The primary goal of the information supply chain is to provide access to the right users to share the data. So, a framework is required to define the rightful users. This chapter provides the mechanism and algorithms to do the same. The hierarchical representation of data introduced here, map on to the different degrees of permissions enjoyed by the customers throwing open new business opportunities.
TopBackground
The sophisticated method of introducing security for the information at the time of content creation and storage is through the digital rights management (DRM). It is covered extensively in MPEG-21. Although the DRM is extensively used with the multimedia content, the underlying concept may be used for any information content, services or the software. DRM is used in e-commerce, e-learning, conferencing, libraries etc. It can be used for music distribution.
Digital rights management (DRM) is a technology that supports the distribution of the online content (Lawrence Lessig, 2004) with copyright, such as Music and documents. The technology provides a mechanism for the content creators to safely distribute and sell the contents online. It takes help from different technologies to realize the access control policies for the software, music, movies, or other digital data, services and the hardware.
The rights management paradigm existed since ages in different forms and size. The focus of earlier versions of the DRM was confined to the security and encryption of the contents to prevent the unauthorized copying. The digital content used to get encrypted with the help of a key. The secret key was distributed only to those who pay. The content is blended to the copyright as shown in the figure 1
Figure 1. Digital content carrying copyright
The activities of rights management covers the description, identification, trading and protection, monitoring and tracking of all forms of the rights. It includes the usages, specification and management of rights holders’ relationships. The supply chain starting from the creation of the content up to the consumption by the end user is covered under DRM.