Digital rights management and content protection are necessary in different business models that include the management and distribution of digital content as music, movies or e books. It is also useful in B2B environments, when adapting or aggregating digital content, for example in the edition process of an encyclopaedia. Moreover, it could be necessary in financial services or in health care, for example to manage the access to patient medical records.
To this end WP3.1 partners of VISNET II NoE are developing a Digital Rights Management (DRM) architecture to manage multimedia information through the complete content value chain, from content creation to consumption by end users, including adaptation and distribution of content. It is a service-oriented DRM platform and all its modules have been devised to be implemented using the web services approach, which provides flexibility and enables an easy deployment of the modules in a distributed environment, while keeping the functionality independent from the programming language and enabling interoperability.
Digital objects are managed in a controlled way by both, DRM systems and Access Control Frameworks. Accordingly, it is desirable that these two types of systems are able to interoperate smoothly, to deliver a transparent service to the end-user. WP3.1 partners have developed a suitable solution that enables users of both systems transparent access and use of protected content, taking into account users’ roles and content usage rules.