Digital Rights Management Explained

by Lowell Rapaport

Although digital rights management (DRM) has been at the center of the controversy over protection of multimedia content, it is also applicable to protecting the security of business content such as financial statements, medical records and legal contracts.

Why do you need DRM? Generally speaking, most development work on securing business information has been about protecting information stored in trusted private networks. But what do you do when business information is sent to an unknown recipient? DRM keeps information secure outside the corporate firewall.

DRM systems are made up of three components: a file format that packages content along with rights information, a license and a rendering application. The rights information is similar to the metadata used to define file security within a network, but it is encoded in a portable rights language such as Extensible Rights Management Language (XRML), a DRM extension of XML.

Rights information determines the access given to different users. Licenses determine what kind of user you are. The rendering application combines license and rights information with original content to give you a specified level of access that can range from read only to full editorial rights.

The key to DRM systems is interoperability. DRM systems that can integrate with general-purpose viewers, such as cross platform Web browsers will give your business partners the ease of use that will let them accept protected content from you without complications.