Seybold: Digital Rights Management is All the Buzz
It seems the flap over Napster has affected more than just a generation of college-age boys. One of the most talked-about issues at this year’s Seybold San Francisco (besides everyone’s favorite new technology, electronic books) has been digital rights management software. Essentially, such software is meant to ensure that neither Napster nor any other peer-to-peer file exchange system will get your digital assets.
Even more than a protection-against-Napster measure, digital rights management software is the next step in the evolution of anti-piracy protection, which started with the advent of digital watermarking technology a few years back. While that technology made it easier to identify your assets once someone had pirated them, the new generation of technology makes online piracy of digital content all but impossible.
Most of the digital-rights-management (called, conveniently, DRM) products touted at Seybold are more or less turnkey packages, including everything from server software to administration and usage-tracking functions to the required client-side plug-in (typically, end users must download a plug-in to view protected content).
Clever Content
Clever Content Server 2.0, from Alchemedia, works by replacing the image tag for your media with its own code. A user can’t look at images until they download the company’s Clever Content Viewer. Once the viewer has been downloaded, however, they are free to browse protected images and other media, but cannot copy, paste, print, or take screenshots of those images. New in this version of the company’s server is a feature called CleverLinks, which allows users to embed links to other media (such as a sales form) within protected media. Also new from Alchemedia is the Clever Content Creator, which allows folks without an in-house Web server to take advantage of media protection. The Clever Content Server costs $10,000 per CPU and the Clever Content Creator starts at $25 per month and is based on the amount of media protected. The server works with Microsoft’s IIS, Netscape Enterprise Server, and Apache Web servers.
ContentGuard
ContentGuard announced Version 1.3 of its self-named DRM package at Seybold. Due by the end of the year, it will run on Sun Solaris servers. The software is based on XrML, or extensible rights markup language, a tagset based on the ever-popular XML. XrML was developed by the whizzes at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and is already being used by Microsoft to encode rights data for its ebooks business. ContentGuard 1.3 comprises four development components: a protection toolkit lets users set encryption and access parameters, a distribution toolkit lets users create storefronts and other means of issuing content to consumers, a consumer toolkit verifies that access terms have been met before issuing content, and a back-office component tracks usage and license generation. The company also announced that it is working with streaming-media technology vendor eVue to create a DRM package for MPEG-4 video and audio content. Pricing was unavailable.
Magex and InterTrust
London-based Magex and its U.S. partner InterTrust have announced that they are beta testing a DRM product, called, simply, InterTrust DRM. The company, which boasts Sir Paul McCartney as an investor, is creating a package that will let users protect text and graphic content such as PDFs, JPEGs, and GIFs. The software will allow end users to preview content before purchasing it, and will support subscription and membership sales models. At Seybold, Magex announced that it is forming a new business unit to deal specifically with digital publications and electronic books. Pricing was unavailable.
Vyou.com
Vyou.com (the company wants you to pronounced it “view dot com”) demonstrated its already-released Vyoufirst DRM technology at the show. The company is developing a Linux version of the package, which now runs on Windows NT and Sun Solaris servers. The package has three components: a Director that lets users establish content access policies, a Server the works with Microsoft IIS and Netscape Enterprise Web servers (support for Apache is forthcoming), and a plug-in that downloads automatically in the background when end-users attempt to access Vyoufirst protected content. At Seybold, the company announced a content-protection package for streaming media, including Flash, QuickTime, Real Media, and Windows Media. Pricing for either package was unavailable.
Phocis
Authorit-e, a DRM package from British company Phocis, works by encrypting protected media in a PDF wrapper. End-users must download a plug-in to view content, but developers can set up free preview scenarios and change pricing and other purchasing options on the fly. (For instance, they can have daily specials on particular media files like e-books or photographs.) Authorit-e has been available in England for some time; the company says it is testing the American market for DRM (now would seem to be a good time…). Also at Seybold, the company announced a joint venture with the Electric Book Company to help protect e-book content.
MediaDNA
Finally, we come to eMediator, a DRM package from MediaDNA. (Quote from the product literature: “In genetics, DNA controls how individual cells in an organism behave. Similarly, MediaDNA technology controls how digital content is distributed and reproduced.” See, it’s organic!) EMediator requires end users to download a plug-in before they can view protected content; once the plug-in is downloaded, administrators can set various levels of access to protected media. (For instance, they can let users view but not print photographs, view content for a set amount of time, or print a set number of times.) EMediator also prevents end users from sharing their purchased content with others. Pricing for the package was not available.
Read more by Andrea Dudrow.
This article was last modified on June 30, 2023
This article was first published on September 1, 2000
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