Safeguarding Digital Library Contents and Users Interim Retrospect and Prospects

Abstract

The Safeguarding ... series in D-Lib Magazine is intended to suggest technology to help manage digital intellectual property. That technology can contribute only in a complex of administrative, legal, contractual, and social practices is broadly accepted; we now pause to examine how efforts to fit in the technological component are progressing and what next needs attention. Among concerns for responsive and responsible management of intellectual property, technical aspects are surely secondary to prominent issues of public policy, law, and ethics. The latter are beginning to be addressed both in legislative processes and also by academic investigators. For the technical community, we assert that we can design offerings with sufficient flexibility that we need not wait for policy decisions which might affect software to administer rules chosen or to hinder unacceptable behavior. The current article projects technical directions without designing solutions. It emphasizes managing the data -- how it is stored, protected, and communicated.