IP-Based DRM - A Fair and Privacy Preserving DRM Framework

Abstract

DRM systems can be categorized as Identity-based and Device-based DRM systems. Identity-based DRM systems invade user privacy by strongly bundling users’ information with the content. Device-based DRM systems authenticate users via the machines they used to play which also violate the privacy principle. No matter how the protocols are designed, these two systems will loss balance between usage fairness and unauthorized usage of copyright contents. In this paper, we propose the concept of IP-Based DRM which authenticates user via IP address. IP-based DRM system has several significant advantages over those existing systems. It not only achieves a better privacy goal, but also provides convenience to the consumers. This system enables a free-trial within a geographic bound, makes licensing for home network easier, and avoids the problems brought by hardware cloning. We also address the problem for those devices are connection limited (needs synchronizing with PC irregularly), the problem of a device having multiple network address, and the problem of roaming service. We will end up with comparing our system to the existing systems with performance and fairness issue.