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Last modified: May 06, 2005
XML and Digital Rights Management (DRM)

"Officer, arrest that man. He's whistling a copyrighted song."

Several standards activities relating to digital rights management, access control, security, and encryption use or propose XML syntax. This document references some work relating to XML and digital rights management. A separate document covers patents and IP licensing issues in the sphere of markup language standards; see "Patents and Open Standards."

Key DRM Projects

Events

Articles, Papers, News

  • [May 06, 2005] In May 2005 the Open Archives Initiative published an Implementation Guideline specification for "Conveying Rights Expressions About Metadata in the OAI-PMH Framework". The specification defines mechanisms for data providers to associate XML-based rights expressions with harvested metadata that is queried and delivered via service providers using the Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Markup examples using Creative Commons and GNU licenses are provided. See details in the 2005-05-06 news story: "Open Archives Initiative Releases Specification for Conveying Rights Expressions."

  • [February 2005] ODRL DCMI Profile. In February 2005 the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) and Open Digital Rights Initiative (ODRL) announced the formation of a joint ODRL/DCMI Profile Working Group to develop a profile of ODRL/DCMI metadata usage. This profile "will show how to make combined use of the rights-related DCMI metadata terms and the ODRL rights expression language. This will enable richer rights management information to be captured along with DCMI descriptive metadata and support wider interoperability with digital rights management and open content licensing systems. The joint Working Group Chairs are Andy Powell (UKOLN, University of Bath) and Renato Iannella (ODRL Initiative)." ODRL Profiles were first announced at the ODRL International Workshop in April in Vienna (2004) as a formal means of showing how to use ODRL in specific technical environments. Profile Working Groups have now been formed to create ODRL Profiles for Geospatial Data, for Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) encoding, and for Creative Commons licenses. See also the ODRL DCMI Profile Working Group mailing list and archives.

  • [October 28, 2004] "RSA Throws Its Hat into the OMA DRM Ring." By [Bill Rosenblatt]. In DRM Watch (October 28, 2004). "RSA Security announced a DRM solution for mobile content, BSAFE Mobile Rights Management, in conjunction with the Jupiter DRM Strategies conference... BSAFE, which will be available in January 2005, supports the OMA DRM 2.0 standard and the ODRL 1.1 rights expression language. It is designed to integrate with RSA's server security software for identity, certificate, and access management... RSA has been a key (pun intended) contributor to the OMA DRM standards, so they have both proven expertise and strong relationships with the device makers and others that are implementing those standards. We had been wondering when one of the leading security infrastructure vendors (such as RSA, Verisign, or Entrust) would finally enter the DRM market... RSA's entry into the mobile content arena has broader implications for the trajectory of the OMA DRM standards. Because RSA's other products are standard features of corporate enterprise information security infrastructures, this could be a way for OMA DRM to find its way into corporate applications. Not all mobile content is for entertainment purposes; in the future, some will be strictly business..." See the text of the RSA announcement.

  • [October 11, 2004] "Digital Rights Management for Interoperable Mobile Services. How the Open Mobile Alliance Enables Increased Revenues for Handset Vendors and Mobile Operators." By Willms Buhse (CoreMedia). In Wireless Business and Technology Volume 4, Issue 3 (September/October 2004). "The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) was created in June 2002; its membership now includes over 400 mobile operators, content, service and applications providers, wireless vendors, and IT companies. In late 2002, OMA released the OMA DRM version 1.0 enabler, its first set of specifications. Based on a subset of the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) Rights Expression Language, and entirely royalty-free, the OMA DRM v.1.0 has been adopted by all the major parties in the content value chain. This includes handset vendors such as Motorola, Nokia, and Siemens, and various European and Asian software providers, such as CoreMedia... While handset manufacturers are implementing DRM on their mobile phones, operators are integrating the DRM server components into their content delivery infrastructure... OMA DRM v.2.0 implements a DRM, REL v.2.0, defined as a mobile profile of the ODRL. This expression language addresses the principal concerns of content providers — protection of sensitive information and purchased content that is in possession of the customer; prevention of unauthorized use and distribution of content; and avoidance of tampering with content, either during transmission or as a case of unauthorized reuse. Accordingly, numerous content suppliers have announced support for OMA DRM v.2.0, among them Sony and Time Warner. Carriers and handset vendors, who see significant revenue enhancement opportunities by offering pervasive mobile access to premium rich content, are expected to release handsets that have implemented OMA DRM v.2.0 by 2005. Handsets and other mobile devices that support OMA-defined DRM technology are already on the market. Currently about 80 models are available in all categories. Given that the specifications were released 14 months ago, this can be considered a tremendous success. As OMA DRM has penetrated into the OS and into, for example, Nokia's widely used Series 60, it has become easy for handset manufacturers to implement DRM. Some leading handset vendors have decided to release DRM in all of their phone models. For these devices, the enhanced DRM v.2.0 specifications represent the next step in pervasive mobile access..." See also: "Open Mobile Alliance Releases Working Drafts for OMA DRM Version 2.0."

  • [October 06, 2004] "EU Wary of Microsoft DRM Purchase." By Wendy M. Grossman. In Wired News (October 06, 2004). "In a move to prevent Microsoft from using its dominance in PC operating systems to control the burgeoning field of digital rights management, European regulators are considering blocking the company's acquisition of an influential DRM patent holder. The EC's focus is primarily on Microsoft, against which it has mounted a number of recent actions. According to the EC's press statement, 'After a preliminary review, it appears to the commission that the transaction might create or strengthen a dominant position by Microsoft in the market for digital rights management (DRM) solutions.' Although the DRM market is still in flux, as it grows those patents could provide their owners significant control over all types of content. That control could arguably be even more significant if Microsoft is able to leverage its dominance in the desktop market so that its technology becomes the gateway through which all content must pass to reach consumers. This is especially true since ContentGuard claims that its patents cover all rights-expression markup languages, the tags that establish what people can do with digital content. If that claim is upheld in court, it could block the development of alternatives intended to aid libraries and other public domain sources. Gary Barnett, IT research director with London-based firm Ovum, believes that the ContentGuard case is in fact much more significant than the EC's recent Media Player action, in which it ordered Microsoft to unbundle its player from the Windows operating system..." See: (1) press coverage; (2) the 2004-08-25 European Commission announcement: "Commission Opens In-Depth Investigation into Microsoft/Time Warner/ContentGuard JV."

  • [August 25, 2004] "EU to Probe Microsoft-Time Warner Buy." By Dawn Kawamoto. From CNET News.com (August 25, 2004). "European antitrust regulators are set to launch a thorough investigation into a plan by Microsoft and Time Warner to acquire digital rights management company ContentGuard, a development that's seen as a setback for the deal. 'After a preliminary review, it appears to the Commission that the transaction might possibly create or strengthen a dominant position by Microsoft in the market for digital rights management solutions,' the agency said in a statement. 'In the course of the investigation, the Commission will also investigate further competition concerns related to the vertical integration of Microsoft in other markets.' The Commission is concerned that, under joint ownership, ContentGuard may have both the 'incentives and the ability' to use its portfolio of intellectual-property rights to put Microsoft's rivals in that area at a competitive disadvantage. 'This joint acquisition could also slow down the development of open interoperability standards. As such, this would allow the (digital rights management) solutions market to 'tip' towards the current leading provider, Microsoft'... and because the digital rights technology is expected to become pervasive throughout the IT industry, the Commission said it is concerned Microsoft's position in the market 'may have spill-over effects on a number of related markets, ranging from mobile telephone to word processors'..." See the announcement: "Commission Opens In-Depth Investigation into Microsoft/Time Warner/ContentGuard JV."

  • [August 19, 2004] "OASIS Rights Language Committee Dissolves." By Bill Rosenblatt. From DRM Watch (August 19, 2004). "The OASIS Rights Language Technical Committee (RLTC) officially dissolved at the beginning of August 2004, thus ending what promised to be an important initiative in rights expression language standardization when the committee was formed in March 2002. OASIS is a body that oversees a wide range of XML-related standards; the RLTC was instigated primarily by ContentGuard, which sought to find an official standards body to take over the development of its XrML rights expression language. Membership of the RLTC included representatives from Microsoft, HP, Sun, CommerceOne, IBM, Verisign, Reuters, and others. ContentGuard's IP portfolio, which it initially inherited from Xerox, includes patents on the use of a 'rights grammar' in what we now call a DRM implementation. Although Mark Stefik of Xerox PARC invented a specific rights language, DPRL, and ContentGuard developed DPRL into XrML, the company's patents do not specify any one particular rights language. Therefore, ContentGuard sought to get XrML established in the market by giving it over to a standards body for further development, with the understanding that whatever language resulted from that development would still be covered by its patents. ContentGuard made a so-called RAND declaration to the RLTC, signifying that any implementations of the RLTC's language would read on its patents, which it would license under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, in accordance with OASIS's policy on intellectual property licensing. Unfortunately, the RLTC became bogged down in a number of issues that impeded progress. These included concern over the implications of InterTrust's patent dispute with Microsoft over DRM intellectual property (coupled with InterTrust's lack of participation in the RLTC) and over proliferation of related standards initiatives in other bodies, such as IEEE and IETF. Some observers also felt that progress was held up by arguments over how to account for consumers' rights in copyright law, such as fair use in the US, fair dealing in the UK and Canada, and private copying in many EU countries..."

  • [July 09, 2004]   DCMI Usage Board Announces Approval of Metadata Terms for Digital Rights Declaration.    The Usage Board of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) has announced approval of the rights-related terms "License" and "Rights Holder." The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is "an open forum engaged in the development of interoperable online metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models." The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set is a standard for cross-domain information resource description, implemented in markup languages perhaps more widely than any other metadata specification. Version 1.1 has been endorsed as ISO Standard 15836-2003, NISO Standard Z39.85-2001, and CEN Workshop Agreement CWA 13874. The new DCMI term "license" is an element-refinement for "rights" and provides for reference of a legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. The DCMI recommended best practice is to identify the license using a URI. Examples of such licenses can be found at the Creative Commons web site. The new term "rightsHolder" identifies a Rights Holder as a person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. The DCMI Recommended best practice for this element is to use the URI or name of the Rights Holder to indicate the entity. The proposal for adding new DCMI rights terms articulates a goal of supporting standard practice concerning rights declarations on the Internet. The design especially recognized that "the recent emergence of the Creative Commons as a clearinghouse for rights declarations affords an opportunity to improve standard practice, particularly for resources that have been developed with the intention of cost-free distribution, but whose creators wish to formally declare various rights." The authors believe that both Creative Commons proponents and Dublin Core adopters "will benefit by having a clear approach to formal rights declaration in a widely adopted metadata framework on the Internet." A growing collection of open source software tools supports the creation of Creative Commons machine-readable licenses and embedding of license metadata within digital objects.

  • [June 22, 2004] "The Hill's Property Rights Showdown." By Declan McCullagh. In CNET News.com (June 22, 2004). "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is under siege. For the first time since it was enacted in 1998, the DMCA has become the target of a large and growing number of critics seeking to defang the controversial law. The legislation says Americans aren't permitted to circumvent encryption guarding certain digital media products — even if the purpose is to make a backup copy of a computer program or DVD. On Tuesday, a new group called the Personal Technology Freedom Coalition is planning a press conference to reiterate its members' support for a proposal to repeal the portion of the DMCA that has drawn the most condemnation. Its organizers already have met with representatives of about 20 congressional offices, and they say the coalition includes key tech companies like Intel, Sun Microsystems, Gateway, and Philips Consumer Electronics North America. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., introduced a bill called the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (HR 107). It would allow the circumvention of copy protection as long as no piracy is taking place. Boucher: 'Our intellectual-property laws have always been intentionally porous, and the porous nature of those laws, accommodating, for example, the Fair Use Doctrine, has enabled the society to have a right to use intellectual property in certain circumstances without having to obtain the permission in advance of the owner of the copyright... Many companies that primarily produce intellectual property oppose this [reform] measure. So does the Business Software Alliance, which is dominated by Microsoft. It is, some believe, sort of Microsoft's alternative voice in the nation's capital. The passage of the DMCA was the crown jewel of the legislative efforts of the content-creating community of the last two decades, because it was a dramatically blunt instrument. It criminalizes conduct that most people would believe should be innocent, such as circumventing technical protection in order to exercise a fair-use right'..."

  • [June 22, 2004] "Tech-heavy Coalition Supports Fair-Use Legislation. Support Grows to Allow Making a Limited Number of Copies of Restricted Products." By Grant Gross. In InfoWorld (June 22, 2004). "A group of technology vendors, consumer rights groups and Internet service providers (ISPs) have banded together to support 18-month-old U.S. House legislation that would allow consumers to make personal copies of copyrighted digital products, including movies and music. The Personal Technology Freedom Coalition on Tuesday kicked off its efforts to get the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, introduced in January 2003, through Congress. The legislation, sponsored by Representative Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, would allow consumers to break copy controls to do such things as make personal copies of compact discs or movies. Supporters of the bill say it's necessary to protect consumers' so-called fair-use rights to make personal copies, which the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) curtails. 'We don't think it's illegal to buy CDs and videos and make a small number of copies for personal use,' said Representative Joe Barton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee... The Personal Technology Freedom Coalition kicked off Tuesday with a Capitol Hill press conference and support from more than two dozen organizations and companies. Supporters ranged from the United States Student Association and Consumers Union to tech giants Intel Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Gateway Inc. Four major telecommunications carriers and ISPs, including Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp., also joined the coalition. The coalition launched on the same day that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced 482 new lawsuits, including 206 in Washington, D.C., against alleged song uploaders using peer-to-peer services to trade music... Some companies are using the DMCA to stifle research into security holes, added Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association. 'It is an attempt to use intellectual property not really to protect intellectual property, but to block competition,' he said..."

  • [June 19, 2004] "Microsoft Research DRM Talk." By Cory Doctorow (Electronic Frontier Foundation). June 17, 2004. Text dedicated to the public domain, using a Creative Commons public domain dedication. This talk was originally given to Microsoft's Research Group and other interested parties from within the company at their Redmond offices on June 17, 2004. "Greetings fellow pirates! Arrrrr! I'm here today to talk to you about copyright, technology and DRM. I work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation on copyright stuff (mostly), and I live in London... Here's what I'm here to convince you of: (1) That DRM systems don't work; (2) That DRM systems are bad for society; (3) that DRM systems are bad for business; (4) That DRM systems are bad for artists; (5) That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT... At the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group meetings where the Broadcast Flag was hammered out, the studios' position was, 'We'll take anyone's DRM except Microsoft's and Philips'.' When I met with UK broadcast wonks about the European version of the Broadcast Flag underway at the Digital Video Broadcasters' forum, they told me, 'Well, it's different in Europe: mostly they're worried that some American company like Microsoft will get their claws into European television.' American film studios didn't want the Japanese electronics companies to get a piece of the movie pie, so they fought the VCR. Today, everyone who makes movies agrees that they don't want to let you guys get between them and their customers. Sony didn't get permission. Neither should you. Go build the record player that can play everyone's records. Because if you don't do it, someone else will..." Source: http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt.

  • [May 31, 2004]   Open Mobile Alliance Releases Working Drafts for OMA DRM Version 2.0.    The OMA Browser and Content (BAC) Download and DRM Sub-Working Group has released several draft specifications as part of the OMA DRM 2.0 Enabler Release, announced in February 2004. The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Digital Rights Management technology "enables the distribution and consumption of digital content in a controlled manner, where content is distributed and consumed on authenticated devices per the usage rights expressed by the content owners. OMA DRM work addresses the various technical aspects of this system by providing appropriate specifications for content formats, protocols, and rights expression languages." OMA DRM 2.0 builds upon core DRM functionality specified in the OMA DRM 1.0 Enabler Release, now supported on more that fifty (50) mobile handsets. The new OMA DRM enabler release "takes advantage of expanded device capabilities and offers improved support for audio/video rendering, streaming content, and access to protected content using multiple devices, thus enabling new business models. It enables the protection of premium content such as music tracks, video clips, and games, with enhanced security and improved support to preview and share content." Support for OMA DRM 2.0 has been announced by numerous mobile device vendors and content suppliers. The OMA DRM 2.0 Enabler Release Specification Baseline introduces the five principal documents: DRM Rights Expression Language V2.0 defines the XML/ODRL-based rights expression language used to describe the permissions and constraints governing the usage of DRM protected media objects. The DRM Specification V2.0 defines the the format and semantics of the cryptographic protocol, messages, processing instructions and certificate profiles, including the Rights Object Acquisition Protocol (ROAP) messages, the domains functionality, transport mappings for ROAP, binding rights to user identities, exporting to other DRMs, the certificate profiles, and application to other services"; these features are outlined in the OMA DRM Requirements. A DRM Architecture document defines the overall architecture for DRM 2.0 including informative descriptions of the technologies and their uses. DRM Content Format V2.0 defines the content format for DRM protected (encrypted) media objects. XML schemas are provided for Rights Object Acquisition Protocol (ROAP) protocol data units, Rights Object Acquisition Protocol trigger media type, and the OMA DRM Rights Expression Language. The OMA DRM Rights Expression Language (REL) V2.0 is defined as a mobile profile of the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL). ODRL is an XML-based rights expression language free of licensing restrictions, providing a lightweight formal mechanism for specifying rights independently of the content type and transport mechanism.

  • [June 01, 2004] "Rights Expression Languages: A Report for the Library of Congress." By Karen Coyle. Commissioned by the US Library of Congress, Network Development and MARC Standards Office. Published February 2004. 53 pages. See the background and introduction provided by Sally H. McCallum. "Rights expression languages (RELs) are part of the technology of digital rights management. Both are recent technologies and still in their formative stages. The first RELs were developed in the late 1990's and none can be considered to be fully deployed at this date (2004). This report provides an analysis of a representative sample of RELs that vary from relatively simple expressions of rights holders' preferences to highly complex components of a trusted systems environment. The four featured RELs are: CreativeCommons, METSRights, Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL), and MPEG-21, Part 5 (MPEG-21/5). The paper develops categories to aid in the analysis of the RELs. The goals and purposes of the RELs are characterized as: (1) expression of copyright, (2) expression of contract or license agreements, (3) control over access and/or use. An understanding of these different purposes can be used to explain many of the differences between these and other RELs. In particular, the degree to which RELs are intended to be machine-actionable is a determinant in the kinds of rights that can be expressed in the REL. A machine-actionable REL must use very precise language and can nearly guarantee compliance with the terms of the machine-readable license. This REL cannot, however, support social or legal concepts like "fair use." On the other hand, broader and less precise RELs must rely on agreement and trust for enforcement, which means that there is a risk that some unauthorized use of the digital resource could occur... The main purpose of this paper is to expose the underlying goals and assumptions of a range of existing rights expression languages, and to establish a taxonomy that will allow us to evaluate RELs in relation to sets of requirements. This taxonomy may also aid in the further development of languages that serve specific or general needs." The author notes in the section 'Business Models of Rights Expression Languages' that the RELs analyzed are "significantly different from each other in terms of their business models — that is, in terms of how they themselves can be licensed and used." Three of the four RELs studied have no license requirements for use: Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL), Creative Commons, and METSRights (METSR). They are open specifications, delivered patent-free by their designers, and are freely downloadable on the Internet. MPEG-21/5 must be purchased from ISO; it is based upon the legally encumbered (patented) XrML(TM) from ContentGuard, recently acquired by Time Warner and Microsoft. [cache]

  • [April 12, 2004] "Microsoft and InterTrust Settle Outstanding Litigation and License Intellectual Property." - "Microsoft Corp. and InterTrust Technologies Corp. today announced that Microsoft has taken a comprehensive license to InterTrust's patent portfolio for a one-time payment of $440 million. The agreement resolves all outstanding litigation between the two companies. InterTrust receives rights under Microsoft patents to design and publish InterTrust reference technology specifications related to digital rights management (DRM) and security. Microsoft and InterTrust believe this agreement will accelerate adoption and development of DRM technologies... The settlement agreement ensures that Microsoft's end-user customers can use Microsoft products and services as they are intended to be used without requiring a license from InterTrust. In addition, software developers who build products that use Microsoft platform technology will not require an InterTrust license for normal and expected uses of the Microsoft technologies... 'DRM solutions are essential to secure valuable personal, business and commercial content in a massively connected world,' said Will Poole, senior vice president of the Windows client business at Microsoft. 'With our existing technology and IP portfolio combined with our new agreement with InterTrust, Microsoft is committed to working with the broader industry to accelerate the promotion of DRM standards and solutions. Microsoft and our partners are delivering the most powerful and flexible rights management solutions in the industry, while assuring customers that we have the IP necessary in striving to secure our products'..."

  • [February 12, 2004] "How Will Office 2003 DRM Impact Interoperability?" By Paul Cesarini (Assistant Professor, Advanced Technological Education Program, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio). In IT Manager's Journal (February 12, 2004). "Last October, OpenOffice.org released the 1.1 version of its office productivity suite. This update included native PDF and Flash conversion, complex text layout language support, and increased compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats. Roughly a month later, Microsoft released Office 2003. This product was freshly-infused with digital rights management (DRM) technologies, dubbed 'information rights management' by Microsoft, designed to secure and restrict access to documents as needed. Documents employing DRM created in Office 2003 may well only be accessible via Office 2003. More recently, Microsoft filed for numerous patent applications in New Zealand and Europe, covering the interoperability of XML-based word processing documents... What do these tactics mean for interoperability between current and pending versions of Microsoft Office and competing products such as OpenOffice.org and StarOffice? Are the goals espoused by Microsoft, namely increased document security, the driving concern behind these moves, or is this a careful strategy designed to lock out competition? [...] Louis Suarez-Potts, OpenOffice.org's community manager argues that the point of files using [Microsoft] DRM is not to simply to make them more secure, but rather to enable an end-run around interoperability. 'On a superficial level, the point of DRM is to limit free access to only those applications able to read DRM-delimited documents', Suarez-Potts said. 'Put another way, MS Office will generate a class of files which only people with the same kind of MS Office will be able to open, let alone edit.' Additionally, Suarez-Potts added that '[OpenOffice.org] will doubtless have better equivalents, ones that are just as secure and conceivably also as limiting.' Suarez-Potts also believes that Microsoft's strategy is unlikely to succeed, due to the required software investment in both server and client sides -- particularly since both the sender and receiver of IRM-enabled Office files would have to buy in to these upgrades..." See: (1) "Microsoft Files for Patents Related to XML Parsing and Word Processing"; (2) "Microsoft Announces Licenses for Use of Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas"; (3) "Microsoft Announces Windows Rights Management Services (RMS)."

  • [January 30, 2004] "Tech Giants Lock Down Wireless Content." By Ben Charny, Richard Shim, and John Borland. In CNET News.com (January 30, 2004). ['A group of technology heavyweights is expected to announce new technology for securing music and video on wireless devices. Bottom line: Development of a wireless content security specification could help spur new mobile media services -- and pose a fresh challenge to Microsoft and others developing similar technology.'] Formerly known as "Project Hudson," the DRM effort "will kick off publicly Monday, with the announcement of new digital rights management (DRM) specification from industry group the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), as well as the formation of a new licensing body led by Intel, Nokia, Panasonic and Samsung that will promote the technology, according to sources. Toshiba was originally a member of the licensing group but has since backed out. The licensing entity will be known as the Content Management License Administrator (CMLA) and will promote an implementation of the latest version of OMA's digital rights management standard... CMLA aims to ease piracy concerns among movie studios and record labels over a growing number of devices, including cell phones, capable of connecting to wireless networks. According to one source familiar with the plan, the DRM scheme will be built into mobile handsets, allowing encrypted files to be streamed onto compliant devices. Known as OMA DRM 2.0 Enabler Release, the specification could also potentially support devices connected in wireless networks based on the 802.11 standards, or Wi-Fi. Despite being a relative newcomer in the crowded DRM space, the CMLA plan has already won some early support from major content owners... Software makers hope to cash in on the media industry's demand for DRM by supplying security standards that could ultimately give them a slice of the profits every time a song or movie is bought or played online. They also stand to reap substantial fees from hardware companies that would be required to license their technology in order to legally play back most copyrighted music and videos. A wave of competing and incompatible DRM products has hit the market from Microsoft, Apple Computer, Sony, IBM, RealNetworks and others, creating interoperability headaches for consumers. For example, Apple's best-selling iPod digital-music player supports only the company's own flavor of DRM, which is used on songs purchased from its iTunes Music Store. DRM-protected songs purchased from other music download stores can't be played back on the iPod, nor will iTunes songs play on any MP3 player other than the iPod. Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications and Siemens make a total of 46 handsets that use an early version of OMA's DRM, while Ericsson and Openwave Systems make servers that use the technology, according to OMA's Web site..."

  • [December 2003] "Open Mobile Alliance: Digital Rights Management. Short Paper, copyright (c) 2003 Open Mobile Alliance Ltd. December 2003. 8 pages. "OMA began working on mobile Digital Rights Management (DRM) specification in 2001 in response to clear market demand. Content and service providers saw mobile phones as a lucrative channel to distribute their copyright protected content, thus a content copyright protection system was needed to protect their investment... The OMA DRM 1.0 Enabler Release was developed rapidly in order to reduce time to market. The Enabler Release was published in November 2002 and was immediately available for companies to implement in their mobile products. OMA DRM version 1.0 Enabler Release was created to meet the above listed content and service provider, and vendor requirements. OMA DRM 1.0 includes three levels of functionality: (1) Forward Lock -- prevents content from leaving device; (2) Combined Delivery -- adds rights definition; (3) Separate Delivery -- provides content encryption and supports superdistribution... The purpose of Separate Delivery is to protect higher value content. It enables so called superdistribution, which allows the device to forward the content, but not the usage rights. This is achieved by delivering the media and usage rights via separate channels. The content is encrypted into DRM Content Format (DCF) using symmetric encryption; the DCF provides plaintext headers describing content type, encryption algorithm, and other useful information. Rights object holds the symmetric Content Encryption Key (CEK), which is used by the DRM User Agent in the device for decryption. The Rights Object is created by using OMA Rights Expression Language (REL). OMA Right Expression Language is a mobile profile of ODRL (Open Digital Rights Language) Version 1.1..." See also "Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL)." [cache]

  • [October 02, 2003] "MPEG LA Announces Plan for Joint Patent License for DRM Technology. DRM Reference Model and Call for Essential DRM Patents Represent First Step." Dividing the loot: MPEG LA has "issued a call for patents that are essential to digital rights management technology (DRM) as described in DRM Reference Model v 1.0. DRM refers to technologies for managing the authorized use of digital content. The purpose of the DRM Reference Model is to begin a process of evaluating and determining patents that are essential for DRM in order to provide users with convenient, fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory access to a portfolio of essential worldwide patent rights under a single license... The DRM Reference Model represents the first phase in a continuing three-step process. Phase II is a call for patents to be evaluated for their essentiality with respect to the DRM Reference Model, and Phase III will be the convening of an initial patent holder group in order to decide the terms of a joint patent license... Version 1.0 of the Model will serve as a tool for the initial call for patents and an evaluation of their essentiality by independent patent experts resulting in the prompt formation of an initial patent holder group to decide terms of license..." For background to this problem, see: "Navigating the Patent Thicket: Cross Licenses, Patent Pools, and Standard-Setting," by Carl Shapiro.

  • [September 26, 2003]   RoMEO and OAI-PMH Teams Develop Rights Solution Using ODRL and Creative Commons Licenses.    Project RoMEO (Rights Metadata for Open Archiving) has completed its first year of operation with funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and has published a rights solution report. A sixth interim Study and the Final Report describe an XML-based system for the expression of rights and permissions governing metadata and resources in institutional repositories. A principal goal of RoMEO, like that of the Creative Commons, is to neutralize the negative effects of (default) copyright law and controlling intermediaries in order to facilitate easy, open access to protected digital works. On this model, consumers do not need to ask permission for use of resources because permission in various forms has already been granted. The RoMEO Project team sought to develop an interoperable set of metadata elements and methods of incorporating the rights elements into document metadata processed by the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). The goal is to protect research papers and other digital resources in an open-access environment. The project team has developed an XML metadata notation using the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) and Creative Commons licenses for disclosure of the rights expressions under the OAI-PMH. The markup model covers both individual digital resources and collections of metadata records. A new 'OAI-RIGHTS' Technical Committee has been formed by members of the RoMEO and OAI project teams to further develop the proposals and to publish generic guidelines for disclosing rights expressions.

  • [September 23, 2003] "Experiences with the Enforcement of Access Rights Extracted from ODRL-Based Digital Contracts." By Susanne Guth [susanne.guth@wu-wien.ac.at], Gustaf Neumann, and Mark Strembeck (Department of Information Systems, New Media Lab, Vienna University of Economics and BA, Austria). Prepared for presentation at DRM 2003, October 27, 2003, Washington, DC, USA. 13 pages (with 38 references). "In this paper, we present our experiences concerning the enforcement of access rights extracted from ODRL-based digital contracts. We introduce the generalized Contract Schema (CoSa) which is an approach to provide a generic representation of contract information on top of rights expression languages. We give an overview of the design and implementation of the xoRELInterpreter software component. In particular, the xoRELInterpreter interprets digital contracts that are based on rights expression languages (e.g. ODRL or XrML) and builds a runtime CoSa object model. We describe how the xoRBAC access control component and the xoRELInterpreter component are used to enforce access rights that we extract from ODRL-based digital contracts. Thus, our approach describes how ODRL-based contracts can be used as a means to disseminate certain types of access control information in distributed systems..."

  • [September 22, 2003] "Sun Touts Liberty for Digital Rights Management." By Gavin Clarke. In Computer Business Review Online (September 19, 2003). "Sun Microsystems hopes to replicate an industry initiative for federated identity in the field of Digital Rights Management (DRM), to stymie Microsoft Corp's own controversial plans to control distribution of electronic content. The company has thrown its weight behind the OMA wireless group's effort to define a DRM specification on mobile devices. Ultimately, though, Sun hopes to build a coalition of vendors and end-users similar to the Liberty Alliance Project to drive uptake of DRM. Sun CTO John Fowler said a Liberty-style group would have the advantage of including input into specifications from end-users. Sun has helped work on a DRM specification at the Open Mobile Alliance, whose list of 200 members includes hardware vendors, ISVs, mobile specialists and content providers such as AOL Time Warner and Sony Inc. Liberty's members include end-users such as Amex and General Motors... 'Liberty was less about vendors who have technology and about the user,' Fowler said. Sun additionally believes mobile DRM for mobile systems to be important, given the expected growth rates in use of cell phones and other devices. Mobile platforms are also dominated by Sun's Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME), meaning any DRM specification could ultimately be built into the platform. Ironically, Microsoft is also an OMA member, meaning the company could end-up putting its name to DRM work that ultimately competes against its own. OMA is an amalgamation of formerly disparate wireless and mobile vendor groups, formed in June 2002..."

  • [September 06, 2003] "Don't Let DRM Lock You In. A Q and A with John Fowler, CTO, Sun Software." By John Fowler. In Features: Sun News, Video, and Resources (September 2003). "By including a proprietary digital rights management system into Microsoft Office, any data created in Microsoft Office can only readable and used by Microsoft tools which means that you must use the Microsoft platform. Don't think about this just in relation to PCs, this also extends to other kinds of devices that you use on your network. You are locking your data to a single vendor. This has always been Microsoft's strategy, but in the past it has been possible to work around this strategy. With Office 2003 and the inclusion of DRM, it will be impossible to work around. So in this case you can think of Microsoft as owning your data and it not being owned by you, because in order to read your data you have to have licensed technology from Microsoft and only Microsoft. From a long term strategic standpoint, this locks you into Microsoft into being your only technology provider to read your data..." See context in following reference.

  • [September 02, 2003] "New Office Locks Down Documents." By David Becker. In CNET News.com (September 02, 2003). "As digital media publishers scramble to devise a foolproof method of copy protection, Microsoft is ready to push digital rights management into a whole new arena -- your desktop. Office 2003, the upcoming update of the company's market-dominating productivity package, for the first time will include tools for restricting access to documents created with the software. Office workers can specify who can read or alter a spreadsheet, block it from copying or printing, and set an expiration date. The technology is one of the first major steps in Microsoft's plan to popularize Windows Rights Management Services, a wide-ranging plan to make restricted access to information a standard part of business processes. Analysts say it represents a badly needed new avenue for boosting sales of Microsoft's server software and an opportunity to lock out competitors, including older versions of Office. It also gives businesses that skipped on the last round or two of Office upgrades a new reason to bite this time... The new rights management tools splinter to some extent the long-standing interoperability of Office formats. Until now, PC users have been able to count on opening and manipulating any document saved in Microsoft Word's '.doc' format or Excel's '.xls' in any compatible program, including older versions of Office and competing packages such as Sun Microsystems' StarOffice and the open-source OpenOffice. But rights-protected documents created in Office 2003 can be manipulated only in Office 2003. 'There's certainly a lock-in factor,' said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft. 'Microsoft would love people to use Office and only Office. They made very sure that Office has these features that nobody else has.' Information Rights Management (IRM) tools will be included in the professional versions of all Office applications, including the Word processor and Excel spreadsheet programs. To use IRM features, businesses will need a server running Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 operating system and Windows Rights Management Services software. The server software will record permission rules set by the document creator, such as other people authorized to view the document and expiration dates for any permissions. When another person receives that document, they briefly log in to the Windows Rights Management server -- over the Internet or a corporate network -- to validate the permissions..." See other details in "Microsoft Announces Windows Rights Management Services (RMS)."

  • [May 15, 2003]   ACM Publishes CACM Special Issue on Digital Rights Management and Fair Use.    ACM's flagship journal Communications of the ACM dedicated a special issue to the theme "Digital Rights Management and Fair Use by Design." The April 2003 issue of CACM (ISSN: 0001-0782; Volume 46, Number 4) contains seven feature articles on the need to reconcile competing interests in the creation of DRM rules that govern fair use of copyrighted digital works. "Guest editor Deirdre Mulligan, Director of the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley, contends that content owners and policymakers have taken technology firms to task for their inability to enforce rules about access to copyrighted works. She calls on some of the most noted legal voices in the DRM debate to help provide technologists some answers, clarifications, and technical options." The articles document how "the public and its advocates, along with many copyright scholars, are voicing their concern that DRM -- whether legally mandated or privately adopted -- will lock up information in ways that thwart individuals' and institutions' rights to read, lend, resell, mix, and build on copyrighted works. A growing number of technology firms are deeply concerned over the dumbing down and locking up of the desktop computer."

  • [April 22, 2003] "Securing Digital Content." By Dennis Fisher. In eWEEK (April 22, 2003). "As Microsoft Corp. prepares to release the beta version of its anticipated and controversial Rights Management Services, a small security company has been quietly working on technology that could trump Microsoft's and make it easier for companies to control digital content... Cryptography Research Inc. has developed a technology that associates security measures with each piece of content instead of using a generic protection scheme for all copies. The security measures are contained in code that runs on a virtual machine inside a playback device. As the content is decrypted during playback, the virtual machine uses APIs in the playback device to determine whether or how the playback should proceed. The architecture includes a digital watermarking function that would let content owners identify every legal copy of a given piece of content. If a legal copy is duplicated, the illegal version could be traced. Under this system, each playback device would have a unique set of keys for decrypting content. The concept, which the company calls self-protecting digital content, grew from research to uncover a DRM (digital rights management) solution amenable to everyone in the debate over mandating copy protection. 'Both sides are missing the point. Mandating copy protection isn't realistic,' said Paul Kocher, president of Cryptography Research, based here. 'But [content owners] have a real problem. Piracy is illegal, and my job is to solve the security problem.' Kocher said the company has had discussions with Hollywood studios about licensing the technology..."

  • [April 17, 2003] "Sydney Firm to Protect 3G Content." By Nathan Cochrane. In Sydney Morning Herald (April 15, 2003). "A small Sydney maker of copyright enforcement technology has beaten Microsoft for the coveted crown of protecting content consumed by the next generation of multimedia mobile phones. IPR Systems' Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) version 1.1 has been adopted by mobile makers such as Nokia, Samsung and Sony-Ericsson, operators including Vodafone and open-standards-setting body the Open Mobile Alliance to safeguard copyrighted content distributed over third-generation (3G) networks. ODRL gives content creators the power to determine exactly how their material is to be used, including how many times it can be consumed, for how long it can be consumed before it expires and how many times it can be forwarded, if at all. IPR's four engineers built the Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) language in about two years before version 1 was commercially adopted by Nokia and others in preference to Microsoft's XrML standard, in part due to political reasons, says chief scientist Renato Iannella. 'ODRL is more concise and this is a critical factor for network bandwidth for the telcos,' Iannella says... Research group Datamonitor predicts the market for content over mobile phones will kiss $US 38 billion ($A 62.7 billion) in three years. Iannella says the mobile phone operators and content producers wanted to avoid the 'Napsterisation' of their services... ODRL is an open standard provided free to developers and phone makers in an attempt to spur wide adoption. IPR makes its money by providing systems that best take advantage of the standard, says its business development manager, Fergus Stoddart. 'Nokia started using ODRL internally but they realised the need to follow emerging standards rather than invent another derivative so they decided to contact us and join the ODRL initiative and put their weight behind it,' he says. Iannella says users of devices such as Nokia's 3650 multimedia messaging service mobile phone benefit by having explicit rights to forward media once it has been consumed..." From Nokia: "The Nokia Content Publishing Toolkit 2.0 is stand alone off-line Windows application which generates OMA DRM and Download OTA files. These standardized technologies allow protection and control of paid content as well as improvement of the customer experience by ensuring that only compatible content is downloaded to terminal." [See the example screen image of the application and sample ODRL OMA output.] "Forum Nokia provides the information needed to develop applications using the technologies Nokia's products support. Today these technologies include the latest wireless standards and protocols such as Bluetooth, Java, SyncML, MMS and Symbian OS, as well as the established mobile technologies WAP and Smart Messaging..."

  • [April 08, 2003] "Driving Content Management with Digital Rights Management." By Renato Iannella and Peter Higgs. White Paper. IPR Systems Pty Ltd. April 09, 2003. 9 pages. "There is often confusion in the market between the functions of Content Management and Digital Rights Management systems. This is understandable as both are dealing with the production and supply of digital content and share common technologies and techniques. However they are best thought of two sides of the same coin bicycle: Both are necessary to have a valuable and practical marketplace that brings content and relevant usage rights from creators to customers... Content Management has evolved and has now been segmented into Enterprise Content Management, Digital Asset Management, Media Asset Management, and Web Content Management. Similarly IPR Systems divides DRM into: [1] Digital Property Management (DPM), and [2] Digital Rights Enforcement (DRE). Digital Rights Management (DRM) involves the description, layering, analysis, valuation, trading and monitoring of the rights over an enterprise's assets; both in physical and digital form; and of tangible and intangible value. DRM covers the digital management of rights -- be they rights in a physical manifestation of a work (e.g., a book), or be they rights in a digital manifestation of a work (e.g., an ebook). Clearly, systems that manage and supply content need to interface to, or be closely coupled with, systems that manage rights... As content is created and managed (e.g., version control, digitisation etc), traded via an ecommerce exchange, and delivered to the consumer, appropriate rights information is also captured and managed in parallel. In many cases the CM functions and the DRM functions have high dependencies, such as the protection of the content at the consumer end of the transaction. The terms and conditions agreed on in the trade will need to inform the content rendering systems to ensure that the content is only used for the purposes acquired... Current rights management technologies are focused on managing downstream rights: the flow of content from a publishing organisation to consumers. This flow is predominantly of relative simple usages or 'passive consumption.' For example, the sale of music content, in which the end consumer can only play the audio file. A more complex market requirement is the management of upstream (content sourcing) agreements which can then be aggregated, managed and transformed into downstream usage offers and agreements. A key feature of managing online rights will be the substantial increase in this re-use of digital material on the Web. The pervasive Internet is changing the nature of distribution of digital media from a passive one way flow (from Publisher to the End User) to a much more interactive cycle where creations are re-used, combined and extended ad infinitum. At all stages, the rights need to be managed and honoured with services of various degrees of sophistication... The next two years will see an explosion in the production and distribution of digital content over the Internet. Much of this content will be re-used, aggregated and transformed to increase its applicability to its various markets. Content Management systems alone will not be able to cope with this need without addressing the rights management requirements. There are applications that are currently being developed that couple Rights Enabled Content Management Systems with open, standards based Rights Management Systems. When the integration is completed they will be at the forefront of the revolution in digital content marketing..."

  • [April 04, 2003] "Rights-Expression Language Is Key to Interoperability. [Digital Rights Management.]" By Bill Rosenblatt (President, GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies). In The Seybold Report Volume 2, Number 24 (March 31, 2003). ISSN: 1533-9211. "Most of the pain points concerning digital rights are essentially political and cultural. But a few are technical, such as finding a standard method for describing exactly what rights are conveyed, for what price and under what restrictions. Many proprietary schemes have been proposed and (mostly) discarded. What seems likely to work in the long haul is a rights- expression language that's rich enough, simple enough and open enough to satisfy all parties in this turbulent industry. As it happens, there are two such languages. Trouble is, there needs to be one... One of the technical factors impeding the growth of the digital rights management market is the lack of interoperability among the increasing number of DRM solutions available. Rights expression languages (RELs) offer the promise of packaging assets in different DRM-enabled formats with a single set of business rules, which saves effort and promotes interoperability among different DRM-enabled components of digital-media value chains. We'll take a look at the background of RELs in general and the two most prominent emerging standard RELs: Extensible Rights Markup Language (XrML) from ContentGuard, Inc., and Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) from IPR Systems Ltd... Today, a growing number of DRM technology vendors are adopting XrML, which is now at version 2.0; details are at www.xrml.org. Microsoft is incorporating either the full language or a subset in all of its DRM solutions, including Media Rights Manager for Windows Media audio and video, Digital Asset Server for Microsoft Reader eBooks and its recently announced Windows Rights Management Services for Windows Server 2003. Other adopters include the e-zine vendor Zinio and the Dutch infrastructure-software vendor DMDSecure. All of these companies have licensed ContentGuard's patents, as has Sony -- although the consumer electronics giant has yet to implement any technology based on XrML. ODRL, meanwhile, has made some headway in the wireless industry, thanks to efforts by the wireless giant Nokia. In addition to its adoption by the OMA, Nokia has released an SDK for implementing OMA download applications, and it has implemented the spec in its 3595 phone. ODRL is also supported in an open-source DRM package for the emerging MPEG-4 multimedia format called OpenIPMP, developed by New York-based ObjectLab Inc... For media applications, ODRL has the advantage of being more concise, meaning that rights descriptions in ODRL tend to be more compact than their equivalents in XrML and that ODRL interpreters can be smaller (in memory footprint) than XrML interpreters. The latter factor is especially important in the mobile-device space, where memory is at a premium; that is one reason why the Open Mobile Alliance (www.openmobilealliance.org) favored ODRL over XrML. ODRL also has some media-specific constructs that XrML does not share, including the ability to specify attributes of media objects such as file formats, resolutions and encoding rates..."

  • [March 05, 2003] "Does Fair Use Apply? Software Vendors Want the Kind of Lock on Products That Has Never Been Allowed in Book Publishing." By Ed Foster. In InfoWorld (March 03, 2003). "If I loan a book to a friend to read, am I committing an act of piracy? The day is fast approaching when at least some people will answer that question in the affirmative. Amid the sound and fury generated by our recent discussions of TurboTax product activation, an important point had to take a backseat to the more immediate concerns readers were expressing about Intuit's move to restrict use of pass-along CDs... So why don't we feel like pirates when we loan someone a book? Or, for that matter, when we give away a video, music CD, or DVD? Books may not be as subject to casual copying as software programs, but the music and motion picture industries are crying piracy even louder than the software industry. And even the worst of the anti-fair-use laws their lobbyists are pushing Congress to pass wouldn't block resale of a legal copy..." [Ed Note: Foster highlights a concern of many, viz., that 'fair use' and 'first sale' as constitutional [or natural] rights are being contemptuously dismissed by leading DRM- and "rights language" developers: "It's not our problem," they say, "and besides, design for protecting these kinds of rights is too complicated, sorry..."

  • [March 03, 2003] "Experts: Copyright Law Hurts Technology." By Robert Lemos. In CNET News.com (March 01, 2003). "Attempts to protect copyrighted material have strayed from their original purpose, say lawyers, technologists and academics, but few can agree on the solution. Speaking Friday at a University of California at Berkeley conference on the law and policy of digital rights management, experts from all circles seem to agree that more is going wrong than right with the current approach to protecting digital content. Moreover, they argue that current laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) -- which makes cracking copyright protections illegal, even when otherwise acceptable under other laws -- are serving the extremes, not the mainstream populace. 'There has to be a way between the lunatics at the two extremes,' said Larry Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University and well-known opponent of the DMCA. 'We need to build a layer of reasonable copyright law on top of this background of unreasonable extremism.' Such sentiments for loosening the control of copyright holders are finding far more fertile ground these days, in the wake of a number of lawsuits that illustrate the dangers of the DMCA. Far fewer people believe that the DMCA is an appropriate method to stave off digital pirates in the Internet age David Farber, law professor for the University of Pennsylvania, said that digital rights management systems need to be in place to protect not the minority of big corporations but the masses of people. 'I am not talking about protecting the media companies from people using their content,' he said. 'I am concerned with protecting my information and finding out who made copies of it.' Until copyright policy tilts back to the populace, people will likely resist such systems, said John Erickson, a system program manager for Hewlett-Packard Labs, who spoke on one of four panels Friday. 'We are taking the human being out of the equation...and putting a chastity belt on technology,' he said. He stressed that laws and technology, such as digital rights management, need to take constitutional issues into account. 'There is not social governance of what goes into a rights management language,' he said. 'If we are to have the regimes, we need to figure out how to have people in the loop'..." See: (1) Berkeley DRM Conference website; (2) BLCT Digital Library publications; (3) "Patents and Open Standards."

  • [February 25, 2003]   Microsoft Announces Windows Rights Management Services (RMS).    Microsoft has announced its upcoming release of a Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) technology for Windows Server 2003 that "will work with applications to support a platform-based approach to providing persistent policy rights for Web content and sensitive corporate documents of all types." The RMS technology uses "tested and proven security technologies, including encryption, digital certificates, and authentication. Putting persistent protections in the documents themselves helps customers control and protect digital information both online and offline, inside and outside the perimeter of the firewall. Because Rights Management policy expressions can remain within files during and after transit, rather than residing on a corporate network, usage policies can be enforced even when rights-managed information leaves the network. Policies can be used to control forwarding, copying and printing, as well as establishing time-based expiration rules. Permissions can be set to expire at a specific point in time, such as a number of days after publishing or at regular intervals, requiring acquisition of a new license. Using Windows Rights Management Services, applications such as information portals, word processors, or e-mail clients can be built so that users will be able to easily designate both who can have access to specific content and what kinds of access rights they can have." RMS technology uses ContentGuard's XrML (Extensible Rights Markup Language). "Microsoft will release two software development kits in the second quarter of 2003 to enable developers to begin to build rights management capabilities into a broad range of intra-enterprise solutions and applications for Windows clients." See entry following.

  • [February 21, 2003] "Microsoft Announces Windows Rights Management Services For Windows Server 2003. Rights Management Solution Will Give Organizations and Employees New Ways To Protect Information." - "Microsoft Corp. today announced plans for Windows Rights Management Services (RMS), a new technology for Windows Server 2003 that will give organizations advanced ways to help secure sensitive internal business information including financial reports and confidential planning documents. Windows Rights Management Services will work with applications to provide a platform-based approach to providing persistent policy rights for Web content and sensitive corporate documents of all types. Beta code for Windows Rights Management Services will be broadly available in the second quarter of 2003..."

  • [February 07, 2003] "Why DRM Sucks." By Gord Larose. From Gord's DRM pages, The Digital Rights Management Page: An Impartial Eye On A Key Battleground of the Net Economy." "Here are the objections from the half-empty camp. They are not true for all DRM systems. But they are true often enough, on balance..." Counterpoint: "Why DRM is Great."

  • [February 03, 2003] "Microsoft Protecting Rights -- Or Windows?" By Joe Wilcox. In CNET News.com (February 03, 2003). "Can Microsoft be trusted? How music labels, Hollywood studios and consumers answer that question could determine whether the software giant dominates digital media the way it does Web browsers or desktop productivity applications, say analysts... In mid-January, Microsoft unveiled a new toolkit that would let record labels create music CDs containing, along with the normal tracks, preripped Windows Media versions suitable for uploading to a buyer's MP3-type player or PC, but protected by Microsoft's digital rights management (DRM) technology to prevent copying and swapping. The toolkit, the DRM license and the use of the Windows Media Audio format is free for the labels, despite Microsoft's $500 million investment developing what many analysts regard as the best DRM technology available today..."

  • [January 28, 2003] "MPEG-4 on Road to Rights Management." By Stefanie Olsen. In CNET News.com (January 28, 2003). "A streaming-media consortium set a schedule this week for finalizing technical specs for MPEG-4 security and rights management--components that are key to the open standard's adoption among content owners. The Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) -- a global group of companies including Apple Computer, Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems--formulated steps to advance MPEG-4 into its final stages. MPEG-4 is a standard for compressing large audio and video files for delivery over digital multimedia platforms including Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It was developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group, the same group that designed MPEG-2 for digital television and MP3 for music files. First, the ISMA will open for review its technical specifications for the encryption and authentication of MPEG-4-compatible files at the National Broadcasters Association annual convention in April. It plans to set the standard by the end of the second quarter. Second, it will introduce a certification program that lets companies obtain an ISMA trademark proving that their products are interoperable with the standard. Finally, it has formed a content advisory board, which will direct the specification for digital rights management, one of the biggest hurdles to clear before content owners freely embrace the emerging standard... The Mountain View, Calif.-based nonprofit is pushing for the advancement of MPEG-4 technical standards at a time when proprietary systems are gaining traction among consumer-electronics manufacturers and content owners. The most formidable player, Microsoft, has pushed adoption of its latest multimedia delivery platform, Windows Media 9 Series, on PCs and beyond, recently licensing it for use on non-Windows operating systems. The lack of digital rights management has been the chief stumbling block for open standards and the companies whose products support MPEG-4, including Apple..."

  • [January 14, 2003] "Technology and Record Company Policy Principles." Issued Jointly by Business Software Alliance (BSA), Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP), and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). January 14, 2003. "The undersigned organizations have therefore agreed upon a core set of principles that will govern our activities in the public and policy arenas during the 108th Congress. These principles are: [...] Technology and record companies support technical measures to limit illegal distribution of copyrighted works, subject to requirements that the measures be designed to be reasonable, are not destructive to networks, individual users' data or equipment, and do not violate individuals' legal rights to privacy or similar legally protected interests of individuals... Technology and record companies believe that technical protection measures dictated by the government (legislation or regulations mandating how these technologies should be designed, function and deployed, and what devices must do to respond to them) are not practical. The imposition of technical mandates is not the best way to serve the long-term interests of record companies, technology companies, and consumers. Technology can play an important role in providing safeguards against theft and piracy. The role of government, if needed at all, should be limited to enforcing compliance with voluntarily developed functional specifications reflecting consensus among affected interests. If government pursues the imposition of technical mandates, technology and record companies may act to ensure such rules neither prejudice nor ignore their interests..." According to an analysis of Bill Rosenblatt in DRM Watch: "... the music industry (through the RIAA) has agreed to lobby against legislation that would require copy protection technology in all digital media devices, such as Sen. Ernest Hollings's (D-SC) Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). In exchange, leading technology vendors (including Adobe, Apple, HP, Intel, and Microsoft) will lobby against legislation, such as Rep. Rick Boucher's (D-VA) Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, that affirms the rights of consumers to space-shift digital content to different devices and to make backup copies of content... This agreement is primarily a victory for the technology vendors... Thus, like almost all previous offline machinations around the copyright law, this agreement does not proactively take consumers' interests into account..." See also the announcement "Recording, Technology Industries Reach Groundbreaking Agreement on Approach to Digital Content Issues."

  • [December 12, 2002] "Information Technology: A Quick-Reference List of Organizations and Standards for Digital Rights Management." Prepared by Gordon E. Lyon (Convergent Information Systems Division, Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology - NIST). NIST Special Publication 500-241. October 2002. 20 pages. "The field of digital rights management (DRM), sometimes called intellectual property management and protection (IPMP), is today a chaotic and not always workable mix of technology, policy, law and business practice. There are many organizations active in DRM. Under such circumstances, even a modest guide or index of active organizations can be useful. In March 2002, experts at a NIST cross-industry DRM workshop recommended that NIST take first steps toward such a guide. With the help of numerous workshop participants and others, this is the first edition of a DRM quick-reference list... The list has definite tradeoffs to preserve compactness and to limit maintenance. For example, the text contains many secondary-level acronyms that are left undefined -- a reader must resolve these terms via Web searching or similar external referencing. Additionally, entries are placed, dictionary style, in alphabetical order rather than under topics. Entries in the table largely constitute an attempt to assemble a short set of descriptions about organizations in DRM (who they are, what they are doing). The left side of each entry is a descriptor. The entry right side supplements by helping a reader explore further, usually at some Web site of an organization..." Note: 'To overcome barriers to usability, scalability, interoperability, and security in information systems and networks, the NIST Information Technology Laboratory programs focus on a broad range of networking, security, and advanced information technologies, as well as the mathematical, statistical, and computational sciences. This Special Publication 500-series reports on ITL's research in tests and test methods for information technology, and its collaborative activities with industry, government, and academic organizations.'

  • [December 09, 2002] "Towards a Digital Rights Expression Language Standard for Learning Technology." Draft DREL White Paper for discussion. A Report of the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee Digital Rights Expression Language Study Group. Principal Authors: Norm Friesen, Magda Mourad, Robby Robson. Contributing Authors: Tom Barefoot, Chris Barlas, Kerry Blinco, Richard McCracken, Margaret Driscoll, Erik Duval, Brad Gandee, Susanne Guth, Renato Ianella, Guillermo Lao, Hiroshi Maruyama, Kiyoshi Nakabayashi, Harry Picarriello, Peter Schirling. 29 pages. Posted 2002-12-09 by Robby Robson (Eduworks) to the LTSC-DREL mailing list. "This report has been generated within the context of the Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC) of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). The LTSC develops accredited technical standards, recommended practices and guides for learning technology. 'Digital rights' is an area of vital importance to all industries that deal with digital content, including the industries of learning, education, and training. As a consequence the LTSC formed a study group in 2002 to examine digital rights standards and standards development efforts in light of applications to learning technology. This effort has focused on digital rights expression languages, i.e., languages in which rights can be expressed and communicated among cooperating technologies. Digital rights themselves exist as policy or law and are therefore not within the scope of a standards development organization. Technology is involved in enforcing digital rights, for example by disabling the ability to make unauthorized copies, but the LTSC almost exclusively deals with standards that support interoperability and not with implementation issues of this type. In this spirit the LTSC study group concentrated on making recommendations for standardizing a digital rights expression language with the specific charge to (1) Investigate existing standards development efforts for digital rights expression languages (DREL) and digital rights. (2) Gather DREL requirements germane to the learning, education, and training industries. (3) Make recommendations as to how to proceed. Possible outcomes included, a priori, recommending the adoption of an existing standard, recommending the creation of an application profile of an existing standard, or creating a new standard from scratch. (4) Feed requirements into ongoing DREL and digital rights standardization efforts, regardless of whether the LTSC decides to work with these efforts or embark on its own. This report represents the achievement of these goals in the form a of a white paper that can be used as reference for the LTSC, that makes recommendations concerning future work, and that can be shared with other organizations..." [source .DOC]

  • [December 03, 2002] "Contentguard Licenses Patented Digital Rights Management Technologies to Sony for Development, Manufacturing and Marketing of its Products and Services." - "ContentGuard Inc. today announced a global licensing agreement with Sony Corporation. Under the agreement ContentGuard, which has a large portfolio of Digital Rights Management (DRM) related technologies, including early foundation patents covering DRM systems and digital rights languages, has licensed its DRM intellectual property to Sony for the development, manufacturing and marketing of Sony products and services. ContentGuard will receive license fees for Sony products and services that utilize patented ContentGuard DRM technologies..."

  • [November 13, 2002] "Philips and Sony Lead Acquisition of Intertrust." - "Fidelio Acquisition Company, LLC, a company formed by Sony Corporation of America, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics and certain other investors, has executed a definitive agreement to acquire InterTrust Technologies Corporation. As a result of the transaction, Fidelio will acquire all of the outstanding common stock of InterTrust for approximately $453 million on a fully diluted basis or $4.25 per share. The most important objective of the transaction is to enable secure distribution of digital content by providing wider access to InterTrust's key Digital Rights Management (DRM) intellectual property on a fair and reasonable basis..."

  • [November 13, 2002] "Sony, Philips Snap Up InterTrust." By Ryan Naraine. In InternetNews.com (November 13, 2002). "Music and consumer electronic giants Sony Entertainment and Royal Philips Electronics on Wednesday announced a $453 million acquisition of DRM specialists InterTrust. The purchase -- done through Fidelio Acquisition Company (owned by Sony, Philips and other unnamed investors -- comes at a crucial time for Sony, which is in the midst of the ambitious Movielink paid subscription service... 'The most important objective of the transaction is to enable secure distribution of digital content by providing wider access to InterTrust's key Digital Rights Management (DRM) intellectual property on a fair and reasonable basis,' the companies announced. InterTrust holds 26 U.S. patents and has approximately 85 patent applications pending worldwide. The company's patent portfolio covers software and hardware technologies that can be implemented in products that use DRM, including digital media platforms, web services and enterprise infrastructure..." Related article from InfoWorld.

  • [October 02, 2002] "DRM Bill Proposed in US House." By Gretel Johnston. In InfoWorld (October 02, 2002). Digital Choice and Freedom Act of 2002 (DCFA). "Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California whose district includes Silicon Valley, introduced the bill, saying the legislation seeks to maintain in the digital age the same balance that existing U.S. copyright law establishes between the interest of copyright holders in controlling the use of their works and the interests of the public in the free flow of ideas, information and commerce. The bill also prohibits shrink-wrapped licenses, also known as EULAs (end-user license agreements), that limit consumer rights, and the proposal clarifies the ways in which consumers can legally sell, archive or give away copies of digital works they purchased. In addition the law gives flexibility to digital content owners to develop new and innovative ways to protect their content and enable its use without violating copyright law... Lofgren's bill is supported by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, the Association of Research Libraries and the public interest advocacy organization Public Knowledge, all based in Washington. It also is backed by Stanford Law School Professor Larry Lessig, founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society..." See the press release: "Lofgren Vows to Protect Consumers in the Fight Over Digital Rights Management. Silicon Valley Congresswoman introduces bill to respect consumer rights and expectations." Also (1) the text, (2) summary, (3) support. Related news: "Tech Giants Back Fair Use bills" (Rick Boucher).

  • [October 02, 2002] "Dan Gillmor: Apple Stands Firm Against Entertainment Cartel." By Dan Gillmor (Mercury News Technology Columnist). In The Mercury News (October 01, 2002). "Intel's doing it. Advanced Micro Devices is doing it. Microsoft is doing it. Apple Computer isn't. What's Apple not doing? It's not -- at least so far -- moving toward an anti-customer embrace with Hollywood's movie studios and the other members of the powerful entertainment cartel... Unlike Microsoft, Apple hasn't asserted the right to remote control over users' operating systems. The era of Digital Rights Management, commonly called DRM, is swiftly moving closer, thanks to the Intels and AMDs and Microsofts. They're busy selling and creating the tools that give copyright holders the ability to tell users of copyrighted material -- customers, scholars, libraries, etc. -- precisely how they may use it. DRM, in the most typical use of the expression, is about owners' rights. It would be more accurate to call DRM, in that context, 'Digital Restrictions Management'..."

  • [September 16, 2002] "Microsoft to Expand DRM Push With Server." By Peter Galli. In eWEEK Volume 19, Number 37 (September 16, 2002), pages 1, 16. "Microsoft Corp. is pushing further into digital rights management with a plan for a DRM server due to go into beta testing later this year. DRM technology enables content creators, such as record companies, to encrypt content and define who can decrypt it and how they can use it. Microsoft is counting on increasing adoption of the technology to help drive demand for many of its current and future products. The company currently offers a DRM system, Microsoft Windows Media Rights Manager, which is being used by seven music and video subscription services. But its fate, once the DRM server is released, is not clear, as Microsoft sees a broader opportunity for the DRM server solution... 'Personal information such as medical and financial data; corporate information such as legal and business documents; and commercial content such as software, music and movies may all require DRM,' said a Microsoft spokeswoman, in Redmond, Wash. Other company officials are positioning the DRM server as an attempt to define read and write privileges more broadly than they are currently defined... Microsoft's goal is to find a way to incorporate a set of interfaces around DRM and its real-time communications server -- code-named Greenwich -- into the platform while still being able to develop and charge for solutions or services built on top of that..." Related news: "Microsoft Buys Liquid Audio DRM Patents."

  • [September 06, 2002] "OpenDRM: A Standards Framework for Digital Rights Expression, Messaging and Enforcement." By John S. Erickson (Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Norwich, Vermont, USA). The OpenDRM Project. Revised September 2002. 11 pages. Paper prepared for the NSF Middleware Initiative (NMI) and Digital Rights Management (DRM) Workshop, September 9, 2002. ['The lack of open, accessible, interoperable standards for digital rights management has often been cited by stakeholders as a leading cause for the slow adoption of DRM technologies. The fact that layered standards can contribute to interoperability should be obvious; that DRM standards developed in an open environment can contribute to the public interest is a more subtle, but equally important point. This document is a collection of thoughts that I have been developing and maintaining for several years on the notion of a multi-layered, open DRM standards architecture, which I think of as OpenDRM. Some aspects of this argument have been articulated in earlier works...']. Excerpts: "At its core, OpenDRM should provide a framework that defines open interfaces between at least three architectural levels of abstraction: rights expression languages, rights messaging protocols and mechanisms for policy enforcement and compliance... So-called rights expression languages provide the basis for expressing rights information and usage control policies, and as such can supply the payload vocabularies for a variety of rights messaging applications including: (1) Intellectual property rights (IPR) information discovery; (2) Simple policy expression, including constraints on access to resources; (3) Rights negotiation and trading, including rights requests and/or claims by information users; (4) The expression of rights agreements and electronic contracts (e-Contracts). Minimally, a rights language should provide vocabulary and syntax for the declarative expression of rights and rights restrictions. In order to guarantee interoperability and evolvability, we would expect a rights language to be inherently extensible: it must provide an open-ended way to express rights not anticipated by the language 'core.' Such extensions might accommodate new operations on content, including uses that are specific to particular media domains, or new contextual constraints... We believe that rights languages will prove to be important enablers of interoperability for systems that mediate access to resources. Although the principles underlying IPR-specific metadata have been around since at least 1993, the importance of standardized vocabularies and formats for expressing IPR policies has only recently begun to be appreciated at the application level [e.g., XRML, ODRL]. More recently, at least one alternative rights metadata schema has been developed for articulating a rightsholder's desire to turn over the public domain specific rights to works [Creative Commons]. It should be assumed that IPR policies must be expressed at different levels of abstraction, and therefore different vocabularies will be appropriate. To avoid chaos and to facilitate interoperability, we believe that some sort of rights language ontology will be required: a set of reusable terms for the basic rights concepts that can be mapped to different syntaxes. This is precisely the work that was begun by the <indecs> project in 1998, and is a fundamental basis of ODRL and, more completely, the <indecs>2-RDD Rights Data Dictionary project... This concept of interoperability through shared ontology is similar to what the ebXML working group has been trying to achieve with their core components approach to building interoperable business objects. Following that model, existing or future IPR expression languages could interoperate through translation via this shared semantic layer, rather than necessarily forcing applications and services to use a single common language..." [cache]

  • [August 15, 2002] Enshrining Fair Use in DRM: Submission to the OASIS Rights Technical Committee. By: Cory Doctorow (Electronic Frontier Foundation). August 14, 2002. Version: 1.5. "A copyright-complete DRM scheme must uphold the public's rights in copyright as well as those of rights-holders. Since fair use relies on the combination of unauthorized uses and the courts to evolve, a copyright-complete DRM scheme must permit unauthorized uses. To date, one proposed use-case has accommodated unauthorized uses consistent with fair use. If this standard is to "address the needs of the diverse communities that have recognized the need for a rights language," then the OASIS Rights TC should ensure that the standard can accommodate this use-case..." See also the collection of Requirements contributions to the Requirements Subcommittee, OASIS RLTC.

  • [August 15, 2002] "Supporting Limits on Copyright Exclusivity in a Rights Expression Language Standard. A Requirements Submission to the OASIS Rights Language TC." By Deirdre K. Mulligan and Aaron Burstein, with John Erickson (Principal Scientist, Digital Media Systems Lab, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories). August 13, 2002. 17 pages. Comments submitted by the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic on behalf of the Clinic and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). "Copyright law grants certain rights to purchasers and other users of copyrighted works. It is neither a legal nor a practical requirement for users to declare (or claim) these rights explicitly in order to enjoy them. While the public's legal rights cannot be altered by Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems per se, we can imagine scenarios in which DRM systems may require users to make these kinds of declarations, in order to work around inherent technical limitations. It is therefore essential that a rights expression language (REL) provide the vocabulary necessary for individuals to express, in a straightforward way, the rights that copyright law grants them to use materials. The user's claim of right would provide the essential information for a usage-rights issuing agency to give the user the technical capability to use the work in a particular way... In many instances it is important that both parties in the relationship be able to assert their rights and/or desired terms. True negotiation between parties requires that, at a minimum, the REL provide the vocabulary and syntax to support bi-directional exchanges. Otherwise, the rights transaction reduces to the mere request for and acceptance of an offer of permissions asserted by the rights holder. This document therefore suggests certain accommodations that DRM architectures, and especially their rights expression language components, must make to adequately express certain core principles of copyright law. Rights holders must have the means to express that a work is available on terms that reflect existing copyright law, as opposed to the limitations of a simple contract. The REL must also enable rights holders to express the more generous terms -- i.e., copyleft, with attribution -- commonly attached to digital resources today. At a minimum, recipients of works must have the ability to assert their rights as recognized under copyright law, and have these assertions reflected in their ability to use the work. Extending an REL to support a broader range of statements that reflect current law is, however; insufficient. The rights messaging protocol (RMP) layer must also be extended to accommodate both the downstream and upstream assertion of rights. We recognize that the RMP layer is not currently within the scope of this discussion, but we believe that the assumption of a one-way expression of rights has in part led to the current deficiencies in the REL..." Available also in original Word/.DOC format.

  • [July 15, 2002] "Federated Digital Rights Management: A Proposed DRM Solution for Research and Education." By Mairéad Martin, Grace Agnew, David L. Kuhlman, John H. McNair, William A. Rhodes, and Ron Tipton. In D-Lib Magazine Volume 8 Number 7/8 (July/August 2002). ISSN: 1082-9873. "This article describes efforts underway within the research networking and library communities to develop a digital rights management (DRM) solution to support teaching and research. Our specific focus is to present a reference architecture for a federated DRM implementation that leverages existing and emerging middleware infrastructure. The goals of the Federated Digital Rights Management (FDRM) project are to support local and inter-institutional sharing of resources in a discretionary, secure and private manner, while endeavoring to maintain a balance between the rights of the end-user and those of the owner. 'Federated' in our project title refers to the shared administration of access controls between the origin site and the resource provider: the origin site is responsible for providing attributes about the user to the resource provider. FDRM applies and extends the federated access control mechanisms of Shibboleth, a project of the Internet2 Middleware Initiative to develop 'architectures, policy structures, practical technologies, and an open source implementation to support inter-institutional sharing of web resources subject to access controls.' FDRM is being pursued by members of the VidMid Video-on-Demand Working Group, a collaboration between the Internet2 Middleware Initiative and the Video Development Initiative. The VidMid agenda is aligned with the goals of the National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative, a national effort to develop enabling middleware for applications in science, engineering, and education. While VidMid work is centered on enabling digital video applications, the application of FDRM is extensible to digital content in any format... FDRM employs existing Shibboleth federated authentication and authorization mechanisms and uses open source protocols, such as the Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML) and the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)... FDRM is designed for use with any authentication and authorization system, be it simple .htaccess files, Windows Domain Authentication, or LDAP authentication modules (LDAP). The architecture presented here is modeled on the Internet2 Shibboleth project. The Shibboleth model and architecture make a compelling foundation on which to build FDRM, since it is designed for federated application, built on open source XML-based messaging standards and open source directories, and is extensible, as our proposed reference architecture demonstrates. Shibboleth is also predicated on the establishment of trust communities. Most significantly, Shibboleth's emphasis on user privacy is one that is wholly shared by FDRM. This emphasis will mark a significant distinction between the FDRM solution and some current commercial DRM systems. The ability to track usage, protect the integrity of a resource, and manage version control is possible in FDRM, without compromising the privacy of the individual. In addition to applying the federated authentication and authorization mechanisms of Shibboleth, FDRM federates asset management..." See also: "Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)."

  • [July 04, 2002] "Microsoft Discloses Ambitious New Security Effort." From CNN News. June 25, 2002. "Microsoft Corp. has disclosed an ambitious new project to improve security by creating within its Windows software a virtual 'vault'" where customers would conduct electronic transactions and store sensitive information. The effort, called 'Palladium,' would require consumers to buy new computers and other devices equipped with ultra-secure computer chips from Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which already are involved in the project, or other companies... Under Palladium, Intel and AMD, the world's largest chipmakers, will redesign computer processors to include cryptography features. Palladium also will require changes to video and keyboard technologies to ensure that a customer's typed information is displayed without changes on the screen. That would require billions of dollars in new equipment upgrades by consumers, corporations and governments. Further, since a consumer's personal information will be scrambled within a vault and tied to a specific computer chip, that information could not readily be stored elsewhere in case of disaster or if the computer fails..." See the FAQ document by Ross Anderson and the Palladium reference page from EPIC. In this connection, note also the report that 'Palladium' style control is already being implemented by Microsoft. Thomas C. Greene reports 2002-06-30 in The Register article "MS Security Patch EULA Gives BillG Admin Privileges on Your Box": "If you caught our recent coverage of the Windows Media Player trio of security holes you may have followed a link to the TechNet download site for a patch, or you might have activated Windows Update. If you did the former (though, oddly, not if you did the latter), you would have been confronted with an End User License Agreement (EULA) stating, most ominously, that: "You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management ('Secure Content'), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer. If we provide such a security update, we will use reasonable efforts to post notices on a web site explaining the update'..."

  • [May 31, 2002] "Hollywood's Flawed Ploy for Stricter Copy Protection. [Will Uncle Sam Mandate DRM? Digital Right Management.]" By Matt McKenzie. In Seybold Report: Analyzing Publishing Technology [ISSN: 1533-9211] Volume 2, Number 5 (June 3, 2002). ['Hollywood's latest rear-guard attack on digital distribution is the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion bill that was recently filed in the U.S. Senate. It's bad law and bad economics. And it pits the normally apolitical Silicon Valley entrepreneurs squarely against the movie studios' PACs.']

  • [May 24, 2002] "Sony Licenses InterTrust's Digital Rights Technology." By Cara Garretson. In InfoWorld (May 23, 2002). "Consumer electronics giant Sony has agreed to license patents from beleaguered InterTrust Technologies to create digital rights management (DRM) technology, a deal valued at over US$28.5 million. InterTrust will receive this one-time fee plus future royalties from Sony, which plans to use InterTrust's patents as a basis for DRM features that will be integrated into its digital media products and services, InterTrust officials said on Thursday. The deal gives Sony rights to InterTrust's 24 existing U.S. patents, plus future rights to the 90 patents that are pending... Twelve-year-old InterTrust, which earlier this month announced plans to forgo product manufacturing and focus on licensing its intellectual property instead, is currently embroiled in a legal spat with Microsoft. In April of 2001 InterTrust filed a suit with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California claiming Microsoft's Windows Media Player and other products infringed upon its DRM patents..."

  • [May 2002] "Rights Markup Extensions for the Protection of Indigenous Knowledge." By Jane Hunter (DSTC Pty Ltd). Presented at The Eleventh International World Wide Web Conference, Sheraton Waikiki Hotel Honolulu, Hawaii, USA; 7-11 May 2002. "Indigenous cultures have experienced a renaissance over the past 5-10 years as indigenous communities have recognized the importance of documenting and sharing their cultural heritage and history. This has coincided with the explosion of the internet and the widespread application of multimedia technologies to the construction of large online cultural collections. Together these developments have triggered a demand for copyright protection mechanisms. A number of XML-based markup languages (XrML, ODRL) have been developed to support the expression of rights asssociated with the intellectual property of resources. The MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework standard being developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) aims to standardize such a language to enable the management and protection of intellectual property associated with multimedia content. However it has been widely recognized that modern intellectual property laws, which are rapidly assuming global uniformity, fail to protect indigenous knowledge adequately or to support traditional or customary laws governing rights over indigenous knowledge. This paper considers some of the requirements for the protection of indigenous knowledge and the enforcement of tribal customary laws associated with knowledge, which have been expressed by Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. It assesses the ability of the two major XML-based rights markup languages (XrML and ODRL) to satisfy these requirements and suggests extensions to these languages to improve their support for indigenous knowledge protection. The aim of this paper is to provide a starting point which will encourage input, feedback and suggestions from indigenous communities. This will enable a clearer understanding of their diverse requirements with respect to the protection of intellectual property and traditional knowledge and the development of a satisfactory solution through future collaboration and consultation..." [cache]

  • [April 24, 2002] "[