Practice first · national desks second · a later instrument only if Member States ask

Attribution

About this proposal

PRA is an informal public proposal for comment. It is not in force. Source A deeds and PD-V files can be practised now. Source B requires national law.

Author

W. A. Hasitha Supun Jayathilaka

Colombo, Sri Lanka. The proposal grew out of a practical problem: wanting to reprint several Sri Lankan books as proper hardbound editions, and being unable to trace who to ask. Older, foreign-authored histories of Sri Lanka turned out worse: the publishing houses that once held their rights had closed decades ago, and the rights closed with them. Some personal libraries were already printing rough, low-quality public-domain copies simply to have something on the shelf, the only workaround available. Repeated across enough titles, the gap looked structural rather than personal: a book can outlive the people and companies that once held its rights, with no record left of what happened to them.

A Diploma in Translation and Interpretation from the University of Kelaniya shaped how the proposal is structured. Tracing how the same book had been translated by different people into different languages, sometimes under territorial exclusivity and sometimes without it, made clear that a book's rights are rarely one simple thing; they are layered by component and by territory, which is the reasoning behind PD-V and COMP-X. The author is currently completing a BA (Hons) in Motion Graphics and Animation at the Academy of Design (AOD, affiliated with Northumbria University). The governance and dispute-resolution reasoning in the papers was also sharpened over two years of WIPO's own public training, including Scale Up Your IP, IP Panorama 2.0 with KIPA, the WIPO-ITU IPMC sessions and the 2026 IPMC advertising track, and a WIPO Mediation and Arbitration workshop.

The working papers are single-author drafts and have not been externally peer-reviewed. They are offered so that copyright offices, libraries, publishers and readers can read them in one place. The next step is to convene a PRA Working Group and run a functioning pilot together; see Governance for what that involves.

Related public work by the author includes the A-R-R-A Framework (Art → Right → Respect → Alignment) at arraframework.org. A-R-R-A is a separate ethical text. It is not a source of law and is not a condition of using a PRA mark.

Linseed, a licensing and attribution platform associated with the author, may implement a free public node. It does not own the marks, does not issue Source B, and does not keep reprint fees.

Governance

Record creation is open to any conforming node under published rules; certification is not automatic. Implementation conformance (PRA-compatible, PRA-conformant, PRA-reviewed) and record authority status (self-declared, institutionally reviewed, authority-recorded, authority-issued) are separate dimensions, both shown rather than merged. No record is deleted: correction happens through named status events, never erasure. No single node may unilaterally invalidate another node's record. The protocol and record format are published and open, so any conforming party may run a mirror. Recording a claim is explicitly separate from certifying that the claim is legally correct. The full governance model, conformance tiers, and challenge routes are set out on the Governance page.

Sources and precedents

PRA is a proposed design combination informed by existing rights statements, institutional rights databases, public-domain marking tools, orphan-work and out-of-commerce systems, and verifiable-credential standards. It does not claim to replace or receive endorsement from any of them.

The full, categorised source list, with the empirical and economic sources used in the provenance addendum, is in the working papers.

How this differs from the Google Books Settlement

The 2008-2011 Google Books Settlement proposed a global registry and an unclaimed-funds structure for orphan and out-of-commerce books, and was rejected substantially because it gave one private entity outsized, de facto control over orphan-work exploitation via a class-action mechanism that foreign rights-holders never opted into. PRA is built to fail that same test if it ever drifts toward it. It differs by design: no exclusivity, no private monopoly over rights data, no implied legal authority from inclusion in the register, public correction and challenge, multiple independent nodes, and dependence on actual national law rather than a settlement-created permission.

What happens on 30 September 2026

The texts are published openly, for public comment. They are not submitted to any specific national office, library, or international body as part of that publication. Anyone, including a national IP office, a library, or an international body, is free to read, cite, or comment on them like any other reader. The next step from here is the working group and pilot described above. None of this makes the marks binding.

Reuse of this site's explanatory text

Until a separate site licence is posted, treat the explanatory pages as available to quote with attribution to the author and a link to this site. The working papers keep the notices printed on their face. The mark names PRA-A, PRA-B, PD-V and COMP-X are proposed vocabulary, not registered certification marks on this page.

AI assistance disclosure

The proposal and this website are human-directed and human-accountable, with disclosed AI assistance. Generative AI tools were used during development for brainstorming, restructuring, language refinement, and rewriting of selected explanatory passages, including on this site and in the working papers. The author selected, checked, and takes full responsibility for the concepts, legal characterisation, sources, examples, and final text. No AI tool is an author, legal adviser, institutional sponsor, or source of law. Source citations were independently checked against the underlying publications or official materials. This proposal has not been peer-reviewed.

Privacy and hosting

This site does not intentionally use advertising trackers or analytics cookies. Standard hosting, security and server logs may process limited technical data for service operation and abuse prevention. Contact messages are retained only as reasonably necessary to respond, maintain correspondence, and address corrections.

Corrections and comments should go to contact@printingrightattribution.org. Please use a clear subject label: PRA correction for a factual fix, PRA challenge to dispute a record, or General comment for anything else. This site does not give legal advice.