The Digital Property Rights Language (DPRL) "is a computer-interpretable language, developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center under the leadership of Mark Stefik. DPRL is intended to support commerce in digital works, that is, publishing and selling electronic books, digital movies, digital music, interactive games, computer software and other creations distributed in digital form. [DPRL] is also intended to support specification of access and use controls for secure digital documents in cases where financial exchange is not part of the terms of use. One of the goals of DPRL in digital property rights is to develop an approach and language that can be used throughout the publishing industries and other industries as well."

"Xerox DPRL is an XML based syntax for specify the terms and conditions governing the use of a digital content. . . designed to be very flexible in order to support a wide variety of business models. . ." [Xerox ContentGuard Software Development Kit (SDK) documentation]. Version 2.00 of the DPRL specification, as documented in Digital Property Rights Language. Manual and Tutorial - XML Edition, ('November 13, 1998', review version ) provides a provisional XML encoding: "Usage rights specifications are represented using the element/attribute markup model of eXtensible MarkUp Language(XML). Collectively, the markup tags indicate what rights are in effect on a digital work." The formal grammar is presented in Appendix B (Grammar for the Digital Property Rights Language) in the form of an XML 'work specification' DTD.

"DPRL is used to specify fees, terms and conditions governing the use of digital content. DPRL is extremely flexible and supports multiple business models and rights protection policies, giving publishers the flexibility they need for their current and future businesses. DPRL supports multiple pricing models: subscription-based, outright purchase, purchase of individual rights (view, print, copy, edit, etc.), metered usage, time-based usage, and membership pricing. DPRL defines syntax for specifying rights for a digital document. Rights such as 'play,' 'print,' 'copy,' 'edit,' etc. can be grouped into named 'rights groups'."

"The design goals for DPRL are: (1) To describe rights, fees, and conditions appropriate for the commerce models that are important to publishers and consumers in digital publishing. (2) To provide standard terms for usage rights specifications that have useful, concise and easily understandable meanings. (3) To provide operational definitions of specifications for vendors of trusted systems that distribute or render digital works, so that the compliance of systems can be tested and evaluated. (4) To provide a basis of extensibility to new language features in a manner that does not unduly compromise the other goals."

"DPRL describes distinct categories of uses for digital works in terms of 'rights,' including rights to copy a digital work, or to print it out, or to loan it, or to use portions of it in derivative works. Digital property rights (or 'usage rights' for short) are rights associated with digital works and their parts that describe how the works can be used. Here are some basic concepts:

• Rights are associated with parts of a digital work (and with folders).
• Every class of usage right has a corresponding transaction.
• The transaction defines what a repository does when the right is exercised.
• Rights are described in sentences of a machine-interpreted language having a grammar.
• The transactions for a given work are parameterized by the information in the usage rights sentences for the work.
• The rights on a work can be changed later, if the change is authorized by the rights owner."

DPRL is now implemented in a ContentGuard product suite, based on the DPRL research developed at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox-PARC). ContentGuard provides: (1) a publisher - that converts documents from many popular file formats to encrypted Self-Protecting Documents; (2) a 'marketplace' - an online storefront that can be integrated with popular e-commerce servers; (3) rights server - back office server for handling all operations associated with ongoing rights tracking and enforcement; (4) Software Development Kit (SDK) - ContentGuard SDK is an integrated set of tools supporting the two key innovations from Xerox: The Xerox Digital Property Rights Language (DPRL) and Xerox Self Protecting Documents (SPD)."

References:

• [April 28, 2000] See now: "Extensible Rights Markup Language (XrML)." Also: Daniel Swift wrote on 'Mon, 01 May 2000 15:07:11 -0700', with respect to http://xml.coverpages.org/dprl.html, "[Subject: DPRL now XrML] 'Recently we launched a new site that discusses the latest information on XrML..."

• Xerox Rights Management - ContentGuard

• Digital Property Rights Language. Manual and Tutorial - XML Edition Version 2.00, 'review version. 86 pages. See the request form or [?] Digital Property Rights Manual. - "A Digital Property Rights Manual is available from Xerox which "explains the basic concepts for managing digital works in trusted systems, describes the language syntax and semantics, and provides examples of typical specifications of usage rights." [URL is 404 as of 1999-06-22]

• Draft DPRL XML DTD

• ContentGuard rights specification technology - Implementing DPRL. [local archive copy]

• "Digital Content and Intellectual Property Rights." By Arun Ramanujapuram and Prasad Ram. In Dr. Dobb's Journal Number 292 (December 1998), pages 20-27 [ISSN: 1044-789X]. "The Xerox Digital Property Rights Language (DPRL) can be used to specify rights for digital works. It provides a mechanism in which different terms and conditions related to access, fee, and time can be specified and enforced for the different operations on digital documents such as view, print, and copy. Additional resources include dprl.txt (listings). . . 'The authors present solutions developed at Xerox, Palo Alto, to combat intellectual property rights violations. They include a language that can be used to specify rights for digital works and active document objects containing encrypted content, rights labels, watermarks and active control, rights authorisation service, a payment system and rights management platforms for transactions.'" [listings, local archive copy]

• [June 24, 1999] "Toward an Open Rights Management Interoperability Framework." By John S. Erickson, Ph.D. (VP of Technology Strategy, Yankee Book Peddler, Inc.). (June 24, 1999). "With Xerox's upcoming unveiling of an XML-based version the Digital Property Rights Language (DPRL), I've been pondering to what extent Xerox and other rights management players (e.g., InterTrust) will work towards open standards. In particular, I'm curious to see if they'll work to foster a rights management interoperability framework analogous to (or perhaps falling within) the likes of ICE, cXML (Ariba), BizTalk (Microsoft), e-speak (HP), etc. From my understanding of Xerox's Rights Management Framework (RMF), this would minimally involve defining a set of tags such that the messaging aspects of RMF (perhaps RMF's rights services layer) could be expressed as XML-based messages that multiple applications/services could deal with. After participating for some time in various international "rights metadata" discussions, it is clear to me that a critical element to true distributed rights management will an open, service-level framework that enables peer-to-peer interoperation of rights management services and agents. On a broader scale, I've been trying to collect these thoughts as a working concept that I'm calling RightsTalk. I envision that the definition and evangelism for RightsTalk would be managed under a structure called RightsTalk.org. . ."

• "The Role of Metadata Supply Chains in DOI-based, Value-added Services." By John Erickson. In ICSTI Forum [Quarterly Newsletter of the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information], No. 30 (April 1999). With 18 references. This document frames the need for a framework such as RightsTalk. See also the document with the issue Table of Contents.

• Overview of DPRL by John Erickson. [Posting to NISO DOI List on Xerox DPRL and Rights Metadata.] In February 1998, John Erickson posted a review of DPRL based upon a 'December 1997' draft specification. The review is now dated (incorrect) with respect to DPRL version 2.0, which provides an XML syntax. In the posting, John provided an "example of what an instance of the DPRL schema might look like using the XML-Data DTD (based on the example work specification given on page 16 of the ['December 1997'] DPRL language spec."

• Press Release: "Xerox to Provide Rights Management for Digital Documents. Xerox ContentGuard Product Suite to be Shipped 3Q '99." [local archive copy]

• [June 21, 1999] "Guarding content. Xerox Enters the Rights Management Arena with ContentGuard. ContentGuard offers persistent protection with a small footprint." By Victor Votsch. In Seybold Report on Internet Publishing Volume 3, Number 10 (June, 1999), pages 27-28. [The Latest Word] "Xerox jumps into digital rights management with an end-to-end suite for protecting documents. ContentGuard, which was developed at Xerox's PARC research facility, also differs from most rights-management products in its server-based operation. It does not require the reader to install any client-side software in order to access documents. A small rights file is sent over the Web with the content. ContentGuard generates on-the-fly Self-Protecting Documents (SPD) that contain information on access rights. SPD files are encrypted and contain information specific to the user and the rights associated with a document. The SPD can determine the status of a user's request to upgrade his rights (print in addition to view) by checking with a master record on a secure Web server."

• See also on digital rights management:

  • OASIS Rights Language
  • Patents and Open Standards
  • XML and Digital Rights Management (DRM)
  • "Extensible Rights Markup Language (XrML)."
  • Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL)
  • MPEG Rights Expression Language
  • Extensible Media Commerce Language (XMCL)
  • Open Ebook Initiative. [Cf. 'Rights and Rules Working Group']
  • Electronic Book Exchange (EBX) Working Group

• Other privacy/rights references:

  • W3C PICS - Platform for Internet Content Selection. See the P3P Project FAQ and Activity Statement
  • Interoperability of Data in E-commerce Systems (<indecs>) - "<indecs> is an international collaborative project which seeks to develop a framework of metadata standards to support network commerce in intellectual property."
  • ContentGuard Links
  • <indecs> Links
  • DOI Home Page

• Contact: Sanjay Swamy, Xerox Rights Management Group. Tel: +1 650-813-6952; Email: sswamy@pahv.xerox.com.

• Contact: Sang Kim, Standards Manager, ContentGuard.com, Xerox. Tel: +1 (310) 333-8237.