# Outreach Letter: Internet Society (ISOC)

**Date:** 22 November 2025
**To:** Internet Society
**From:** Palimpsest Stewardship Council
**Subject:** Protecting Cultural Heritage and Creator Rights in Global Internet Governance

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Dear Internet Society,

We write to you with deep respect for ISOC's role as a global champion of an open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy internet. For over thirty years, the Internet Society has worked to ensure the internet remains a force for good—enabling innovation, fostering community, and supporting fundamental human rights across borders and cultures.

## The Palimpsest License: Cultural Heritage in the Digital Commons

The **Palimpsest License** addresses an emerging challenge for global internet governance: how to protect cultural heritage, creator autonomy, and meaningful attribution as artificial intelligence systems transform creative expression at scale. This directly implicates ISOC's core concerns around internet openness, multistakeholder governance, and cultural diversity online.

## Alignment with Internet Society Principles

### 1. A Global Internet for All
**ISOC:** The internet should be accessible globally, respecting cultural and linguistic diversity.
**Palimpsest:** Creative works should be shareable globally whilst preserving cultural context and indigenous knowledge systems.

Both frameworks recognise that global connectivity must not erase local cultural meaning.

### 2. Multistakeholder Governance
**ISOC:** Internet governance should involve diverse stakeholders—governments, civil society, technical community, private sector.
**Palimpsest:** Creative licensing should balance creator rights, public access, AI innovation, and cultural heritage protection through transparent community governance.

Both embrace collaborative decision-making over unilateral control.

### 3. Trust and Security
**ISOC:** Users should trust internet infrastructure and applications.
**Palimpsest:** Creators should trust that their works won't be extracted for AI training without consent, attribution, or cultural context preservation.

Both address power imbalances in digital systems.

### 4. Open Standards and Interoperability
**ISOC:** Open, transparent technical standards enable global internet functionality.
**Palimpsest:** Machine-readable licensing metadata (JSON-LD) and synthetic lineage tags enable global creative attribution across platforms and AI systems.

Both favour standardisation over proprietary control.

## Critical Internet Governance Challenges

### 1. AI Training and the Global Digital Commons
AI systems train on publicly accessible creative works from across the internet—news articles, Wikipedia entries, cultural heritage digitisations, social media content, open educational resources. This raises questions central to ISOC's mission:

- **Access vs. Exploitation:** When does open access become unconsented extraction?
- **Cultural Sovereignty:** How do indigenous communities control their digitised cultural heritage?
- **Attribution at Scale:** Can attribution mechanisms survive AI transformation?
- **North-South Dynamics:** Are Global South creators disproportionately extracted from without benefit-sharing?

### 2. Cross-Border Licensing and Jurisdiction
Creative works circulate globally but copyright laws remain territorial. Palimpsest's multi-jurisdictional framework (Dutch law + Scottish courts + international arbitration) addresses:
- Legal certainty for cross-border creative sharing
- European data protection standards (GDPR-adjacent)
- Hague Convention enforcement mechanisms
- Symbolic legal standing beyond strict territorial enforcement

### 3. Multilingual and Multicultural Internet
Palimpsest operates bilingually (Dutch/English) with provisions for:
- Cultural context preservation across translations
- Indigenous knowledge governance
- Diaspora narrative protection
- Symbolic attribution respecting diverse cultural practices

## How Palimpsest Works

### Key Mechanisms
1. **Informed Consent for AI Training** – Creators specify whether works may be used in AI training
2. **Synthetic Lineage Tags** – Machine-readable metadata (JSON-LD) embedded in AI-generated content
3. **Cultural Context Preservation** – Mandatory attribution of emotional lineage, symbolic meaning, community origin
4. **Quantum-Proof Traceability** – Future-resistant attribution using cryptographic and semantic methods

### Governance Model
- **Palimpsest Stewardship Council:** Multi-stakeholder body (creators, legal experts, technologists, cultural advocates)
- **Community-driven evolution:** Transparent proposal and ratification processes
- **Global accessibility:** Bilingual documentation, plain language guides, diverse format availability

### Technical Standards
- JSON-LD metadata schemas
- SPDX-compatible licensing identifiers
- RDFa/Microdata web integration
- Decentralised attribution (IPFS, blockchain-agnostic)

## Proposed Collaboration Opportunities

We would welcome ISOC's perspective and potential partnership in the following areas:

### 1. Internet Governance Forums
Presenting Palimpsest at:
- IGF workshops on AI governance and creator rights
- Regional IGF meetings (particularly Asia-Pacific, Africa, Latin America)
- Thematic discussions on cultural heritage, indigenous rights, and AI

### 2. Policy Development
Collaborating on positions regarding:
- AI training transparency and creator consent
- Cross-border enforcement of creative rights
- Cultural heritage protection in digital environments
- Multistakeholder governance for AI training datasets

### 3. Technical Standards Development
Working with IETF, W3C, and other standards bodies on:
- Attribution metadata standards
- Consent signalling mechanisms (analogous to robots.txt)
- Synthetic content disclosure protocols
- Decentralised licensing verification

### 4. Capacity Building
Developing resources for:
- Global South creators managing AI training rights
- Indigenous communities digitising cultural heritage
- Journalists protecting trauma narratives
- Artists navigating AI-generated derivative works

### 5. Cultural Diversity Online
Exploring frameworks for:
- Protecting minority language content from decontextualisation
- Supporting diaspora communities managing cultural narratives
- Enabling collective licensing (DAOs, cooperatives, indigenous councils)
- Balancing openness with cultural sovereignty

## Invitation to Dialogue

We would be honoured to present the Palimpsest framework to Internet Society leadership and working groups. We recognise that internet governance requires balancing competing interests, and we value ISOC's decades of experience fostering multistakeholder dialogue.

Would you be available for an initial conversation? We are flexible regarding format—participation in an IGF session, webinar presentation, written exchange, or in-person meeting.

## Contact Information

**Palimpsest Stewardship Council**
Email: [contact information to be provided]
Repository: https://github.com/[repository-path]
Documentation: [documentation URL]

Thank you for your consideration. The Internet Society has demonstrated that principled, multistakeholder governance can preserve internet openness whilst protecting fundamental rights. We aspire to extend those principles to ensuring creative expression retains its cultural context and meaningful attribution in the age of artificial intelligence.

With profound respect for ISOC's global mission,

**The Palimpsest Stewardship Council**

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## Appendices Available Upon Request

- Full text of Palimpsest License v0.4 (English and Dutch)
- Technical standards: JSON-LD metadata and attribution protocols
- Cross-border enforcement mechanisms
- Case studies: Cultural heritage, indigenous rights, AI training
- Multistakeholder governance framework
