Charging, paying and copyright : information access on open networks

The current commercialisation of the Internet is resulting in the rapid development of mechanisms and systems to support commercial transactions over open, public networks. There is also a growing requirement for publishers to make material available electronically while protecting their rights as copyright owners or licensers. Two European funded projects, COPINET and COPICAT, are investigating these two related areas. COPINET is constructing and trialling a system to provide online access to commercially operated bibliographic information and full-text document delivery services via the World Wide Web. The issues of charging and billing mechanisms, especially the means ofobtaining payment for information provision over the Internet using various WWW-based financial transaction systems, are covered. The project has the aim of producing implementation guidelines based on the experience gained in developing a representative system. COPICAT deals with the issue of copyright protection for electronically published material distributed on the Internet and has developed a protection and management system. Publishers can determine a level of protection appropriate to the value of the material while monitoring use and managing the chain of rights. COPICAT can be deployed to enable publishers to open up the market for electronically published material, especially in open-access environments.