1. Development of Strategy for the ePub
Library of the Vienna University to maximize the profits: Concerning
the rights management
By Dr. Michael Hahsler
[Reviewed by L.R. Amarakoon

2. Contents
 Introduction
 Summary of the paper
 Definitions of Information Goods and Digital
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Technology
Key learning
Industrial applications, if any ?
Your personal analysis and point of views
Recommendations
Conclusions

3. Introduction
 The aim of this study is to develop best possible
strategies for the digital library of the Vienna
University Digital Library – ePub, concerning
rights management in order to maximize the
profits (based on the assumption that ePub would
sell its content.
 Through the digital technology the global
economies have totally changed. The
technological developments , as well as the
dramatic reduction in costs of copying and
distribution make rights management difficult.
However, through illicit copying this technology
also offers many great new opportunities for the
publishing industry.

4. Introduction (Contd...)
 This paper also explains what information
goods and the problem with the digital
technology, digital libraries and digital rights
management
 Present few case studies of other DL depicting
what strategies they use to sell their products.
 Based on them the research team had made
recommendations on suitable strategies for the
e-Pub of WU to make profits related to rights
management.

5. - The first part of the paper describes “information goods”
and the problems associated with digital technology.
-The 2nd part describe what digital libraries and their
properties and its functionality.
- Then it introduce us to digital rights management and
“Architecture of DRM systems”.
- Digital Millennium Copy Right Act of 1998 is also
described.
- 04 case studies of other digital libraries are presented.
- Presented 05 strategies for the e-Pub library of the WU
recommended by the team, based on the above parts of
this
paper.
Summary of the paper

6. Information Goods and Digital
Technology
 Definition of information good:
An information good is anything that can be
digitized. This
can be a book, a record, a movie, an image etc.
They are also
called digital content
 Definition of IP:
IP refers to creations of the mind: Inventions,
literacy and
artistic works, and symbols, names, images and
designs used
in commerce

7. Information goods and the digital technology (Contd...) :
Properties of Information Goods:
 Information as experience goods:
Information goods are experience goods . At the
of purchasing them customers always want know
what it is like first, in order to determine whether it
fulfils his/her requirements. But if the owner gives
away the material he wants to sell in order to
show people what they are, how can the owner
make profits then?.
 There are solutions for this problem:
- Previewing and browsing
- Reviews
- Reputation

8. Information goods and the digital technology :
Properties of Information Goods (Contd...)
 Cost Structures of information goods
- Information goods have high fixed costs of
production and low marginal cost of reproduction.
Ex. Production of a Hollywood movie is very
expensive. Reproduction cost are very low.
“With IP, the upfront costs are what it‟s all
about,”(Bill Gates) ...”Say a piece of software cost
$10m to create and the marginal costs, because
it‟s going to be distributed electronically , are
basically zero”. Once costs of development have
been recouped , “every single additional unit is
pure profit.”But some one comes with a
significantly superior product, “your demand can
literally almost drop to zero”. – Wall Street
Journal, Aug23,2001.

9. Information goods and the digital technology :
Properties of Information Goods (Contd...)
 Production costs, warehouse expense and
reproduction costs:
- Production Costs – The cost of production of an information
good typically has the property that it is very costly to produce
the first copy and very cheap to produced the rest of the copies.
- Warehouse expense – The costs for the storage of information
goods depend on the size, duration of the storage and medium
where they are saved. Since storing files is very cheap
nowadays these costs are normally very minimal.
- Reproduction costs – Reproduction costs depend mainly on
technical aspects.
Normally they are very low compared to production costs.

10. Information goods and the digital technology :
Properties of Information Goods (Contd...)
 Information as a public good
- In contrast to private goods, pure public goods
are non-rival and non-excludable. Non-rival – a
person’s consumption doesn’t diminish the
amount available to other people; Non-excludable
- One person cannot exclude another person
from consuming the good. National defence
would be an example for such a pure public good.
 There is a difference between the above two
properties. Non- rivalness is a property of the
good itself. By the very nature of the good the
same amount of i.e. Defence are available to
everyone in an area.

11. Digital libraries and their
properties
 Definition
“Digital libraries are organizations that provide the
resources, including the specialized staff, to select,
structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret, distribute,
preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence
overtime of collections of digital works so that they are
readily and economically available for use by a defined
community or set of communities” – DLF (1998).
 The term “digital library” has a many potential meanings: It
can be a collection of material in organized electronic form
that one might find in a traditional library through to the
collection of all digital information along with the services
that make that information useful to all users. Primary goal
of a DL is to provide universal access to information goods.

12. Properties of Digital Libraries
 Services offered: A DL is more than a collection of materials. It
offers number of services to its readers. Those services offered
are: Services to support management of collection, services to
provide replicated and reliable storage, services to aid in query
formulation and execution, services to assist in name resolution
and location etc.
 Collection of information resources: The information objects that
provide the content are the basis for a digital library, which are
digital objects. They may also be in other media, i.e. Paper
editions, but represented in the library via digital means.
 Supporting users deal with information objects: assist users by
satisfying their needs and requirements for access,
management, storage and manipulation of the variety of
information stored in the collection

13. DRM
 The traditional rights management of physical
material was easier because the fact that these
materials where physical and not digital . But
digital materials. because of the ease of digital
reproduction and transmission there are serious
breaches of rights law.
 1 st generation DRM focused on security and
encryption to solve the problem of unauthorized
copying. This security and encryption has the
purpose to lock the content and limit its
distribution to only those who pay. However, 2nd
generation of DRM covers the description,
identification, trading, protection, monitoring and
tracking of all forms of rights usages.

14. Digital Millennium Copyright Act
of 1998
 DMCA is needed because it protects the
intellectual work from copyright violations.
 As researchers point out it could adversely
affect research competitiveness: In section
1201 of the DMCA it says “ No person shall
circumvent a technological measure that
effectively controls access to work protected
under this title”.

15. Key Learning
 DRM technology can prevent normal uses of works
protected by copyright law, such as printing or
excising portions for quotation. For libraries and
schools to serve their educational, research, and
information
roles, the public must be able to use works in the full
range of ways envisioned by the Copyright Act in its
limitations and exceptions.
 Eliminating “fair use” and other exceptions in
Copyright Law that underpin education, criticism, and
scholarship.
 Apart from that it pose a serious threat to the ability of
the public to access and use works in the public
domain. The DRMs have the potential to protect works
indefinitely. This permanent lock up of public domain
material runs contrary to the principle of balance in
copyright law.

16. Key Learning (contd…)
 They even threaten to lock up and permanently
render works inaccessible because data stored in
proprietary DRM formats is at a much greater risk
of being lost once the playback media become
obsolete.
 Due to the lack of inter-operability in DRM related
services, there is the potential that large
collections of content will not be able to be
accessed at all.
 This has a serious affect on the availability and
accessibility of information and shrinks what is
available via the public domain.

17. Industrial Applications, If any
 Using „digital licenses‟ is the core concept in DRM
 Instead of buying the digital content, the user purchase a license
permitting some rights to him/her. This license is a digital data file
that spells out usage rules for the digital content. These can be
described by number of criteria, such as frequency of access,
expiration date, limits of transfer to other devices etc. However,
these rules can be combined to enforce certain business model for
a industry, such as rental or subscription, try-before-buy, pay-peruse etc.
 This technology which controls the use and distribution of
electronic files- has been traditionally used by the commercial
book publishing and music industries. DRM in these fields is
justified as a protection of intellectual properties (IP). However,
now that DRM is being used by Academic Institutions such as WU,
technical organizations and scientific and engineering
publications, one can questioned who should be the rightful
owner of the IP.
 ePub Library has to implement Digital Rights Management
Systems (DRMs) together with technological protection measures
(TPMs) in order to make profits in respect to DRM of electronic
media they held in the library collection.

18. Personal analysis and point of
view
 It is observed that digital libraries can improve the access to




information in a large scale.
Information in digital form available on line through internet
creates a big problem to intellectual content
provides/owners.
Digital resources in libraries are available from a home
computer or handheld devices such as Smart Phones,
iPads, iPhones or a Tab etc. These advances in the
technology create new opportunities and markets for
content owners and publishes etc.
Although it is easier and less expensive for content owner
to distribute a digital good rapidly, but beside the thread
through illicit copying this technology also offers many
great new opportunities for the publishing industries.
Hence DRM poses one of the greatest challenges for
content communities. The present DRM covers the

19. Personal analysis and point of
view (Contd...)
 It is no doubt that libraries support copyright ,
which is called balanced copyright. But
nowadays they are concerned at the growing
imbalance of copyright laws in favor of rightsholders.
 Digital rights management systems(DRMs)
together with technological protection
measures (TPMs) have become a
controversial topic of discussion around
copyrights of electronic media.
 Digital networked environment makes copying
and distribution of information far easier for

20. Personal analysis and point of
view (Contd...)
 As observed, in order to protect the interests of
copyright holders (DRMs) restrict the use of digital
files (usually valuable original intellectual property
such as movies, music, etc.) These technologies can
control file access (number of views, length of views),
altering, sharing, copying, printing, and saving. These
technologies may be contained within the operating
system, program software, or in the actual hardware
of a device.
 DRM systems take two approaches to securing
content.
-The first is "containment," an approach where the
content is encrypted in a shell so that it can only be
accessed by authorized users.
-The second is "marking," the practice of placing a
watermark, flag, or an electronic tag on content as a
signal to a device that the media is copy protected.

21. Recommended Strategies for the
ePub
 The research team recommend the following strategies for the
ePub – the digital library of the WU
 Strategy 1: giving away “ePubs” content
Give away a table of content and only some of the chapters of the
literature. Ex. Give away the first 25 pages of each work for free like
dissertation.com does. Epub could also make these 25 pages available
for download in PDF format or post it online. Users could browse
through these free chapters to experience the good and see what it is
worth to them in order to buy it or not.
 Strategy 2: Demand for repeat views
Post the whole document online. The user would only have the
privilege to view the content over the internet. The value of the
downloaded PDF file would be that it could be printed out and
read whenever the customer wants. Compared to the online
version “option value” is added to the PDF version of the book.
The PDF or printed version of the book satisfy the users demand
for repeat views.

22. Recommended Strategies
(Contd…)
 Strategy 3 : Similar products which are not
identical
Users don‟t want to repeat viewing the same
image over and over again, they want
variations. Epub could give away the older
material of their holdings for free in order to
sell the rest. Users could experience the
quality of Epubs content and this could raise
the demand for similar products
 Strategy 4 : Complimentary goods
Offering the Index or search service for free is
another way to increase the demand for content.

23. Recommendations of Strategies
(Contd…)
 Strategy 5 : Charge a certain amount of money
for offering access to their whole or a special part
of their content fro a limited period of time as
what Academic Library does. ePub too could
make its materials accessible for i.e. 24 hours or
even 7 days for a certain amount.
All these possible strategies could perhaps also
be combined. User can choose whether he/she
wants to pay a big amount to gain access to the
whole material, or pay a smaller amount to get
only a special work or even only some of the
chapters

24. Scenario in Sri Lanka with regards
to Digital Libraries
 A digital library is a library in which
collections are stored in digital formats and
accessed through computers. That is to say,
digital content may be stored locally and
accessed remotely through computer
networks.
 It is observed that digital library services in
Sri Lanka are offered by the following
organizations:
- National Science Foundation (NSF) : NSF erepository has been launched to create global
visibility and accessibility to scholarly
research in Sri Lanka. Registered users can
upload papers.

25. Scenario in Sri Lanka with regards
to Digital Libraries (Contd…)
 The Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka
 Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) – Digital
content of Theses, abstracts of papers, past
question papers, OUSL journal issues can be
access online using the following URL“http://digital.ou.ac.lk
 EduLankas (www.eduLanka.lk) – This is the
largest online education web site with digital
content in Sri Lanka, which is popular among
students. Provides digital content related to ebooks, online lessons, teacher information,
education related course information etc.

26.  National Library of Sri Lanka (NL) – It has commenced a
Scenario in Sri Lanka with regards
project to develop a digital library. Started a document
scanningto Digital Libraries (Contd…)
project with the aim of providing access to
readers regardless of the location, materials related to Sri
Lanka and Sri Lankans.
 Dept of National Archives and the Museum Library of Sri
Lanka started digitizing 20-30 years ago.
 However in Sri Lanka it is observed that DRM is in its
infancy.
 It is recommended that NILIS and all the other University
libraries should get-together and establish a e-library
consortium, since Sri Lanka has a 20-30 yrs experience in
such consortium for printed publications and information
and proved successful venture. Digitization project can be
commenced as a collaborative efforts of this suggested
digital library consortium. The consortium can decide on a

27.  Information goods are experience goods.
 In order to buy an information good users
Conclusions
have to know what it is like first an if it fulfils
their requirements. But if the content owner
gives away the materials he wants to sell in
order to show people what they are, then the
question arises of making profits.
 There are solutions to this problems. Content
owners have to offer opportunities to let users
browse through their products. Ex. Movie
industry solve this problem by offering
previews.
 Reviewing products and providing those
reviews to the users
 It is a standard practice in the information

28. Conclusions (Contd…)
 Increasing profits is the motive for DRM
schemes for those who impose them.
Their profits is a side issue when millions
of people‟s freedoms at stake; Though it is
not wrong to expect profits, it cannot
justify denying the public control over its
technology.
 It is observed that there are campaigns
launched in the developed countries such
as “Defective by Design” exposing DRMencumbered devices and media. There are
protests against DRM since 2006.

29. Q and A