Aboriginal Australians pioneer new digital rights management system

[Barnaby_McEwan]

Aboriginal archive offers new DRM

A new method of digital rights management (DRM) which relies on a user's profile has been pioneered by Aboriginal Australians. The Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive has been developed by a community based in Australia's Northern Territory. It asks every person who logs in for their name, age, sex and standing within their community. This information then restricts what they can search for in the archive, offering a new take on DRM.

Dr Kimberly Christian, who helped to develop the archive, told BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme that the need to create these profiles came from community traditions over what can and cannot be seen. "It grew out of the Warumungu community people themselves, who were really interested in repatriating a lot of images and things that had been taken from the community," she said...

...Dr Christian, who is an assistant professor based at Washington State University, stumbled across the idea of the archive by chance after meeting a group of missionaries who had digitally archived photos of the Warumungu community since the 1930s. After loading them onto her laptop, she took them back to Tennant Creek and set up a slideshow - where she noticed that people turned away when certain images came up on screen. For example, men cannot view women's rituals, and people from one community cannot view material from another without first seeking permission. Meanwhile images of the deceased cannot be viewed by their families.

[Leonard]

Wow, that is an interesting one ! The first thought that came to my mind was censorship as in the old Soviet Union where peoples library card and access was limited to vocation and 'need to know', but I think this is more an item of cultural sensitivity and taboo within this specific culture. Interesting approach to information access.

http://www.mukurtuarchive.org/about.html

I think that a key concept is: "In doing so, the archive mirrors a system of accountability in which many people engage in the responsible reproduction and transmission of cultural knowledge and materials."


Leonard.