1980s

Ted Nelson's Xanadu Project developed the Transcopyright model to enable permssions over content to be made available by rightsholders in advance.

1990

The European ESPRIT Project Copyright in Transmitted Electronic Documents (CITED) developed a model to provide control, policing and remuneration, in respect of the use of copyrighted material stored and transmitted in digital form.

1991

Pamela Samuelson and Robert J. Glushko wrote a summary of Xanadu system in Intellectual property rights for digital library and hypertext publishing systems: an analysis of Xanadu. Proceedings of the third annual ACM conference on Hypertext, 1991 , San Antonio, Texas, United States. Pages: 39 - 50 ISBN:0-89791-461-9.
<http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/122974.122979>

1993

(April) First DRM Conference: JFK School of Government, MIT, IMA and CNI host "Technical Strategies for Protecting Intellectual Property in the Networked Environment." Presenters include Joseph Ebersole, Henry Perritt, Bob Kahn, Gary Griswold, Ted Nelson and others. Proceedings published in January, 1994.

The European Imprimatur Project was a Ground-breaking work on Electronic Copyright Management Systems. Interestingly, the project Final Report states that
"...there are many aspects ... that are innovative ... however [it] is unlikely to be a patentable process."

Henry H. Perritt, Jr. wrote a paper on the concept of "permissions headers" in which rights information would be attach to every digital work distributed across networks in Knowbots, Permissions Headers and Contract Law (dated April 2-3, 1993). A later version appeared at the Conference on Technological Strategies for Protecting Intellectual Property in the Networked Multimedia Environment.

1994

A framework for patents and copyrights in the Digital Age. (Everything you know about intellectual property is wrong.) By By John Perry Barlow . Wired Magazine March 1994.

(Nov) John Erickson (HP) proposes an early distributed DRM system in his Dartmouth Ph.D. proposal, "Electronic Copyright Management in the Production of Networked Interactive Multimedia." John's suggested approach built upon Perritt's notion of a "permissions header," combining a distributed system ("registration" and "authorization" servers) with "permissions" (usage rights) flags, copyright information and links to authorization hosts accompanying the digital media file throughout its use.

(March) John Perry Barlow writes "The Economy of Ideas: A framework for rethinking patents and copyrights in the Digital Age (everything you know about intellectual property is wrong)" Wired (March 1994).

Richard Dan Herschaft (InterDigital Communications Corporation) completed a thesis on "A common approach to extending computer security concepts to the universal distributed non-trusted environment" in which he proposed the "information protection tag" to capture rights-based information. The thesis was presented to the Graduate Faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Science Southern Methodist University on December 17, 1994

Other Bibliographic Links

• Giant Steps DRM Bibliography