Digital Public Infrastructure for Authorship: A Joint Working Paper with Howard Law
AXM and Howard University School of Law have released a joint working paper exploring the concept of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) for Authorship.
The paper examines how the principles of digital public infrastructure — open, interoperable systems that serve as shared foundations for economic participation — can be applied to the challenge of authorship governance in the age of AI. Just as digital public infrastructure has transformed financial inclusion and identity verification in countries around the world, the paper argues that similar infrastructure is needed to ensure that authors, creators, and cultural institutions can participate meaningfully in AI-driven economies.
The working paper addresses several key themes:
The Authorship Gap. As AI systems train on and generate content at unprecedented scale, the infrastructure connecting human authorship to machine use has not kept pace. Authors and rights holders often lack visibility into how their works are accessed, no mechanism to express consent or conditions, and no structured pathway for economic participation.
DPI Principles Applied to Creative Works. The paper draws on established DPI frameworks — particularly those advanced through India's digital infrastructure stack and the G20 DPI dialogue — to propose analogous layers for authorship: identity (who created or controls the work), consent (what uses are permitted and under what conditions), and exchange (how value flows back to rights holders).
Infrastructure, Not Regulation Alone. While legal frameworks remain essential, the paper argues that regulation without supporting infrastructure creates an enforcement gap. Machine-readable consent, portable authorization, and interoperable rights registries are presented as necessary complements to policy.
The Role of Institutions. Libraries, archives, universities, publishers, and collecting societies are positioned as critical nodes in authorship infrastructure — organizations that already hold relationships of trust with creators and can serve as authorized custodians within a governed system.
The collaboration between AXM and Howard University School of Law reflects a shared commitment to ensuring that the governance of creative works in AI systems is grounded in both technical rigor and legal scholarship. Howard Law's expertise in intellectual property, civil rights, and technology policy brings essential perspective to questions about who benefits from AI's use of human-created works and how infrastructure can be designed to promote equity.
The full working paper is available on Medium.
We are grateful to Howard University School of Law for this collaboration and look forward to continued partnership at the intersection of law, technology, and authorship governance.