Proposed practice

A print-facing protocol for documenting the rights basis of reprints.

Reprints often carry too little information about what was reproduced, under what authority, in which territories, and with what limitations. Printing Right Attribution (PRA) is a proposed physical-copy protocol that places concise, component-level rights information on the verso of a reprint and links it to a public, challengeable record of the stated rights basis.

Bright-line rule A PRA mark never creates permission by itself. Permission exists only where applicable national law, a licence, a deed, or another identified legal instrument independently supplies it. A PRA mark communicates the scope and basis of a recorded claim. It is not a government certification, court determination, warranty of non-infringement, or substitute for legal advice. A PRA-ID identifies a record; it does not create a right.

PRA does not itself grant permission or determine copyright status. It records and displays the stated legal basis, territorial scope, component coverage, and evidence associated with a reprint.

What PRA adds

A concise rights notice printed on the physical book.
A stable PRA-ID linking to a public record.
Component-level and territory-specific attribution.
A visible history of corrections, challenges, and status changes.

What PRA does not replace

National copyright law.
RightsStatements.org.
Creative Commons tools.
Government orphan-work or out-of-commerce systems.
Publisher or rights-holder licences.
Institutional rights databases.

What a PRA record should answer

What was reproduced?
Who or what authorised it?
In which territories?
For which components?
For which uses?
What evidence, review, and authority status support the record?
What happens if someone challenges it?

PRA is designed to complement, not replace, national law, RightsStatements.org, HathiTrust rights metadata, Creative Commons' public-domain tools, and the EUIPO out-of-commerce works portal. See Built to map, not replace for exactly how.

PRA-A PRA-B P · N · C · T · R PD-V COMP-X

Permission

PRA-A / PRA-B

Two proposed permission-basis types. A rights holder signed a deed, or a named national authority issued a licence. Other lawful bases may exist outside this classification; without A or B, PRA itself asserts no permission.

Use

Profiles P N C T R

What the copy may do: personal, non-commercial, commercial, translation, regional. A profile is not a licence until it points at A or B.

Status · proposed

PD-V

After a documented search and assessment, listed components are believed free of copyright in listed territories as of a stated date. Not a licence. Not CC0. Territory- and component-specific, unlike a global public-domain mark.

Status · proposed

COMP-X

Named components are out of the grant or out of the PD-V finding. Stops "the book is old" from swallowing a living preface or plate.

How to read a verso

This edition uses the proposed Printing Right Attribution protocol. PRA-ID: 0000-0000-0000 (text string, do not rely on the QR code alone) Basis: PD-V (LK, IN) · text only Excluded (COMP-X): 1982 preface; cover design This mark communicates a recorded claim. It is not a government certification, court determination, warranty of non-infringement, or substitute for legal advice, and it does not by itself create permission to reproduce or distribute the work. Status: [register URL] The mark may be presented as currently operative only while the resolver shows the record as Active.

Illustrative record only, not an active legal record.

A PRA-ID identifies a record; it does not create a right. A stack is allowed: PRA-B · PRA-N · COMP-X means a national licence, a non-commercial reprint, plates out. The letters "PRA" with no suffix are not a valid mark. Full reading guide.

This is not

a new copyright right, a treaty, or an official WIPO document;
a Creative Commons licence or a RightsStatements.org statement issued by that consortium;
permission for a platform to license someone else's book;
a worldwide right to reprint, or a finding that "old" equals public domain;
proof that a reproduction is lawful: a record here shows that a claim, with stated evidence, review and authority status, has been recorded and made inspectable, not that the claim was verified correct;
a blockchain system, a cryptocurrency, or a tradeable token. A future implementation may use a ledger as one optional integrity layer; see Architecture.

Papers

An informal working paper, single author, not peer-reviewed, offered for comment, now including an explicit crosswalk to RightsStatements.org, HathiTrust, Creative Commons, and the EUIPO out-of-commerce works system, plus a governance model built on separate evidence, review, authority, and challenge fields rather than one collapsed ranking.

Read and download →

Linseed may host a node. It is not the exclusive registry, licensing authority, or payment holder. Any implementation of the schema is valid if the record is public, complete, and preserves history.

Proposed by W. A. Hasitha Supun Jayathilaka · Colombo, 2026 · texts offered for comment from 30 September 2026.