A distributed digital rights management model for secure information-distribution systems

There is a need to protect digital information content and the associated usage rights from unauthorized access, use, and dissemination. The protection mechanisms should meet the requirements for the correct management of fine-grained access and usage controls and the protection of user privacy. Digital rights management (DRM) solutions have significant relevance in this context. This paper describes a distributed DRM model for a secure information-distribution system consisting of six trust-building blocks. These are (i) the user application, (ii) the authentication and authorization module, (iii) Rights-Carrying and Self-Enforcing Objects (SEOs), (iv) the privacy enforcement module, (v) theUsage Tracking and Monitoring Proxy (UTMP), and (vi) thesecurity infrastructure. SEOs are information objects that carry access and usage rights and are responsible for the fine-grained enforcement of these rights. The security infrastructure plays a pivotal role in the creation, distribution, storage, manipulation, and communication of information objects across organizational boundaries with the required level of security. Our model was originally developed for an Internet-based learning project in Norwegian schools and meets most of the aforementioned requirements.