A Project with Paradoxical Goals
	Superdistribution Digital Property Rights Robust Ownership of Property made of Bits
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Superdistribution,
like
superconductivity,
allows
information
to
flow
freely,
without
resistance
from
copy
protection
or
piracy.

---
Ryoichi
Mori

Also
see
Coalition
for
Electronic
Markets, Electronic
Property, and Superdistribution:
Objects
as
Property
on
the
Electronic
Frontierand other
publicationsfor controversial and comprehensive techno-social solutions to the problematics of buying, selling and owning property made of bits.

Superdistribution; Objects as Property on the Electronic Frontierby Brad Cox; Addison Wesley1996; ISBN 0201502089; at Amazon.comand IBM InfoMarkets.

Reviews

Review
of
Superdistribution;
Objects
as
Propertyby William Sheridan. I bought the Cox book because I expected it would be about OBJECTS in distributed computing environments. On the basis of my reading of a Wired Magazine article, that's what SUPERDISTRIBUTION means. Well, according to Cox, not exactly. He uses the term OBJECTS to refer to "somebody's electronic property". What he wants to assure, is that use-value is reciprocated by exchange-value.

Review
by
Fred
Beshears: This excerpt from a review of a book by Brad Cox summarizes an interesting (new?) way of thinking about the assignment and collection of fees for the use of software. I've long believed that the copyright system doesn't really fit the new digital environment, and that a new mechanism is needed to provide enough revenue for those who develop and distribute good software to enable them to keep doing so. Here's an alternative.)

Software's
Cash
Registerby Peter Huber Forbes, October 18, 1993 at Pg. 314 People still boast about making money the old-fashioned way, but the new way is faster. Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Sam Walton moved people and things: factory workers, wire cable, salesclerks, soda. That meant heavy lifting, which is slow. Nowadays you get rich quick moving bits and bytes. A lot more people are going to get rich that way in the coming years, because the software industry has finally perfected a cash register.

Related
Articles

Objects
as
PropertyInvited article for IEEE Software Magazine, Managers Column, January 1997.

What
if
there
is
a
silver
bullet
and
the
competition
gets
it
first?
by Brad Cox What if superdistribution really is a Silver Bullet for the information age issues that I've raised in this column? And what if the competition builds it first?.

Superdistribution?
by Brad Cox, Wired Magazine; September 1994 Stop selling software. Give it away. Get paid for its use. Meterware is so logical it could be the foundation of the new, networked economy. Also see David Henshel's
Letter
to
the
Editor
and my response

Ryoichi
Mori's
Work

Superdistribution:
The
Concept
and
the
Architectureby Ryoichi Mori and Masaji Kawahara; The Transactions Of The Ieice; Vol.E 73, No.7 July 1990; Special Issue on Cryptography and Information Security

Ryoichi
Mori(Japanese) Home Page

JEIDAHome Page

KAWAHARA
MasajiMasaji is a research associate at the Research Center of Education Media, Tsukuba College of Technology. He developed Prototype II for superdistribution which utilized the coprocessor interface of an existing computer. He designs another prototype which can more freely distribute electronic objects such as software components and multimedia data. He also the maintainer of The Superdistribution Resource Page.

Intellectual
Propertycollection by (Hal Varian?).

Superdistribution
Resource
Pageby Masaji Kawahara Superdistribution is an approach to distributing digital information in which digital information is made available freely and without restriction but is protected from modifications and modes of usage not authorized by its copyright holder. By eliminating the need of copyright holders to protect their products against piracy through copy protection and similar measures, superdistribution promotes unrestricted distribution of digital information. Contents What's New on Superditribution (updated:3/5/96, Japanese) Frequently Asked Questions about Superdistribution Prototype for Superdistribution Slide Show On-line Technical Reports (Japanese) Publication List (Japanese) Related Web Servers (Research or Non-profit Sites) Related Web Servers (Commercial Sites)

What
Lies
Aheadby Ryoichi Mori; Byte Magazine; January 1989 Over the past 20 years, I have seen two important innovations come along. In 1973, I predicted that the microcomputer would be the most important issue for many decades. In 1978, I came to the conclusion that the first Japanese word processing machine, the Toshiba JW-10, would change the history of Japanese documentation work. I predicted that the Japanese word processor would reach not only to the offices, but also to personal document work.

Other
People's
Work

Superdistribution
of
Digital
Information:
The
Impact
On
Bottom-Line
ResultsOctober 17, 1995 1. Introduction 2. Technologies enabling superdistribution 3. Economic models 3.1. Initial assumptions 3.2. Model 0: One generation redistribution 3.3. Model 1: Multigenerational redistribution with a single recipient 3.4. Model 2: Multigenerational redistribution with multiple recipients 3.5. Model 3: Multigenerational redistribution with multiple recipients plus cannibalization 3.6. Model 4: Multigenerational redistribution with multiple recipients plus cannibalization and expected coefficient values 4. Sharing the revenue, ensuring success 4.1. A piece of the click 4.2. Quality and branding 4.3. Superdistribution and mass customization 4.4. Concluding comment Prepared by: Northeast Consulting Resources, Inc. Advanced technologies for copyright compliance, metered usage, and guaranteed payment enable new business models in which revenue can be collected from downstream users of all kinds of digital content, including software, text, audio, and video. This additional revenue is extremely attractive because the distribution costs are nearly zero when content is distributed over networks such as the Internet. This business model is known as "superdistribution." Figure 1 illustrates the basic ideas.

Superdistribution
of
Digital
Information:
The
Impact
On
Bottom-Line
Results

Intellectual
PropertyInformation Economy pages on Intellectual Property (by Hal Varian, perhaps?)

Remunerating
Authors
and
Publishers
in
a
Digital
Worldby Richard Hill, June 1995 This paper explores the question of how the creation and distribution of intellectual property subject to copyright protection can be assured if digital media are used to create or to distribute the work. An analysis of copyright issues related to computer software is used as a starting point.

Fixing
the
Digital
Copyright
Dilemma
with
Telerights:
Copying
is
easy;
decryption
is
notby Wade Riddick After reading the National Information Infrastructure debate on intellectual property reform in the digital age, one could conclude that computers and copyrights have come to an impasse. The copyright code assumes that copying is difficult and expensive, hence authors are rewarded on a per copy basis. Digital technology makes such copying nearly costless. Why reward authors for their part in a costless transaction?

A
New
Computer
Standard:
Fixing
the
Flats
on
the
Information
HighwayBy Wade Riddick One important roadblock often missed by policymakers as they work to lay the foundations of the information super-highway is the incompatibility that exists among the operating systems and microchips that will form the highwayŐs roadbed. When the Clinton Administration opened the telecommunications industry to competition, its goal was not to limit consumer choice, but rather to broaden choice by weakening narrow, monopolistic controls over technology and allowing small private companies to move technology in many different directions.

Freeny
Patentby Also see Dial
A
GiftInteractive Gift has apparently sent out 34 infringment notices to companies doing electronic commerce regarding patent that claims that it may cover any method of sending information with a subsequent key that unlocks it. See Interactive
Gift
Express
claims
34
firms
infringe
on
its
electronic
commerce
patent

The
Tunes
root
project by FranŤois-RenŽ "FarŽ" Rideau. Tunes is a project to replace existing Operating Systems, Languages, and User Interfaces by a completely rethough Computing System, based on a correctness-proof-secure higher-order reflective self-extensible fine-grained distributed persistent fault-tolerant version-aware decentralized (no-kernel) object system. We want to implement such a system because we know all these are required for the computing industry to compete fairly, which is not currently possible. Even if Tunes itself does not become a world-wide OS, we hope the TUNES experience can speed up the appearance of such an OS that would fulfill our requirements.

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