Mechanisms to Make End-Users of Copyrighted Works Pay Through Levy and DRM

Abstract

In order to compensate the copyright owners for use of their works by end-users, a levy system has been implemented in various countries which seeks to tax certain copying equipment and operators. The same system has been proposed for cloud storage and Internet services. The levy system tries to balance the social norms of file sharing with the legal norm of copyright enforcement. The licensing mechanisms that could be used to give effect to the levy systems are built on the model whereby the owner forsakes some of his rights in order to gain fair remuneration. For the levy system to play a more meaningful role in the future, it has to be made more uniform and widespread in its application. Together with the levy system, various managerial goals and tools also aim at ensuring payment to rights owners by regaining and retaining control over copyrighted works in the digital environment. For the convenience of end-users, a single window service and a single fee license could be experimented with. Digital Rights Management (DRM), which mostly relies on technological protection measures, rights management information and electronic documentation to implement the controls and restrictions necessary for the overall management of digital works, has become a major mechanism for exploitation. While both DRM and a levy system aim at the same objective of ensuring payment to rights owners, the mechanisms to achieve the objective are different. If levies and DRM are implemented together, there is a danger that the user ends up paying twice for the same work. Therefore, DRM and levies can co-exist only when the practice of DRM has been taken into account when the levies are being set up.