READI

(Rights for Electronic Access to and Delivery of Information)

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DEFINING THE USER

Definition

In all contracts the user population or "permitted" user is defined, whether or not fees are based on limited or unlimited access, or whether the information is supplied on a subscription model or on a per-use basis.

For example, in a contract or licensing agreement between a provider or intermediary and an academic institution, the user population may be defined as current faculty and staff, enrolled students, and present administrators. The implication here is that former students, staff, faculty, and administrators are excluded from access. Similarly, in a public library setting, users can be defined as those who hold valid library cards. In a corporate setting, users may be defined as current employees or identified by location.

In some settings, provisions may be made for non-affiliated or "occasional" users who access online information from authorized terminals (walk-in users at universities and public libraries, for example).

Most agreements adopt a technique that employs "passwords" or some other method to identify qualified users who may gain access to the information. Usually, the language related to passwords and other such identifying methods is contained in a separate clause or paragraph (see "Passwords").

Discussion

Once the agreement identifies "permitted user(s)," contracts and licensing agreements then commonly specify the particular ways in which the community of users may have access to the information. Under a subscription-based fee structure, the broadest possible agreement between providers or intermediaries and institutions is "unlimited access." Such licenses or agreements call for users in the population to have no restrictions, on how much, how often, or from where the information is accessed.

In some agreements, the "site" where information may be accessed is identified. Some contracts also identify locations where "occasional" users can find access to licensed information (in the student union or the university library, for example). This contract element is closely related to methods of monitoring use, discussed later in the guide (see "Monitoring").

Many buyers feel that to specify the physical location of terminals, or access sites, is too restrictive, since most wish to provide access to any authorized user, regardless of location, say, from remote terminals in dormitories. Sellers, on the other hand, may seek to restrict use to specific systems to control and monitor use.

Other subscription-based agreements or licenses restrict the number of users at a given time to a specific number of "simultaneous" or "concurrent" users. Such licenses do not usually restrict the amount of information accessed at a given time, but only the number of individuals who may access it simultaneously.

Still other subscription-based agreements or licenses/contracts set a "cap" on the number of individuals who may access the information. In these arrangements, commonly there is no restriction on simultaneous access, nor do such agreements restrict the amount of information accessed. The principle here is that the total number of individuals within a population who may have access to the information is limited. So, for example, at a given university, with a population of 100,000 students, faculty, staff, and administrators, it may be understood between the parties that 10 percent of the population is interested in "clinical medicine" for which the database is to be accessed. In this example, the contract might limit access to 10,000 users.

[NOTE TO REVIEWERS--"caps" must have important implications for monitoring, repackaging, policing assignment of passwords, etc. Please provide examples and a discussion of these implications].

In non-subscription-based agreements (where individuals or institutions pay for information based on a time, access, or other measure) users usually identify themselves with passwords, credit card numbers, ID numbers, names, or other identifiers. Such agreements may not require a definition or identification of the total population served, since payment is based upon usage or time and not on population served. Nonetheless, certain agreements may still restrict populations, as well as users, in such a non-subscription-based environment.

Benefits

From the point of view of the supplier, the principal benefit of defining the user as only those who are part of an institution's population is that it protects the information from access by other users. Such a limit is especially important to suppliers under contracts that call for unlimited access.

Institutions, too, may benefit from contracts that call for prohibition of access from individuals outside their institutions inasmuch as it protects the institution's infrastructure and technological resources.

For those institutions serving multiple populations (a state university system, for example), unlimited access to information for all authorized users may offer great advantages, assuming a reasonable price is paid for such unlimited access. It may also be the least complicated, as far as monitoring goes, since fewer devices are necessary to keep track of users and usage.

Occasionally, in order to limit use and thereby limit fees, institutions may opt for paying for simultaneous users or agree to place a cap on access, based upon a portion of their total user population.

In certain instances, unlimited access agreements may also benefit the suppliers of information. Unlimited access may release suppliers from the burden of having institutions gather and release in-depth information on users and usage.

However, suppliers may prefer to restrict access to a predetermined number of simultaneous users (or a percent of the population) in order to limit access to servers that do not have sufficient capacity to provide unlimited access.

What's more, fee structures may also benefit suppliers in restricted environments, rather than in unlimited environments. So, for example, if a fee is based on 100 simultaneous users (or a cap of 1,000 users), as the number of simultaneous users increases (or the population cap rises), suppliers may seek additional fees.

A difficult, long-range, business question was also uncovered when discussing "Defining the User." In order to isolate transactions with potential future customers, some suppliers of information currently do not allow intermediaries to sell the original information supplier's services to the intermediary's customers. Some felt this is short-sighted. Most preferred to engage in a collaborative effort to market effectively to a customer's customer and so view this as a marketing opportunity, rather than a form of competition.

Overall, both buyers and sellers of networked information have good reason to negotiate agreements which limit (or lower) the costs associated with the accounting, reporting, monitoring, etc. of use since it benefits both sides.

Risks

The risk to suppliers of information, especially in large institutions (as well as public ones--and in particular public libraries) is that the definition of the population can be so broad as to incorporate nearly everyone.

What's more, the risk for suppliers in an unrestricted use environment is that (especially in large institutions and public libraries), the subscription fee may not cover the costs of providing the information (or be adequately compensated for the value of the information provided). When suppliers offer direct access to information over networks, large-scale use and unlimited access may overwhelm the system capacity. As for the simultaneous use and an upper limit--or "cap" on use, the risk may come from monitoring and the supplier may be providing more than what is contracted.

On the buyer's side, buyers may be burdened with performing monitoring services they are not equipped to perform. A further risk is that simultaneous access and upper-limit "caps" open both sides of the agreement to further negotiating over access and price that they may not have originally intended.

It should be noted that these "caps" and simultaneous access with a stated maximum number of users are uncommon in this marketplace. Another potential risk when employing this model is that periods of heavy use are complex to predict and when peaks occur, they are invariably much more severe than anticipated. For example, in academic settings, the use of computer resources are mainly driven by class schedules. This makes peak conditions difficult to foresee and, compounding the problem, typical peak vs. normal capacity models do not apply because the peaks are in the extreme. The difficulty in managing peak vs. normal usage is a primary risk of models employing simultaneous users.

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Any comments, or feedback?		Last Update:   Wednesday, 03 July, 2002 - 04:22 PM - EDT