Craig Thompson, Professor of Computer Science, describes an interesting research topic:

Assume agent wrappers wrap Internet resources (data sources, applications, etc.) and we want to guard the resource and license its use or capability or results. Develop an XML “license” that encapsulates digital rights and provides an interface for microcharging for use of the resource. Then develop a means to compose microlicenses so that composite objects can exist that contain collections of microlicensed resources. This might be an alternative to open source, one in which licensing is made easy – anyone on the web can license anything for the right price or compensation.

In their paper ‘Digital Licensing‘ Thomson and Rishikesh present some interesting ideas how to implement ‘microlicensing’ it with Web services. In a way their approach is similar to what DMP has done in the past: breaking down the problem into Primitive Functions and designing Tools to implement these Functions (in this case a Negotiation service, a Service-Level-Agreement service, a Compensation service, an Electronic Receipt service).

The DReaM-MMI (”Mother-may-I”) system, described by Sun Microsystems in their white paper on Sun’s DReaM Open Sournce DRM architecture seems to follow a very similar philosphy.

I am pretty sure that very soon some form microlicensing will allow creators of content and services to negotiate a fair price with consumers. It will be an alternative business model to giving away code or intellectual property (e.g. music) for free – if this is what Thompson means “an alternative to open source”, I agree with him. However, if you consider the societal benefits of sharing code, there is no alternative to Open Source. Perhaps this is the reason why RMS wants to protect GPLled code from being used for DRM systems.

Traditionally there is a linear relationship between the price you pay for something and it’s availability (the amount of work you need to invest in order to get a unit of something). When something gets more easily accessible (e.g. because of it’s technical reproducibility), it’s monetary value decreases. When something is encoded into the digital space, it’s accessiblity and reproducibility becomes infinite and it’s price per unit approaches zero.

The period in which availability was based on reproduction was relatively short. Before the industrialisation availability was merely based on production. Starting with the industrial revolution availability more and more depended on reproduction. And now, thanks to sophistcated reproduction technology, the poverty in many parts of the world has been reduced and people can start using their brains again e.g. in order to produce unique products and services for other people (the current (2005) slogan of IBM is “On Demand Business”).

The day has only 24 hours, so the time to “pay” attention to something is limited. Content providers are fighting for the attention of content recipients. When the amount of available content (e.g. measured in content hours) increases, content recipients have a bigger choice and their willingness or ability to “pay”attention for a certain piece of content decreases, up to the point where people who offer content pay for the limited time of the recipients (e.g. google Ads).

Even if the relationship between money and availability ceased to exist, there would be value. For the illiterate every book ever written (every song, weapon, women,…) is no better or no worse than any other. In a world of abundance content will be created and traded between people who are able to appreciate it’s quality (e.g. uniqueness, novelty, relevance). I see no reason why these people should starve their creators.