Express your Rights

The next building block of DRM is the license. In its simplest form, a license might just be a decryption key — a DRM password — that allows the rendering of a digital asset. This sort of protection is very familiar to those who have purchased the download version of a software package where a key is provided and, once it is entered, access is granted. Either you have all rights to the software (your license key) or you have no rights (no key).

But that’s the old way. As Michael Aldridge, project manager for Microsoft’s Digital Media Division, notes, "DRM is about new ways of selling content — much more than just preventing piracy."

In a total DRM solution, a license combines a decryption key with a set of rights granted to the customer who purchased that key. These rights define, at a granular level, how the consumer may use a product. For example, suppose you download a protected music album (more accurately, a digital set of songs) for which you have no license key. Because you have no license key, you also have no rights to the album. When you attempt to play it, you’re informed that you need to purchase a license to continue.

So, you follow the links to an e-commerce site that can sell you the rights — in the form of a license. In a licensing scenario that allows substantial latitude for consumers — and revenue or marketing potential for the distributor — the following options may be offered:

1. Listen to the album only once, as a preview, for free.
2. Listen to the album up to three times in exchange for providing a valid e-mail address (to fatten the marketing database).
3. Listen to the album as much as you want for one week, in exchange for filling out a personal profile for the marketing folks.
4. Listen to the album as much as you want, forever, on your current computer for $5.
5. Listen to the album as much as you want, forever, on any computer, but only one computer at a time, for $10.
6. Listen to the album as much as you want, forever, on any computer and also on a portable music player, but only one computer and one music player at a time, for $12.

The first thing we learn from this example is that the price of purchase doesn’t have to be money. In some cases, a consumer’s personal profile for a marketing database is enough. And the item purchased isn’t the music, but the right to listen to certain music three times, for one week, until a specified cutoff date and time, or until some other agreed-upon point at which the DRM technology will render the music unplayable. But, of course, consumers will be given the option to buy more rights.

A few of the options above include rights for one computer versus many computers as different options, because DRM solutions need to tie each license and its associated rights to a specific piece of rendering hardware. This might be a single computer or a music player. Either way, if this tie is not made, the data and license could simply be posted on the Internet together for everybody and his brother to enjoy for free.