Status:
IGF Theme(s) for workshop: Emerging Issues
Main theme question address by workshop: Emerging Issues - Question 2 "...acceptable and proportionate measures..."
Concise description of the proposed workshop:
The workshop will address the question of how digital works which are shared via the Internet (either with permission, e.g. granted by means of a Creative Commons license, or without permission) can be effectively linked to a website of the astist(s) or author, so that they can have a significant positive marketing effect (and not just the effect of often undesired competition to commercial offerings). The workshop will focus in particular on audio formats like MP3 and OGG and the
possible addition of standardized URL metadata.
The motivation for exploring this idea is that on one hand, copyright holders are complaining that the Internet environment is not sufficiently conductive to their legitimate interests of earning money through cultural contributions. On the other hand, the frequently heard call for ever more heavy-handed measures to enforce copyright on the Internet threaten the Internet's essential feedoms (which are in fact essential for the human rights foundations of information society) and are in fact contrary to the fundamental property of culture that culture is something that people share.
Therefore, it is important to explore how digital cultural goods can be produced in economically sustainable ways that do not conflict with the freedom properties of the Internet or require heavy-handed copyright enforcement against people who wish to share digital cultural goods in non-commercial ways.
This workshop explores specifically the contribution that technical standardization can make, in particular with regard to the inclusion of URL metadata in e.g. MP3 and OGG audio files, so that anyone who received a copy of the file can easily visit the copyright holder's website and spend money there.
Panelists will discuss possibilities and difficulties of amending the relevant technical standards, and discuss what can be said about realistic expectations for economic benefits.
Background Paper: BackgroundPaper.pdf
Provide the name of the organiser(s) of the workshop and their affiliation to various stakeholder groups:
Norbert Bollow, Swiss Open Systems User Group /ch/open, civil society
Have you, or any of your co-organisers, organised an IGF workshop before?: Yes
Please provide link(s) to workshop(s) or report(s):
Provide the names and affiliations of the panellists you are planning to invite:
Ms Jillian York, Electronic Frontier Foundation, USA (Civil Society)
Mr Jeremy Malcolm, Consumers International Asian+Pcific Regional Office,
Malaysia (Civil Society)
Mr Kivuva Mwendwa, ISACA, Kenya (Technical Community)
Mr Justin Franke, author of the Winamp media player application and
inventor of the gnutella peer-to-peer network, USA (Private Sector)
a representative of an artists association (Civil Society)
a representative of Google Inc. (Private Sector)
a representative of a record label (Private Sector)
a representative of the European Commission (Government)
Name of Remote Moderator(s):
Ms Ginger Paque, Diplo Foundation