Extending DRM Features to Distributed Environments

Recent electronic devices are connected with each other by various connectivity techniques. This trend makes computing resources distributed over many devices. However, since the general DRM models assume contents and the corresponding rights should be stored in the same space or storage, they cannot fully support distributed environments. To fully utilize the distributed resource and to provide more user-friendly scenario, this paper assumes the contents and the rights can be stored in different storage. Based on the altered assumption, this paper proposes new models: rights movement model and rights consumption model. In addition, remote playback model is proposed, which is a specialized version of rights consumption model for rendering devices. By enabling free flow of the contents and rights between devices, the usage of DRM systems can be widened and more activated.