Digital Rights Management and Consumer Acceptability: A Multi-Disciplinary Discussion of Consumer Concerns and Expectations

The INDICARE project – the Informed Dialogue about Consumer Acceptability of DRM Solutions in Europe – has been set up to raise awareness about consumer and user issues of Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions. One of the main goals of the INDICARE project is to contribute to the consensus-building among multiple players with heterogeneous interests in the digital environment. To promote this process and to contribute to the creation of a common level of understanding is the aim of the present report. It provides an overview of consumer concerns and expectations regarding DRMs, and discusses the findings from a social, legal, technical and business perspective. A general overview of the existing EC initiatives shows that questions of consumer acceptability of DRM have only recently begun to draw wider attention. A review of the relevant statements, studies and reports confirms that awareness of consumer concerns is still at a low level. Five major categories of concerns have been distinguished so far: (1) fair conditions of use and access to digital content, (2) privacy, (3) interoperability, (4) transparency and (5) various aspects of consumer friendliness. From the legal point of view, many of the identified issues go beyond the scope of copyright law, i.e. the field of law where DRM was traditionally discussed. Often they are a matter of general or sector-specific consumer protection law. Furthermore, it is still unclear to what extent technology and an appropriate design of technical solutions can provide an answer to some of the concerns of consumers. One goal of the technical chapter was exactly to highlight some of these technical possibilities. Finally, it is shown that consumer acceptability of DRM is important for the economic success of different business models based on DRM. Fair and responsive DRM design can be a profitable strategy, however DRM-free alternatives do exist too.Digital Rights Management; consumers; Intellectual property; business models

Digital Rights Management and Consumer Acceptability: A Multi-Disciplinary Discussion of Consumer Concerns and Expectations

The INDICARE project – the Informed Dialogue about Consumer Acceptability of DRM Solutions in Europe – has been set up to raise awareness about consumer and user issues of Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions. One of the main goals of the INDICARE project is to contribute to the consensus-building among multiple players with heterogeneous interests in the digital environment. To promote this process and to contribute to the creation of a common level of understanding is the aim of the present report. It provides an overview of consumer concerns and expectations regarding DRMs, and discusses the findings from a social, legal, technical and business perspective. A general overview of the existing EC initiatives shows that questions of consumer acceptability of DRM have only recently begun to draw wider attention. A review of the relevant statements, studies and reports confirms that awareness of consumer concerns is still at a low level. Five major categories of concerns have been distinguished so far: (1) fair conditions of use and access to digital content, (2) privacy, (3) interoperability, (4) transparency and (5) various aspects of consumer friendliness. From the legal point of view, many of the identified issues go beyond the scope of copyright law, i.e. the field of law where DRM was traditionally discussed. Often they are a matter of general or sector-specific consumer protection law. Furthermore, it is still unclear to what extent technology and an appropriate design of technical solutions can provide an answer to some of the concerns of consumers. One goal of the technical chapter was exactly to highlight some of these technical possibilities. Finally, it is shown that consumer acceptability of DRM is important for the economic success of different business models based on DRM. Fair and responsive DRM design can be a profitable strategy, however DRM-free alternatives do exist too

Digital piracy

Die vorliegende Arbeit behandelt das Thema Digitale Piraterie von Musik und Filmen im Internet aus einer gesamtheitlichen Sicht. Dies umfasst die soziale, technische, rechtliche als auch ökonomische Perspektive, wobei der Fokus auf letztere liegt. Die Gründe für das unrechtmäßige Herunterladen von urheberrechtlich geschützten Inhalten und die Etablierung dieses Verhaltens als ein weltweit verbreitetes Massenphänomen bildet den Schwerpunkt des Kapitels, das die soziale Perspektive dieser Thematik behandelt. Die technische Perspektive liefert nicht nur einen Einblick in DRM Systemen (Systeme zur digitalen Rechteverwaltung) sondern erörtert zudem Systeme, mit deren Hilfe Piraterie überhaupt betrieben wird. Jede Auseinandersetzung mit einer Thematik die über Recht und Unrecht Aussagen trifft benötigt als Rahmen eine Erörterung der hierfür zugrundeliegenden Gesetze. Diese wird im Kapitel "Rechtliche Perspektive" abgehandelt. Im Hauptteil der Arbeit wird zunächst die gegenwärtige Struktur und Vorgehensweise der Musik und Filmindustrie erörtert. Danach wird ein Rahmenkonzept für zukünftige, an die technologischen Fortschritte und Wünsche der modernen Kunden angepasste Geschäftsmodelle geschaffen. Aus diesem Konzept heraus werden insgesamt sieben Geschäftsmodelle präsentiert. Auf die ersten drei Modelle wird hierbei der nähere Fokus gelegt, da sie den gesamten Markt betreffen. Die restlichen vier Modelle sind als Nischenprodukte angedacht, die für einen bestimmten Teil des Marktes interessant sein werden. Abschließend folgen ein Fazit und eine allgemeine Empfehlung an die Musik und Filmindustrie.This master thesis deals with the issue of digital piracy of music and film in the internet from a broad perspective. This includes the social, technical, legal and economic perspective with a focus on the latter. The emphasis of the chapter dealing with social issue lies on the reasons for illegitimate download of copyrighted material and the establishment of this behaviour as a worldwide phenomenon. The technical perspective not only delivers an insight into DRM (digital rights management) systems, but also looks into systems which are used to pirate in the first place. When dealing with a topic about rightful and unlawful behaviour then it is inevitable to look into laws and policies regulating these issues. This will be done in the chapter dealing with the legal perspective. The main focus of this work lies with the economic perspective. This chapter will begin with an analysis of the current structure and practise of the music and the film industry. Later on a framework will be created to derive innovative business models more fitting to the technological developments of recent times and the requirements of modern customers. Out of seven business models presented, the first three will be looked up in detail since they are meant to be adapted to the whole market, whereas the other four models suit only certain segments of the market. Finally the thesis finishes with a conclusion and a general recommendation for the music and film industry

Next-generation JavaScript Licensing Enforcing Techniques

A contínua partilha, visualização e execução de conteúdos digitais de forma ilegal é um problema bem conhecido no panorama internacional. Conteúdos comerciais são partilhados sem qualquer tipo de controlo, e modificados para ultrapassar barreiras, impostas pelos produtores, ao acesso não autorizado, degradando assim a confiança entre os produtores e os seus consumidores. Além da degradação da confiança, é também reduzido o valor, cultural e monetário, que um conteúdo representa no mercado. Para evitar o uso indevido de conteúdo são então implementados mecanismos de aplicação de licenças, que garantem que o Consumidor só possa interagir com o conteúdo nos conformes da licença, associada ao conteúdo no seu processo de distribuição.A linguagem de programação JavaScript é cada vez mais usada para a criação de software para a Web ou Mobile, no entanto, a maioria da investigação para proteger o conteúdo é focada no contexto dos ataques maliciosos, como modificação ou injecção de código. É necessário por isso criar paralelismos com mecanismos de aplicação de licenças, implementados em outras tecnologias, retirar os fundamentos básicos do licenciamento, e aplicar estas informações para esta tecnologia, possibilitando aos produtores protegerem os seus interesses, aumentando também a confiança com os consumidores.Esta dissertação engloba um projeto de criação de uma solução que permita aplicar licenças a conteúdo JavaScript, que deve garantir que um potencial utilizador só possa executar ou partilhar quando assim lho é permitido, envolvendo validação do ambiente de execução, verificação do tempo de utilização, entre outros fatores. É significativo também que a solução unifique a proteção de conteúdo para várias plataformas, móveis ou não móveis, e tenha em consideração o uso de técnicas que reduzam o custo para o Produtor e para o Consumidor. Com efeito, espera-se que esta solução seja inovadora no âmbito tecnológico atual por produzir uma ferramenta que abrange aspetos pouco explorados em JavaScript.The continuous sharing, visualization and execution of digital content in a illegal way it's an well known problem on digital market. Commercial assets are shared without any kind of control, and are modified to break constraints, that are enforced by producers, to the unauthorized access, degrading the confidence between producers and their costumers. In addition to the degradation of confidence, the commercial and cultural value of an asset, in the market, is decreased. To avoid the unauthorized use of content, mechanisms of licensing enforcing are implemented, to assure that a Costumer can only interact with a content if he follows the license, that is associated with the content in his distribution process.JavaScript programming language is becoming more and more used to the development of Web and Mobile software, however, the majority of research in JavaScript security is focused in malicious attacks, as code injection or tampering. For this reason, it's necessary to create parallelisms with license enforcing mechanisms, from other technologies, study the basics of licensing, and apply this knowledge to JavaScript, hence giving to producers the power to protect their assets and increasing the confidence with costumers too.In this project it's intended the creation of a solution that allows licensing enforcing to JavaScript content, assuring that an user can only execute or share if he has the rights too, including execution environment validation and time of use verification. It's also important that the solution unifies the protection to multiple platforms, mobile or non-mobile, and the use of techniques that reduce the cost to producers and costumers is regarded. Therefore, it's expected that the final solution will be cutting-edge in this context by giving a tool that explores new areas on JavaScript

Scalable Storage for Digital Libraries

I propose a storage system optimised for digital libraries. Its key features are its heterogeneous scalability; its integration and exploitation of rich semantic metadata associated with digital objects; its use of a name space; and its aggressive performance optimisation in the digital library domain