Transcopyright™*
ALL THE FREEDOM THAT'S LEGAL

 

Should documents be locked into one view and one arrangement of content?  We think not.

There are two great benefits of public domain works, whose copyrights have expired.  The first, of course, is that they are free.  But the other great benefit is that they may be cut up and shown in new ways without copyright difficulty.

What if we can create that same benefit for copyrighted works?

The Transcopyright system makes this possible, in a way that maintains two vital benefits of copyright:

1)  nothing is taken out of the original context, because the original context is only a click away.  We can show this now for text (the TQclient for transquotation).

2)  each downloader pays the original rightsholder if the material requires payment.  (To be implemented.)

Why are we supporting payment, when everything "should be free"?  Because some content will always be sold, the idea of transcopyright is to encourage rightsholders to make that form of sale and use more flexible.  Those who freely give content away don't need this system.*

* Although they may come to like its context features, and use it for their free content.

HOW IT WORKS: STRUCTURE IS SEPARATE FROM CONTENT.

Structure of a document (sequence and plan of assembly) may be created by anyone.  Readers need to obtain the content separately, although this can be made automatic.

Content of a document (text, audio, video) is downloaded or sold in small quantities, as required to fulfill a given document structure.

RIGHTSHOLDERS WHO CHOOSE TO PARTICIPATE AGREE IN ADVANCE TO SUCH USE.  (See transcopyright permission.)

EXAMPLE:

Suppose Joe Smith owns the copyright to a lot of World War II footage.  He places it on a server under transcopyright.

Now suppose Susie Jones wants to tell a particular story using this footage and her own soundtrack.  Susie publishes what in Hollywood is called an EDL, or Edit Decision List, telling what shots to use and in what sequence.  (She also puts up her own sound track on line under transcopyright.)

Now, suppose you want to see Susie Jones's movie.  You download the EDL to your transcopyright browser, which finds out the cost of the pieces-- let's say a total of fifty cents-- and determines that this does not exceed the amount you have preset.  It sends for the pieces.

Now you can watch the movie.  You also own the copies of the pieces that make it up.  If you decide on some new arrangement you would like to publish, you publish your own EDL.
 

Most people don't understand the copyright law and how much it restricts re-use of content.  No other system allows such re-use and is legal.

Others are trying to break the law, hoping that copyright will become permanently unenforceable.  Ethical issues aside, this is probably a mistake.  They do not recognize the determination and resources of the publishing and film industries.  The large fines and occasional imprisonment of violators are likely to be only the beginning.

Still others are trying to change the copyright law, which is now the same in most countries (the Berne convention).  Good luck, but change is not likely.

We work within the law.  With the transcopyright system we offer the only legal, honest, daylight method of making on-line content reusable in new ways.  Transcopyright is a permission system (or license) which lawyers agree is probably legal in all countries.
 

The Eprints server, open source from the University of Southampton, will send a quotation directly from a document and the original content of the quotation.  Here is an example--

The text of such a quotation:

Computer people don't understand computers. Oh, they understand the technicalities all right, but they don't understand the possibilities. Most of all, they don't understand that the computer world is entirely built out of artificial, arbitrary constructs.

Here is the URL that brings the quote from the server in raw text form:

http://tprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11/01/zifty-d9.txt?xuversion=1.0&locspec=charrange:166/258

Here is the URL that brings the quote from the server in human-readable form:

http://tprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11/01/zifty-d9.txt?xuversion=1.0&locspec=charrange:166/258&mode=human

Here is the URL that brings the CONTEXT of the quote from the server in human-readable form:

http://tprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11/01/zifty-d9.txt?xuversion=1.0&locspec=charrange:166/258&mode=context

WHAT YOU CAN USE NOW:  2. Transquotation Viewer

The DeepLit Transquotation viewer (by Andrew Pam of Xanadu Australia) will allow you to create new composite (collaged) documents from material available on the net--

• without actually distributing the content (as specified by transcopyright permission)
• keeping the original context of every quote just a click away.

Here is a sample of the final result.  Try it and you should understand it right away:

http://www.xanadu.com.au/dlit/sample.vhtml [won't show in old Netscapes]

Each separate quotation appears as a colored stripe when moused over.  Click, and you get to its context.  Pieces served from Eprints show the exact context.

The program (currently called TQclient.exe) will accept a text EDL, send for the portions and concatenate them into a page-- maintaining the connection of each quote to its original context, as you just saw.  Here is a sample of the EDL (currently of type .vlst).  If you change the suffix to type .txt, you can see the span addresses (span URLs) which the program concatenates.

http://www.xanadu.com.au/dlit/sample.vlst

Here is the current version of the program (for Windows):

http://www.xanadu.com.au/dlit/TQclient.exe.  The Python version is also available for use with other platforms.

Drop the .vlst file onto TQclient.exe.  A black panel will appear.  During this time, each span URL in the .vlist file is being concatenated into the .vhtml file.  Your browser should open with the .vhtml file showing the concatenated quotations.

If a portion is brought from an Eprints server, you may jump from each quotation to its exact original context.  If a portion is extracted from a textfile on the net, you may jump to its original file.  If a portion is extracted from a web page on the net, you may jump to its original page.

You may create an EDL file for (presently called type .vlst) by span URLs.  Right now there is no editor, but it is easy to make an EDL by trial-and-error until an editor is ready.

As the rightsholder I hereby give permission for all parties to re-use this content in any quantities, in any new contexts,

PROVIDED that such use is virtual and by reference,

with the re-using party distributing only a plan or EDL containing the on-line addresses of my text, audio or video content, so that each recipient obtains said text, audio or video content from my server;

AND PROVIDED that the viewing mechanism provides immediate access to the original context of each portion in my original source on-line documents.

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