The DigiBox: A Self-Protecting Container for Information Commerce

Information Commerce is a business activity carried out among several parties in which information carries value and is treated as a product. The information may be content, it may be returned usage and marketing data, and it may be representative of financial transactions. In each of these cases the information is valuable and must be kept secure and private. Traditional approaches secure the transmission of that information from one point to another; there are no persistent protections. Protection of all of these components of information commerce for all parties in a transaction value chain is necessary for a robust electronic infrastructure. A prerequisite to such an environment is a cryptographically protected container for packaging information and controls that enforce information rights. This paper describes such a container, called the DigiBox  . EPR has submitted initial specifications for the DigiBox container to the ANSI IISP Electronic Publishing Task Force (EPUB) within the User/Content Provider Standards Working Group (WG4). This document was created with FrameMaker 4.0.4 1. Information providers can be assured that their content is used only in authorized ways; 2. Privacy rights of users of content are preserved; and 3. Diverse business models related to content can be electronically implemented. The Internet and other information commerce infrastructures will require a management component that enforces such rules, ensuring a safe, coherent, fair, and productive community. This management component will be critical to the electronic highway’s acceptance. Without rules to protect the rights of content providers and other electronic community members, the electronic highway will comprise nothing more than a collection of limited, disconnected applications. Analysts have concluded that content will constitute the largest revenue-generating component of the information superhighway [5]. It is also clear that unfettered access to content requires that content providers be able to maintain control over literary or copyrighted assets. Many analysts conclude that this will be one of the key bottlenecks in the implementation and deployment of New Media. 2 Information Commerce and Digital Value Chains Information commerce is often considered a wholly new concept, made possible only through the use of networks and computers. In fact, a robust information economy has existed for centuries, involving trafficking in physical representations of information such as books, newspapers, and so on. Because such commerce involves physical goods, there is a non-negligible floor to the cost of handling information goods. The new aspects of the electronic information economy are that the information itself is the entire product and that the product can be distributed at negligible marginal cost. The traditional information economy in physical goods is publisher-centric, because creation of information goods—particularly low-cost goods— requires a substantial manufacturing investment. Figure 1 illustrates a simplified traditional information economy: physical goods flow from a publisher (manufacturer) to a customer, in response to orders and followed by payments. The author’s relationship with the publisher may be more lightweight, but the author is nonetheless dependent on the publisher to report sales and make royalty payments in accordance with the author’s contract. In addition, a financial institution provides payment processing and clearing services for all parties. Figure 1. Traditional information economy. Because of the flexibility afforded by electronic mechanisms, information commerce is evolving from indirect, advertiser-supported, mass-audience media to a new, niche-audience-oriented business model. In this system, members of the electronic community, with or without the economic support of advertising, pay providers directly for what they want to receive. Business-tobusiness purchasing is steadily evolving into a direct electronic ordering model. Figure 2 illustrates the flexibility possible in new electronic information commerce models. Although there is still a role for publishers, this role no longer involves physical goods. Rather, the publisher is responsible for packaging and aggregating information goods and control information, Publisher Financial Institution Author Customer C on te nt