Digital Rights Management Technologies Research Articles

Does DRM Make Sense? An Analysis of Digital Rights Management Technology in the Wake of the National Information Infrastructure

Does DRM Make Sense? An Analysis of Digital Rights Management Technology in the Wake of the National Information Infrastructure

DRMFS: A file system layer for transparent access semantics of DRM-protected contents

In many digital rights management (DRM) schemes, only a specialized application can decode DRM-protected contents. This restriction is harmful to users because they want to use their purchased digital contents with their preferred applications. To relax this restriction, DRM technology should provide transparent access semantics of DRM-protected contents to authorized applications. Some previous schemes achieve limited transparent access semantics but have efficiency and applicability problems. In this paper, we propose a DRM control scheme at the file system layer (DRMFS) that achieves transparent access semantics of DRM-protected contents with efficiency, applicability, and portability. Since DRMFS is working at the file system layer, any authorized application can access DRM-protected content in the same way as using general files. To implement a prototype of DRMFS, we use the Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) library that is a well known library used to develop user level file systems. We explain details of the implementation and evaluate its performance. The evaluation results show that DRMFS has acceptable overheads.

Quantitative Evaluation of Enterprise DRM Technology

It is of critical business importance for organizations to keep confidential digital documents secure, as the potential cost and damage incurred from the loss of confidential digital documents have increased significantly in recent years. Digital Rights Management (DRM) was developed to help organizations keep digital documents secure, as one of many digital information security solutions.In this study, the functions of eight popular DRM products currently available on the market are reviewed, and the impact of using of these DRM products is evaluated quantitatively. A group of metrics is defined reflecting the potential costs and impact to the organization incurred by implementing DRM products. Stochastic models are used to quantitatively evaluate the costs and impact of implementing a particular DRM product. In this study, it is found that although DRM products protect digital assets by encryption and by providing central control on information within the organization, this comes at a cost, since these security mechanisms typically reduce the productivity of the staff. The reduction in productivity is in turn measured in the form of non-productive time (NPT) which is an inherent part of the stochastic modeling process.

Analysis and Design of Scalable DRM in VOD

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is an interdisciplinary and challenging research topic in recent years. VOD system becomes more and more popular due to its flexibility and convenience, but its program is prone to be copied and diffused illegally. Through researching on the VOD system and DRM technology, this paper incorporates and implements a scalable DRM system model in VOD, this model can expand DRM easily, and has good effect.

스마트카드 기반의 강한 보안을 갖는 DRM 모델의 설계 및 평가

Recently, digital rights management (DRM) related researches are widely spreading with prosperity of IT industries. The DRM technology protects proprietor of copyright by preventing mischanneling and illegal copy. In this paper, we propose a new DRM model that has an enhanced and efficient protocol based on certificate using smart card. The proposed model overcomes weaknesses of WCDRM model and has following additional advantages: first, copy protection is enhanced by hiding user`s specific information from attacker by storing the information within smart card; second, server load for contents encryption is reduced by making clear protocols among author, distributer, certificate authority, and users; third, offline user authentication is guaranteed by combining partial secret values in media players and smart card. Exposure of core information also is minimized by storing them in smart card. In addition, we show that the proposed system is more secure than WCDRM model by comparing various factors of anonymous attackers.

Fair Use and Digital Rights Management in the Light of U.S. Laws

This paper discusses the digital copyright management in the context of Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 1998. The increased ability to copy and distribute information, knowledge, and entertainment in the digitally networked age has provoked a series of responses. In order to gain back control, copyright holders have made use of so-called technological protection measures including, for instance, Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes - that are aimed at regulating the copying, distribution, and use of and access to digital works through code ('code is law'). The digital right management prevents the unauthorized use of authors’ original work. With the current technological developments in information technology, information can be accessed easily. In the wake of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) ban on the circumvention of DRM technologies used to control copyrightable works, DRM restrictions are now backed up with the force of law.

Tracing Pirated Content on the Internet: Unwinding Ariadne's Thread

Digital rights management (DRM) technologies have recently received many blows that might hamper their future. Copyright holders, by imposing tight restrictions on their assets' usability, have managed to infuriate consumers to the point at which the music industry has partly dropped DRM. Is multimedia content protection dead? Well, not quite yet. Discreet protection technologies, such as content fingerprinting and traitor tracing, are receiving increasing interest. Strictly speaking, these technologies don't prevent piracy. Instead, they permit enforcement of a damage control policy should piracy occur. Here, we focus on these technologies, particularly traitor tracing, which perhaps offers the most promising way to navigate the complex maze of Internet content piracy.

Towards Legal Protection for Digital Rights Management in India: Necessity or Burden?

Developments in India for laws that aim to provide protection for the application of digital rights management (DRM) technologies for [digital] media deserve more examination than assuming the need to adopt the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty, or World Intellectual Property Organization Performances and Phonograms Treaty. Here we take a look at the Indian copyright environment, how it developed from early times, the current climate, and questions facing reformers. The proposed changes to the Indian Copyright Act and the Canadian Copyright Act are based on the same treaties, however, the respective legislatures have taken divergent approaches on how to implement the new protections in the digital age.

The Battle over Digital Rights Management: A Multi-Method Study of the Politics of Copyright Management Technologies

Digital rights management (DRM) refers to various technological systems by which copyright holders seek to exert control over the use and circulation of their works. This dissertation explores the policy debate over copyright law as a potential vehicle for regulating DRM technologies. It examines this debate in three separate time periods, between 1989 and 2006, as it took place in Congress, in The New York Times and Washington Post, and online. It answers the question: Which policy actors communicate most regularly in which media about DRM and copyright law, and how has this changed over time? Methods used include quantitative content analysis of documents from all three media, qualitative historical policy analysis, and web graph analysis tools that quantify and map the hyperlinks between websites. This work builds upon and extends the methodology of using web graphs as a tool for identifying the most central actors within a topical cluster of websites. Results illustrate the birth and growth of a fairly unified multi-sector strong fair use coalition. Voices of opposition to the regulation of DRM via copyright have moved from profound underrepresentation to approximate parity in congressional access, successfully moved press coverage in a more favorable direction, and dominated the online debate. Policy outcomes reflect this shift; while the strong copyright coalition successfully pushed through two major laws expanding copyright in the 1990's, by the mid-2000's, the strong fair use coalition had fought them to a draw, stopping proposed expansions of copyright and winning key congressional allies for a proposal to reduce DRM regulations. This dissertation's results suggest the substantial power of online issue advocacy. In particular, the web benefits policy coalitions that have a disadvantage in financial capital but a comparatively large base of support. Coalitions still need regular interpersonal communication with policymakers, but online coalition building and advocacy appear to be of substantial help, legitimizing and amplifying the message of under-resourced coalitions.

Digital Games Distribution: The Presence of the Past and the Future of Obsolescence

Digital Games Distribution: The Presence of the Past and the Future of Obsolescence

Technological Standards, Inc.: Rethinking Cyberspace Regulatory Epistemology

Technological standardization by the private sector (de facto) is increasingly a means of evading existing law in network environments such as cyberspace. The U.S. government, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and theoreticians tend to view technological standards as the digital materialization of legal standards, and, like legal standards, technological standards are also optimally designed by decentralized regulatory institutions. This paper argues, however, that emerging classes of technological standards, such as digital rights management (DRM), should be analogized to legal rules, which are centralized, rather than decentralized legal standards. It does so from a critical viewpoint of the traditional law and economics literature on optimal lawmaking, with respect to the distinction and choice between rules and standards in the legal process. Arguably, for network environments, current developments show that technical standards are now going through a transformation from their traditional role of strictly regulating technical design of inanimate objects in the shape of legal form, to regulating behavioral performance of users in the shape of legal substance. Focusing on the latter, this paper concludes that when de facto standard setters create technological standards based on their policy preferences, rather than creating open-ended, less specific legal commands, they are turning their policy preferences into covert rules. Optimally, such rules would be created by centralized institutions. Nonetheless, this epistemological shift to technological standards regulating behavioral performance is also met by an opposite regulatory constraint due to high standardization costs for centralized institutions. Thus, while rulemaking is optimally performed by centralized institutions, the stealthy rulemaking activity of de facto standard setters requires an adapted checks and balances approach to technological standard setting. Given these invariable institutional constraints, this paper recommends treating the regulation of technological standards, such as DRM technology, with a rule-oriented approach.

Looking Ahead—Future Issues when Reflecting on the Place of the iConsumer in Consumer Law and Copyright Law

The following is a brief report of the discussion and main comments that were made during a workshop ‘The place of the iConsumer in EU and US law—protecting consumers of copyright protected content’, held in Amsterdam on 14 and 15 of December 2007. The workshop was part of a series of joint events organised by the Berkeley Centre for Law and Technology, University of California (BCLT) and the Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam on copyright and a follow-up to the conference on ‘Copyright, digital rights management technology and consumer protection’ that was held at the UC Berkeley in March 2007. The main goal of the workshop was to confront a consumer law approach with the more commonly discussed approach of internalising user-related questions directly into copyright law. To this end, a selected group of European and US experts in both fields, copyright law and consumer law, were invited. The participants were then asked to share their thoughts and views from the different fields of law with regard to a number of main statements given by the organisers. The transatlantic perspective further added to the discussion. The main purpose of this report is to point to a number of issues that, according to the workshop participants, should be taken into account in future discussions concerning the legal position of the iConsumer. This report summarises the discussion along the three statements that the organisers asked participants to consider. The report gives some background information for each of the statements, to then describe the main arguments made during the workshop, to the extent that this discussion has not already been internalised in the papers that are part of this special JCP issue.

The impact of digitization on business models for publishing

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to report the findings from a research project aiming to investigate the implications of digitization for the Australian book publishing sector and in particular for current and emerging business models. Recognizing the dynamic nature of the publishing industry in Australia with the rapid development of information and communication technologies, this study aims to address several critical research questions in the publishing industry in Australia as follows: what are the major trends emerging within the publishing industry in Australia? What implications do these trends have for business models? What technologies and applications offer the greatest potential for supporting value creation activities and business model development in the digital era?Design/methodology/approachA comprehensive review of the literature on business models is conducted, in particular, in relation to the publishing industry. The current status of the technology used in the publishing industry is explored, and the overall profile of the Australian publishing industry is established with the use of a document analysis method based on secondary data available. This leads to the development of an online questionnaire for surveying the book publishers in Australia, and results in the conduct of 14 follow‐up case studies, the latter forming the basis for the current paper.FindingsThe findings are that global trends towards consolidation and increasing competition are replicated in Australia, and that business models are responding, for example, with the emergence of hybrid models, embodying traditional elements and those consequent on the advent of digitization. It is also clear that the internet and related network technologies, along with content and digital rights management technologies are emerging as key to change, but those strategic decisions are ultimately based on business drivers rather than on emerging technologies.Practical implicationsThe research findings would be of significant benefits to Australian business, especially, the publishers in Australia in their endeavour to effectively deal with the challenges that the rapid advance in information and communication technologies has brought to every organization. These findings help organizations, including Australian publishers, realistically assess the impact of the digital technologies on their businesses and subsequently formulate effective policies and strategies for fully making use of the potential of the digital technologies for developing and sustaining their competitive advantages in the market.Originality/valueThe originality of this study is the use of a multi‐method approach for investigating the implications of digitization for the Australian book publishing sector and in particular for current and emerging business models. Such a study is of tremendous value to the Australian publishers due to the rapid advance of digital technologies; the need for a better understanding of the impacts of such technologies advances on publishers; and the increasing competitive market in publishing. The research findings would help Australian publishers and also other organizations develop specific strategies and polices for effectively dealing with the challenges from the rapid development of the digital technologies.

Determinants of distribution channel choice for online software license purchases: A theoretical model

The digital nature of software products combined with the advent of the internet has allowed for the proliferation of a new software delivery option: the digital distribution of software. Unfortunately, the diffusion of this new software delivery option has also facilitated copyright infringement and the distribution of pirated content. In response to these threats, software publishers have started applying various copy protection solutions to trial versions to make it more difficult for nonlicense holders to gain full access to products beyond their evaluation periods. In an escalating effort, some software publishers are now using digital rights management (DRM) technologies (among the various other distribution options they provide to their customers) when distributing software products online. By casting the software distribution channel choice as a transaction cost analysis (TCA) problem, this research proposes a theoretical model to uncover the reasons why, when purchasing a software license for a product that is marketed using a “try-before-you-buy” strategy, consumers would select the physical distribution channel not tied to any DRM technologies (ie, CD-ROM) rather than the digital distribution channel that uses DRM technologies (ie, electronic software distribution through demo-unlock).

The Magnificence of the Disaster: Reconstructing the Sony BMG Rootkit Incident

Author(s): Mulligan, Deirdre; Perzanowski, Aaron K. | Abstract: Late in 2005, Sony BMG released millions of Compact Discs containing digital rights management technologies that threatened the security of its customers' computers and the integrity of the information infrastructure more broadly. This Article aims to identify the market, technological, and legal factors that appear to have led a presumably rational actor toward a strategy that in retrospect appears obviously and fundamentally misguided.The Article first addresses the market-based rationales that likely influenced Sony BMG's deployment of these DRM systems and reveals that even the most charitable interpretation of Sony BMG's internal strategizing demonstrates a failure to adequately value security and privacy. After taking stock of the then-existing technological environment that both encouraged and enabled the distribution of these protection measures, the Article examines law, the third vector of influence on Sony BMG's decision to release flawed protection measures into the wild, and argues that existing doctrine in the fields of contract, intellectual property, and consumer protection law fails to adequately counter the technological and market forces that allowed a self-interested actor to inflict these harms on the public.The Article concludes with two recommendations aimed at reducing the likelihood of companies deploying protection measures with known security vulnerabilities in the consumer marketplace. First, Congress should alter the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by creating permanent exemptions from its anti-circumvention and antitrafficking provisions that enable security research and the dissemination of tools to remove harmful protection measures. Second, the Federal Trade Commission should leverage insights from the field of human computer interaction security (HCI-Sec) to develop a stronger framework for user control over the security and privacy aspects of computers.

Interoperable DRM Framework for Multiple Devices Environment

As networks increase and cross-convergence occurs between various types of devices and communications, there is an increasing demand for interoperable service in the business environment and from end users. In this paper, we investigate interoperability issues in the digital rights management (DRM) and present a practical framework to support interoperability in environments with multiple devices. The proposed architecture enables end users to consume digital content on all their devices without awareness of the underlying DRM schemes or technologies. It also enables DRM service providers to achieve interoperability without costly modification of their DRM schemes.

A tale of two DRM: The co‐construction of access and use rights for licensed digital library resources

AbstractThis paper explores the process by which access and use rights for licensed digital resources are co‐constructed between owners and users of intellectual property through a longitudinal social process. It describes this co‐construction process for the development of digital rights management (DRM) technologies on two digital scholarly resources—the Society for Automotive Engineers (SAE) Digital Library and ARTstor. The ARTstor DRM development process could be seen as “the best of times” where the vendor actively sought stakeholder input and engaged in user testing. In contrast, the SAE DRM development process can be seen as “the worst of times” where the publisher imposed a DRM on a user group with no input and no user testing. While in both cases the DRM were reconfigured after initial user reactions, the reconfiguration in the ARTstor case was relatively managed and positive in tone, and the reconfiguration in the SAE case was chaotic and openly hostile. Differences in the co‐construction of the DRM can be explained in part by differences in publisher attitudes toward academic libraries as customers, difference in the publishers' traditional business models, and differences in ownership of the content within the two digital libraries.

Privacy or piracy, why choose? Two solutions to the issues of digital rights management and the protection of personal information

The decrease of privacy caused by Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a serious issue, since it slows down the adoption by the consumers of DRM technologies at a time when a very large adoption is needed to win the fight against piracy. This article presents two outlines of solutions that are expected to allow the fight against piracy and the respect of privacy to coexist. The first solution consists of combining first-degree price discrimination and rewarded disclosure in a mutually advantageous trade. The second solution introduces a different type of DRM system that aims to make digital goods rival, thereby leading to anonymous DRM.

Enforcement and Control of Piracy, Copying, and Sharing in the Movie Industry

We review strategies that movie distributors have used to cope with piracy, copying and sharing of movies in the United States in four categories: ― "hard goods" commercial piracy, consumer theft of pay TV signals, consumer copying and sharing of videos and pay TV, and mostly in prospect--Internet file sharing. In the past, distributors have mainly sought to raise costs of engaging in these activities by increasing legal jeopardy, advantaging anti-copy technology, and reducing original sources of supply. They appear to have effectively reduced or contained most piracy, copying and sharing of movies in the U.S., at least with analog media. Movie distributors are following similar strategies with digital media, including Internet file sharing. Digital media raise the stakes because of lower costs of copying or sharing and higher quality of outputs. Digital outputs are not always as high quality as source originals, however, and Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies potentially improve distributor control. The movie studios now face technological, demand, and political uncertainties in the U.S., notably in maintaining or achieving technically compatible DRM systems to control file sharing and PPV/VOD copying. Implications for foreign markets and directions for research are discussed.

A System of Logo-Based Disclosure of DRM on Download Products

Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies are used in an increasing number of products and industries. In addition to contract law and copyright law, DRM provides a third means - a technological means - of limiting consumers' abilities to use products they buy. Because DRM has a separate enforcement mechanism than contract law, however, notice to consumers of the presence of DRM may yield different requirements than in other areas of law. Even should the law not provide such a notice requirement, however, there are many reasons, including economic, customer relations, and corporate goodwill reasons why companies that use DRM would be best served to provide adequate notice of the presence and implementation of DRM on their products. To date, advanced notice of the presence of DRM has been nearly nonexistent; notice almost always comes in the form of a clause in the End User License Agreement (EULA) provided to customers post-transaction. Providing comprehensive yet effective notice (likely to be acknowledged by the consumer) in advance of the transaction poses many difficulties. Yet actual and comprehensive notice, acknowledged by the end user, is necessary to undermine the economic, legal, and customer relations problems addressed above. This article recommends a uniform logo-based system to disclose the presence and details of DRM to consumers in advance of commercial transactions on downloaded products.