7. The Adoption of Rights Expression Language in CONVERGENCE

This chapter describes CONVERGENCE’s licensing scheme and its governance, based on the MPEG-21 part 5 standard and on the specific content protection and rights management requirements, identified in the CONVERGENCE use scenarios. In the digital media value chain, Rights Expression Languages (RELs) are used to enable controlled access to digital resources, addressing several different issues from the description of licenses to access and usage control, payments, etc. A REL is an essential component of any security infrastructure supporting differentiated controlled access to digital resources, and providing adequate protection of intellectual property rights. Among these, the project has selected the MPEG-21 part 5 open standard, which can be implemented in XML, and is one of the main current contenders for a general-purpose REL. Our scheme is designed in the light of CONVERGENCE’s ability to distribute and manage any kind of digital resource in a large distributed environment, and this chapter explains how REL data is embedded into the CONVERGENCE data unit, the Versatile Digital Item (VDI) and introduces a basic set of security features, based on digital certificates, for the enforcement of the rights and conditions expressed in CONVERGENCE licenses.