibit the copying of a product
with a valid PRD! Even if there are a billion people using the PRD
product without purchasing the rights to it, this is still a better
situation than an equal number of people using a non-identified
product without usage rights. In addition to this, the widespread
distribution of the product is of benefit to society as a whole
and at a minimum probably good for the creator's reputation.
An interesting situation arises if each legal
recipient were to become a part owner of the information and receives
a part payment if they passed it on to another known recipient.
In this way reciprocal trade conditions can be spread much further
through the population. This idea is described further in the referral
process in the ‘Business’
section.
This analysis also highlights the advantages of
providing information as a service instead of a product. When the
information is part of a service it maintains the one to one trading
relationship between two organisms that is so important. In this
case the DIPR model provides the environment
and structure that records the transfer of rights within the service.
This finally brings me to the end of my argument,
albeit in very general terms, that demonstrates the need for this
complicated system of both Author
Rights Offices and Consumer
Rights Offices in the Distributed Intellectual Property Rights
system. It is the fundamental need for organisms who extend
their society onto the Internet to be able to recognise each other,
to have their own individual presence, and know who is playing the
game or not. (This need to recognise one-another could point to
the advantage of each individual having a unique, secure and persistent
identification but that is another project).
