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A transport right is the lending of digital transfer rights to various media. A transport right occurs when an owner of intellectual property legally consents to the lending, copying or transferring of a protected work.
The U.S. Copyright Act contains bundles of copyrights, and a transport right - a subset of other rights - is just one of these.
There are two types of transport rights: Exclusive and non-exclusive. The latter is a legally binding contract, whereas the former does not require a contract. The former may be in the form of an assignment transfer of copyright rights, where the content owner forgoes individual rights to control copyright privileges but passes those rights to a third party. Or, it may be in the form of an express license, where a copyright owner allows a third party to have varying ownership of the intellectual property rights, but the rights holder forgoes any right to sue the third party for liability. Protecting the copyright owner within the U.S. Copyright Act is the ability to terminate the transport right, thus taking back the copyright privileges in their entirety.
Transport rights, along with other digital rights management laws, largely favor the author or artists of digital media over consumers. As time goes on, it is going to become increasingly difficult for consumers to access all digital media, whether for entertainment or access to intellectual materials.