The Digital Media Project

INTEROPERABLE

DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT

PLATFORM

Technical Specification, Phase II

9 February 2006

Foreword

The Digital Media Project

The Digital Media Project (DMP) is a non-profit Association registered in Geneva, Switzerland. Its mission is “to promote the successful development, deployment and use of digital media that respect the rights of creators and rights holders to exploit their works, the wish of end users to fully enjoy the benefits of digital media and the interests of value-chain players to provide products and services, according to the principles laid down in the Digital Media Manifesto” [10].

Membership in DMP is open to any corporation and individual firm, partnership, governmental body or international organisation. DMP does not restrict Membership on the basis of race, colour, sex, religion or national origin. By joining DMP each Member agrees, both individually and collectively, to adhere to open competition in the development of digital media technologies, products or services. DMP Members are not restricted in any way from designing, developing, marketing or procuring digital media technologies, hardware, software, systems or services. Members are not bound to implement or use specific digital media standards, recommendations and specifications by virtue of their participation in DMP.

The goals of DMP are realised by developing Technical Specifications, Technical References and Recommended Practices enabling businesses that support new or improved end-user experiences and Recommended Actions to appropriate entities to act on removal of barriers holding up exploitation of digital media. Technical Specifications, Technical References, Recommended Practices and Recommended Actions are collectively called "DMP Approved Documents" (AD).

DMP operates on the basis of open international collaboration of all interested parties: corporations and individual firms, partnerships, governmental bodies or international organisations, supporting the DMP mission and the means to achieve its goals. DMP ADs are developed according to the DMP Procedures of Work [11]. DMP seeks the involvement of creators and end users of Digital Media through appropriate mechanisms.

DMP ADs are publicly available documents whose copyright is retained by DMP. DMP contributes the results of its activities to appropriate formal standards bodies and other appropriate entities whenever this is instrumental to achieve the general DMP goals. Electronic copies of DMP ADs can be obtained free of charge from the DMP web site (http://www.dmpf.org/) or from the DMP Secretariat (secretariat@dmpf.org).

DMP has the intention to make ADs available in a form such that users can implement them either freely, or on a royalty-free basis or on fair and reasonable terms and non discriminatory (RAND) conditions following the IEC/ISO/ITU policy on IPR in international standards. When issuing Calls for Proposals DMP explicitly advises Respondents to the Calls of this policy. If DMP references an external standard or specification in a DMP AD, DMP expects that the same IPR policy, or a comparable one, has been adopted by the entity that produced the standard or specification.

However, it must be noted that DMP is not in a position to make any expressed or implied guarantee that licensing of any of the technologies relevant to any or all of its ADs can indeed be obtained either royalty free, or at RAND terms.

Media and Digital Technologies

Media content has always played an important role in all societies and manifold technologies have been invented and deployed to provide means to store, distribute and consume it. The complexity of these technologies and the stimulus to provide ever-enhanced end-user experiences have created very complex media content value-chains populated by an increasing number of interacting intermediaries, each providing increasingly sophisticated services to the two extremes of the value-chains – creators and end users – as well as to the various intermediaries in between. Note that in DMP all players in the value chain – Creators, intermediaries and End-Users – are generically called Value-Chain Users or, simply, Users. Note that terms beginning with a capital letter are defined in the DMP Terminology [6].

Media value-chain technologies have been designed with two main purposes in mind: the first to provide or augment the end-user experience, and the second to provide or augment the capability to distribute media content. The latest round of technologies – the digital technologies – have augmented the end-user experience, e.g. by providing very high quality audio and video that does not deteriorate with time and use. Further digital networks have also dramatically increased the distribution potential of media content.

As a result the traditional means to manage the value of media content along the value-chain are rapidly losing their established meaning. This is the source of various difficulties and is the major cause of the poor exploitation of the potential of digital media technologies. Digital Rights Management (DRM) has been advocated by many as the set of technologies that can overcome these difficulties because Users are given the possibility to manage Content while it moves along the Value-Chain.

The Digital Media Project agrees that DRM has the potential to combine the benefit of digital technologies with the need for a virtuous circle that motivates Creators to continue creating because remuneration is facilitated by DRM technologies. However, DMP sees serious problems in the introduction of DRM technologies that are lacking Interoperability.

A DRM system can be described as a particular form of communication designed to provide controlled communication between two or more Users. Therefore the implementation of a DRM system may require a broad range of communication technologies. Unless these are designed in such a way as to enable communication of Content between two different implementations, DRM becomes an obstacle that prevent Users from having the seamless and rewarding communication that digital media technologies have enabled. This has particularly serious consequences in the case of the End-User because the lack of Interoperability detracts from the End-User experience and thus may seriously impede the take off of services designed to provide appropriate remuneration to relevant value-chain users.

Standards can bring benefits to the very special type of communication systems called DRM. However, the application of DRM standards obeys different rules because DRM is tightly con­nected to business practices. As the introduction of digital technologies is currently forcing chan­ges in the way value-chain users conduct their business, it is hard to define today what kinds of standards are required, much less to forecast what kinds of standard will be needed in the future.

DMP approaches the problem of DRM Interoperability by specifying technologies – that DMP calls Tools – required to implement what DMP calls “Primitive Functions”. These are “smaller” functions obtained when the functions value-chain users perform when they do business between themselves are broken down into more atomic elements. It is expected that, while functions may undergo substantial changes as a consequence of the evolution of the media business in the value-chain, Primitive Functions will generally remain more stable.

Therefore DMP is not developing a universal “DRM standard” capable of providing interoperability between every variety of different Users in arbitrary Value-Chains or across different Value-Chains. DMP provides specifications of Tools enabling Primitive Functions along with examples of how Value-Chains serving specific goals can be set up using the standard Tools. DMP specifications are developed in phases, so as to achieve gradual development of standards technologies.

The DMP approach to DRM standardisation is based on the following process

1.                    For each phase Use Cases deemed to be significant are identified and documented;

2.                    Primitive Functions required to implement the selected Use Cases are singled out;

3.                    Requirements for Primitive Functions are developed through inputs from relevant Users;

4.                    Tools serving the needs represented by the Use Cases are standardised;

5.                    Calls for Proposals for Tools with the identified requirements are issued;

6.                    The Tools are selected and documented through an open process. DMP favours Tools that have already been developed, standardised or adopted by other bodies, possibly adapting them to DMP needs;

7.                    Specifications of how Tools can be assembled to implement the selected Use Cases are developed;

8.                    In subsequent phases, Calls for Proposals for additional Tools needed to support new Primitive Functions or additional functionalities of existing Tools are issued.

DMP calls the ensemble of all standardised DRM Tools “Interoperable DRM Platform (IDP)”. The IDP provides several major advantages:

1.                    The specifications are industry agnostic, i.e. Users are free to build a great variety of Value-Chains that suit their business models by combining the Tools appropriate for them;

2.                    The capabilities of a Value-Chain or new Value-Chains can be extended by adding more Tools, possibly through additional standardisation;

3.                    The cost to access standardised Tools may be reduce because in general Tools have multiple usages and may be provided by multiple suppliers;

4.                    Full interoperability can be achieved within a Value-Chain;

5.                    An enhanced degree of interoperability can be achieved between different Value-Chains;

6.                    Innovation can be continuously fed in the system.

DRM requires more than technology

In spite of the value DMP attaches to Interoperable DRM as the main digital media-enabling technology, DMP has noted that DRM has the potential to substantially alter the balance that has been in existence in the analogue world between different Users of Content, in particular when one of them is the End-User. If not appropriately remedied, this imbalance may lead to a significant reduction of the scope of Traditional Rights and Usages (TRU) of Users. A possible outcome is the outright rejection of the new technology on the part of some Users, in particular End-Users who will perceive the media experience in a DRM environment as inferior.

DMP is not claiming that an established TRU necessarily implies a right of a User to a particular Use of digital media but simply that, if Users have found a particular Use advantageous in the analogue domain, they are probably interested in continuing to exercise that Use in the digital domain as well. Leveraging upon this interest may provide multiple opportunities for new “Digital Media Business Models” that are attractive to Users but respectful of Rights Holders.

Therefore DMP intends to add technologies to its specifications to make the exercise of a broad range of TRUs technically possible. However, even a summary analysis shows that many TRUs have a legislative/regulatory impact that needs to be addressed by proper authorities. This can only be done within individual jurisdictions by determining which TRUs shall be mandated in Interoperable DRM Platforms operating under their jurisdiction and which TRUs can be left to private deals between Users. This is a challenging task because it requires blending knowledge encompassing the legal, social and economic fields with in-depth knowledge of the highly sophisticated and unusual DRM technologies.

The suite of DMP Approved Documents

DMP has produced the following ADs:

1.        Chapter 1 – Value Chain Functions and Requirements [1]: a collection of Primitive Functions derived from today’s media value-chains with corresponding Requirements.

2.        Chapter 2 - Architecture [2]: a general architecture that describes some of the digital extensions of today’s media value-chains and collects the basic assumptions and technologies underlying the establishment of IDP-enabled Value-Chains.

3.        Chapter 3 – Interoperable DRM Platform [3]: a collection of technical specifications of basic Tools that are needed to implement Primitive Functions.

4.        Chapter 4 – Use Cases and Value Chains [4]: a collection of all Use Cases along with normative specifications of examples of (portions of) Value-Chains  implementing the Use Cases using the Tools drawn from the IDP Toolkit.

5.        Chapter 5 – Certification and Registration Authorities [5]: a set of operational rules for Certification Authorities established to Certify Devices and DRM Tools, and Registration Authorities established to Assign Identifiers to Content, DRM Tools, Devices, Users and Domains.

6.        Chapter 6 – Terminology [6]: a set of terms and corresponding definitions that are used throughout DMP ADs providedto overcome the problem of DRM being a new field that impacts many existing fields with their own established and sometimes conflicting terminologies.

In addition DMP is currently developing the following ADs:

7.        Chapter 7 – Reference Software [7]: a software implementation of IDP Tools. DMP strives to provide the reference software as Open Source, with a license aligned to established practices. When this is not possible DMP provides the reference software with a “modify, use and distribute” license.

8.        Chapter 8 – End-to-End Conformance [8]: a set of Recommended Practices that Value-Chain Users can reference to ascertain that the Tools employed by other parties conform to DMP Technical Specifications and Technical References.

9.        Chapter 9 – Mapping of Traditional Rights and Usages to the Digital Space [9]: a set of example support of TRUs using DMP Tools possibly complemented by recommendations to appropriate authorities to enable the benefit of TRUs in a DMP-enabled world of digital media.

1          Value Chain Functions and Requirements

1.1        Introduction

DMP is developing a series of specifications for Interoperable DRM called Interoperable DRM Platform (IDP) where each phase of the IDP specifications is indicated by a sequential number. The open IDP specifications enable Users to technically execute Functions using standard Protocols through standard Interfaces with predictable results.

Because there is such a broad variety of value-chains there can hardly be a “universal DRM system” to develop specifications for. Therefore it is expected that there will be a range of “implementations” of DRM systems designed to satisfy the needs of specific value-chain users. The DMP specifications can be used to realise the digital equivalent of the media value-chains that exist today, but also to make value-chains that have no obvious equivalent with today’s value-chains.

This unpredictable environment requires a different type of standardisation thanused for other standardisation efforts, e.g. video coding, that typically apply to well-defined environments. The DMP approach is based on protocols for lower-level functions (called Primitive Functions) between value-chain users. If Primitive Functions are well defined existing and possibly new Functions can be built as combinations of Primitive Functions. In the future new Functions could also be built using existing and new Primitive Functions.

This document documents the requirements upon which the Interoperable DRM specification has been developed. To achieve this, the following process – open to any party – has been invoked:

1.        Ask a broad range of value-chain users to state their needs

2.        Derive Functions from the stated needs

3.        Develop requirements for implementing Functions

4.        Identify prominent use cases used to focus the development of specifications

5.        Issue Call for Proposals for technologies to implement Functions.

All documents produced at each of these steps have been made publicly available for comments on the DMP web site at http://www.digital-media-project.org/.

So far representatives of the following value-chain users have contributed to the process:

1.        Civil Rights Associations

2.        Association of People with Special Needs

3.        Collective Management Societies

4.        Device Manufacturers

5.        Individuals

6.        Producers

7.        Public Service Broadcasters

8.        Sheet Music Publishers

9.        Telecommunication operators.

This document is work in progress as it is the starting point for the series of interoperable DRM specifications that DMP plans to develop. Those wishing to comment on or contribute to future versions of this Chapter 1 are requested to forward their submissions to Marc Gauvin (mgauvin@sdae.net). Submissions are typically discussed within the Ad hoc Group on Requirements for Interoperable DRM Platform, whose email reflector is idp-ied-rq@dmpf.org. To subscribe to the email reflector follow the instructions.

This Chapter 1 contains

1.        The list of Value-Chain Users identified so far by DMP, and whose requirements the DMP expects to support (Chapter 2)

2.        The list of General Requirements underpinning the DMP process (Chapter 3)

3.        The table a Primitive Functions identified with indication of which IDP Phase supports the given Primitive Function (Chapter 4)

4.        The full list of Functional Requirements of Primitive Functions (Chapter 5).

1.2        Value-Chain Users

1.3        General requirements

1.4        Primitive Functions

The following table provides the current list of Primitive Functions grouped in categories. For each Primitive Function a cross in any of the last two right columns indicates whether or not it is currently specified and if so in which version of the Interoperable DRM Platform (AD #3). An X in both columns means that technology is provided by IDP-2 that adds to the technology already provided by IDP-1.

Table 1 – Primitive Functions