Identity-Based DRM: Personal Entertainment Domain

Digital Rights Management (DRM) enforces the rights of copyright holders and enforces their business models. This imposes restrictions on how users can handle content. These restrictions apply specifically in networked environments. Authorized Domain (AD) DRM concepts remove several of these restrictions, while taking into account the content providers’ need to limit the proliferation of content. This paper compares a number of alternative DRM concepts based on some criteria including control on content proliferation and user experience. We introduce a new concept called Personal Entertainment Domain (PED) DRM. PED-DRM binds content to a person. This person has a number of permanent domain devices. The person’s content can be rendered on these permanent domain devices and temporarily on other devices after user authentication. This concept aims at providing a better user experience than current solutions by making it more person identity based. The concept builds upon the best aspects of device-based and person-based DRM. Furthermore, we present the architecture of a PED-DRM realization. We conclude that PED-DRM meets the criteria and is practical to implement, although it has the prerequisite of having an authentication infrastructure.