An Interoperable Digital Rights Management (DRM) platform based on ISO MPEG-21 Framework for the Hong Kong Creative Industries
David Chung and Lindsay Chung
Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited
Units 1102-1104, Level 11, Cyberport 2,
100 Cyberport Road, Hong Kong
{davidchung, lindsaychung}@cyberport.hk
Abstract
Cyberport’s iResource Centre (iResource.hk) is an information portal based on ISO MPEG-21 Multimedia framework to serve the creative industry in Hong Kong with the objective to create a unified platform for audio-visual content rights management. We tried to use a seven layers model to present the goal of MPEG-21 in systematic way to help users better understand the use of MPEG-21 framework. Based on this model, an Open DRM platform has been developed to deliver different types of rights information for exchange of digital goods.
1. Introduction
This paper will discuss an interoperable digital rights management (DRM) platform for audio and visual content owners to define a common set of content usage rules and licensing information.
The business potential of digital goods distribution and manipulation is huge in today’s knowledge economy and peer-to-peer networking environment, as are its economic, legal and social implications. However, the main business challenge for digital content creation is the illegal download and copying which lead to huge business lost to the creative industry.Digital Rights Management (DRM), as a technical interdisciplinary field, is at the heart of controlling the digital content and assuring authorized user friendly, safe, well-managed, automated, and fraud-free distribution. In the past, there are many DRM platforms being introduced for authorized distribution of digital content to serve the mass markets, in which the participants have conflicting goals and do not fully trust each other for example Windows Media, RealPlayer and iTunes DRM. A lack of standards in the DRM space is also a reason often offered by content distributors for not deploying DRM solutions. [2]
With the advancement of computer software, hardware and multimedia standard, it is now possible to develop an end-to-end trusted environment to deliver different types of rights information for exchange of digital goods. iResource.hk is effectively a centralized public license clearance platform to keep track of rights information and the use of digital goods by different end users.We will uniquely identify audio/visual items with a common set of metadata and numbering.By defining usage rights in standard based expressions (ISO MPEG-21 XrML) in order to achieve interoperability across multiple digital rights management platforms and to enforce usage rights across multiple digital rights management technology, platform and playback devices.To facilitate the exchange of information between the DRM platform and the commerce stores, web service will be used for passing content metadata and usage right information in XML format between the systems. The XML files are based on ISO MPEG-21 specification to allow maximum interoperability across different kind of systems. In our platform there are two types of users; content providers and consumers. The content providers are using the system to protect their digital items and the consumers are to consume the digital items in the protected format.
Before the platform development, we conducted consumer research on the acceptability of DRM and DRM related issues in Hong Kong. The research was to verify couple of key assumptions and formulate the development strategy:-
a)Demand for DRM in Hong Kong.
b)Standardization support
c)Trusted centralized clearance.
d)Flexible Business Model
e)Broadband connected computers as entertainment device
f)Explicit usage contract for digital items
g)Flexible payment methods
The initial findings of the research results had already published online for public review and comment. After the development, the system will also be vigorously tested by using the System Usability Scale (SUS) a reliable, low cost usability scale that can be used for global assessments of systems usability. We will report the user acceptance results and feedback for the improvement of the system later.
2. Knowledge Economy
“The knowledge that used to be tertiary after raw materials and capital in determining economic success is now primary. With this reality comes the need for more differentiated systems for determining who owns what intellectual property, better protection for whatever is owned and faster systems of dispute resolution when disputes arise- as they will”.[13]
Knowledge is bits of information flow in the internet age. With the advancement of computer chips, communication networks and software, ordinary people can access information at any place, any time. The computer with equipped low cost hardware and software which can play audio-visual works is becoming everybody’s hobby.
Since the Hong Kong SAR government set out the Digital 21 IT Strategy in 1998 and a revision in March 2004 [5]; to focus on building Hong Kong’s information infrastructure and creates an enabling environment for e-business to prosper. Cyberport is the IT flagship of the Government to promote technological development in Hong Kong.Hong Kong is now one of the cities with the highest PC and broadband penetration in the world according to report from Census and Statistic Dept (C&SD) of Hong Kong SAR Government. The C&SD’s Thematic Household Survey Report in 2005, Hong Kong has 2.298 Millions household and 56.9% aged 10 and over who had used internet service. Using PC for offline digital entertainment is about 47%, 97.3% use it once a week and average time is 5.6 hours per week. About 54.1% for searching and downloading information online (excluding Government information) and 37.3% for online digital entertainment. 89.6% using the PC at home and 39.9% at work and 15.9% at place of study.
According to a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, movies and other software are being downloaded from file-sharing networks more than music.The group also discovered that the number of video downloads grew slightly to 27 per cent of the pie in 2003 from 25.2 percent the previous year.
By 2008, music downloads will account for a third of music industry revenue overall according to Yankee Group. However, the recording industry reports that Peer-to-Peer piracy in 2003 cost record labels and artists some US$700 million in lost compact-disk sales. In UK, the British recording industry estimated that illegal music file-sharing costs the UK recording industry some 100 million pounds per year. The IFPI cites surveys showing that illegal file-sharing is a major factor in the fall of world music sales, which have dropped by more than US$6 billion in the last five years. In France, sales dropped by 15 percent in 2003 and by 22 percent in the first half of 2004; sales in Denmark are off by nearly 50 percent in the past three years; and in Germany CD album sales have dropped by over 30 percent since 2000.The CEO of Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Dan Glickman claimed that the worldwide box-office sales were US$23.5 billion in 2005, about $6.1 billion that the industry estimates was lost to illegal copying. About half of pirated material is in DVDs sold on street corners, but $3 billion comes from pirates stealing digital movies and posting them online. Or indirectly, the stolen movies are sent via the internet to facilities where illicit DVDs are made. The Hollywood studios have two websites to use DRM technology to offer movie via the internet, Movielink.com and CinemaNow.com.
Not all the industry player support the use of DRM to protect digital content, for example, Yahoo Music's general manager Dave Goldberg made a public statement “Lay off the DRM” speaking at the Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles on February 23 2006. This was the first time the head of a for-pay digital music service expressed negative viewpoint against DRM. Goldberg encouraged the industry to experiment with more MP3-based sales model, ie. transaction-based, subscription, and advertising support. Rather, he emphasized more innovative approach service functions which includes better playlist features, effective personal recommendations, better distribution across devices and platforms, and more seamless billing.
On 31 March 2006, the research firm Mintel International Group Ltd. reported that the actions of the industry killing the music sales and not just file sharing, which included lawsuits against individual consumers, payola practices, and, most recently, restrictive digital rights management.
3. Peer-to-Peer Superdistribution Network
Peer-to-Peer network concept is not something new and this concept was introduced by Mori in 1983 referred as “Superdistribution”. Since 1987, distribution work had been carried out by a committee of the Japan Electronic Industry Development Association (JEIDA), a non-profit industry wide organization. That committee is now known as the Superdistribution Technology Research Committee [21].
According to Brad Cox, Superdistribution is an information pump, a way of motivating people to supply information that other people are willing to buy. An ideal marketspace is a vendor-neutral place, a location that anybody can visit to play the role of either buyer or seller of digital goods [3]. The very successful Apple iTunes Music Store to sell legal music online as “Online Bit Vendors” [15], a merchant that deals strictly in digital products and services and, in its purest form, conducts both sales and distribution over the web. A world full of potential information-age entrepreneurs and a superdistribution system of debits and credits continues recursively, just as in any market [15].
iResource.hk is the information portal, which will play a major role in Hong Kong to facilitate the buyers and sellers of the digital content in peer-to-peer superdistribution network, in particular video and audio contents.
4. Myth or Realty?
There is much confusion for Copyright versus Useright; Digital Right, Copy Protection and Right Management, Copy Protection. We need to explain clearly the technology jargons before we can fully understand different DRM standards and initiatives.
4.1 Copyright versus Useright
Copyright is usually enforced with legal protection while useright usually use technological means to protect the interest of the rights owner [Renato Iannella].
Copyright – the right to copy the work.
- The right to reproduce or copy the work.
- The right to distribute copies of the work to the public.
- The right to prepare derivative works.
Useright – the right to use the intellectual property contained in a copy, regardless of how the copy was acquired.
- For audio-visual works, the right to use for personal enjoyment.
The owner of intellectual property can bundle these rights for sale in any formats or channels they want, and content can be freely distributed in protected form. Different technical approaches to manage useright will be discussed in the digital rights management section.
4.2 Digital Rights, Copy Protection and Right Management
Digital Rights
Digital rights are not just copyrights; it is the privileges for creating, distributing, using and managing the digital assets.
Copy Protection
Copy protection is concerned only with the delivery stage. Copy protection describes a technology used to overcome the risk of unauthorized usages in specific circumstances. Applied too broadly it becomes counterproductive and destroys the user experience or erodes word of mouth marketing. Not applied at all often reduces the likelihood of an appropriate creator return.
Right Management
Right management is to deal with who owns it? Who contributed to it? What uses are permitted? How much to pay? Who to pay? Right Management is the development of strategies and systems to allow the optimal balance between market access, creator and channel reward with user convenience. It requires management of the full lifecycle of the knowledge flow from creation, storage, trade and delivery.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is using technical measurement for controlling the digital content and assuring authorized user friendly, safe, well-managed, automated, and fraud-free distribution.
5. Digital Rights Management Standardization
Many of the existing Digital Rights Management systems in Hong Kong such as NOW broadband and DVD system provide contents in limited usage conditions and usage environment. Over the decade, many pioneers in the field of computing have tried to build different prototypes of Open DRM platform. An early attempted was done byRyoichi Mori and Masaji Kawahara [21] in 1990 to develop S-box to test the public domain software superdistribution in a secure way. In IEEE Globecom2003, an Open DRM System had been proposed by Akiko Seki and Wataru Kameyama [1] to address safe distributions of contents and to set rights information of these contents. The rights information is described in XML-based language, ie the eXtensible rights markup Language (XrML), which can be processed by any DRM systems and distributed much easier. This is very similar to the digital rights management approach of the MPEG-21 Part 5 REL [10].
5.1. ISO MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework
In April 1, 2004, ISO has formally approved the MPEG Rights Expression Language (MPEG-21 Part 5 REL) and MPEG Rights Data Dictionary (MPEG-21 Part 6 RDD) as a standard [9]. ISO MPEG-21 REL is a vendor-neutralXML-based Rights Expression Language used to specify terms and conditions for the authorized distribution and use of any digital content. ISO MPEG-21 REL is an XML based declarative language for the computing process to enable unambiguous expression of 14 types of content access and usage permissions such as execute, modify, play, print. ISO MPEG-21 REL derives directly from ContentGuard's XrML 2.0 rights language, which in turn was derived from the Digital Property Rights Language invented by Dr. Mark Stefik [14] at Xerox PARC in the mid-1990s. Please refer to ISO/IEC Standard 21000 specifications for details [10,11].
ISO MPEG-21 RDD defines a standard set of terms that digital rights management systems use with MPEG-based content and provides a methodology for creating new terms.Use of the RDD System will facilitate the accurate exchange and processing of information between interested parties involved in the administration of rights in, and use of, Digital Items, and in particular it is intended to support the MPEG-21 REL.
The MPEG REL data model for a rights expression consists of four basic entities and the relationship among those entities. This basic relationship is defined by the MPEG REL assertion “grant”. Structurally, an MPEG REL grant consists of the following:
- The principal to whom the grant is issued
- The right that the grant specifies
- The resource to which the right in the grant applies
- The condition that must be met before the right can be exercised
ENTITY / MPEG-21 REL
Subject / r:keyHolder
Object / r:digitalResource
Right / r:grant
Condition / R:allConditions
The ISO MPEG-21 Part 4 defines an interoperable framework for Intellectual Property Management and Protection (IPMP). IPMP enables a MPEG-21 terminal to communicate through messaging with various IPMP-tools to protect MPEG-21 content.
5.2. Interoperability
“Interoperability defined as software and hardware to allow users to share data”, quoted from Dictionary.com. Open Digital Rights Management with clear principles focused on interoperability across multiple sectors and support for fair-use doctrines.
5.3.Excellent Industry Support
The MPEG-21 vision is to define a multimedia framework to enable transparent and augmented use of multimedia resources across a wide range of networks and devices used by different communities. Many industry players shared their viewpoints on the importance of the interoperability and ISO MPEG REL standard is going to address this problem. We shared the same vision and the main design concept of the proposed Open DRM system was based on the MPEG-21 multimedia framework.
Specifically, the ISO MPEG-21 RELis backed by organizations including Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Warner Bros., Universal Music Group, Microsoft, Time Warner and Thomson.
We believe the interoperability is the most important feature of the DRM system concurred by many industry players.
"If DRM technologies are going to proliferate - by helping ensure that creators are compensated and consumers can use that content in legitimate ways - broadly accepted industry standards for interoperability are crucial. The ISO MPEG REL standard is an important milestone forthe future of DRM and digital content delivery" [16].
"IFPI supports the development of open, interoperable standards as a way to get more music to more consumers in more legal and flexible ways” [19].
“A prerequisite to ensure Community-wide accessibility to DRM systems and services by rights holders as well as users and, in particular, consumers, is that DRM systems and services are interoperable” [6].
The proposed system would serve the community as a centralized clearance for digital items.
To make DRM systems to talk to each other, vendors must allow ways to pass content providers’ rule from one system to another and ensure that devices and content services that use different technologies enforce the rule the same way. An ISO MPEG-21 framework which enable technology to translate rules and other requirements into various formats so that they work with multiple DRM products. Under the MPEG-21 model, different kinds of usage scenarios can be derived to support the traditional business model of physical goods for digital contents. Since we adopted the multimedia framework, many flexible business models for content distribution could be implemented and tested.
6. Key Design Objectives for iResource.hk
To better understand the acceptability of DRM and user awareness on intellectual property protection, we conducted the first DRM survey in Hong Kong with target audience of age 16-27. 684 results were collected by paper survey.