An Evaluation Framework for DRM

Arnab, Alapan and Hutchison, Andrew (2008) An Evaluation Framework for DRM, Proceedings of The 6th International Workshop for Technical, Economic and Legal Aspects of Business Models for Virtual Goods, incorporating The 4th International ODRL Workshop, 16 - 18 October 2008, Poznan, Poland, 176-200, Poznan University of Economics Publishing House.

PDF ah-vg2008paper.final.pdf Download (136kB)

Abstract

There have been numerous evaluations of DRM systems, and most of these evaluations have focused on the end user experience of DRM systems. However, some of the problems identified by these evaluations are not simply a result of business strategies by the various vendors, but caused by the underlying deficiencies in the DRM architectures themselves. For this reason, in addition to evaluating the user experience, there is a need to evaluate each DRM systemas a software system. In this paper, we present 27 requirements, divided into three categories, drawn up from a number of different sources (from consumer requirements to DRM standardisation programmes) to create an evaluation framework for DRM. We then benchmark four different DRM systems (two media systems, two enterprise systems) against this framework, and identify some of the universal problems in current DRM systems. In our analysis, we find 4 major flaws with current DRM systems: the lack of user authentication, lack of device and platform portability due to the reliance of device based authentication, poor support for revocation and modification of access rights and a poor understanding of legal and social requirements from the developers of the DRM systems.

Item Type:	Conference paper
Uncontrolled Keywords:	DRM, iTunes, Windows Media, Microsoft RMS, Adobe Document Security, DRM Requirements, DRM architectures
Date Deposited:	22 Oct 2008
Last Modified:	10 Oct 2019 15:34
URI:	http://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/id/eprint/491

Actions (login required)

View Item