This book explains the fundamentals of digital rights management systems including identifying, tracking, authorizing and restricting access to digital media. You will learn how DRM systems help to protect and enforce copyrights, patents, trademarks, and other forms of intellectual property.Digital assets can take various forms including audio, data and digital video. You will discover how it is possible to provide simple access to authorized users (paying customers) and how to restrict access to unauthorized users.Digital media content must be uniquely identified. The common identification codes that may be assigned to digital media include ISBN (books), ISSN (magazines), DOI (multimedia) and watermarks.
You will learn that DRM systems may include a DRM controller, digital asset manager and DRM packager that allow DRM systems to receive requests for digital assets, to find and retrieve the assets and to packages (encode) to protect the assets during delivery and use.
Digital assets can be monitored and tracked using a variety of information including their distribution addresses (IP address) and through unique identifying characteristics of the digital media such as the use of digital watermarks.
Protocols and standards can be used to define rights elements of digital media and services. Some of the DRM languages covered in this book include XrML, SDMI, XCML, ORDL, RDF, REL and others.
You will discover how authentication works without the need to transfer secret keys through communication systems. The basic encryption processes are described along with introduction on some of the ways to use and implement encryption.
The common DRM threats including hacking and ripping methods are explained along with ways to reduce the risk of decoding and copying of digital media by unauthorized people.
