Automotive Digital Rights Management Systems

Increasingly powerful embedded computers and multimedia technologies enter the automotive world on a grand scale, various new opportunities as well as some important challenges will become reality. Location-based up-to-date navigation and infrastructure data, movies, music, entertainment software or additional vehicular features and setups on demand will become ubiquitous within the next automotive generation, but have to be reliably protected against unauthorized usage or manipulation. Whereas most copy protection mechanisms solely try to prevent illegal copying of digital content, systems for digital rights management (DRMS) allow rights holders to implement and enforce a detailed rights model which exactly controls the utilization rights. Moreover, protecting vehicular data and software against unauthorized manipulation means for both drivers and car manufacturer an enormous safety advantage. But in comparison to common application domain of DRMS in the world of personal computers, the application in the automotive domain involves several crucial restrictions and specific requirements.