Silvia Llorente

Use of standards for implementing a multimedia information protection and management system

In the multimedia content life cycle, the provision of trust to content creators, content providers and distributors is a key issue. The fight against piracy, and, in general, against unauthorized usage of multimedia content should lie on the protection of content, that helps to guarantee only authorized usage, respecting the rights that users have over the content. Some standard initiatives, like MPEG-21, are trying to provide a framework where trust and protection can be defined and associated to multimedia content. The MIPAMS (multimedia information protection and management system) architecture is our starting point to address the solution to this problem. We are enhancing our initial MIPAMS by adding standards-conformant tools for content protection. In some cases, we conclude that current standards need to be adapted to new applications. In this context, the FP6 programme AXMEDIS project will provide tools and demonstrators to show how to provide trust and protection for the whole distribution chain.

Rights Management in Architectures for Distributed Multimedia Content Applications

There are several initiatives working in the definition and implementation of distributed architectures that enable the development of distributed multimedia applications on top of them, while offering Digital Rights Management (DRM) features. In this chapter, the main features of the MPEG Extensible Middleware (MXM) (ISO/IEC, http://mxm.wg11.sc29.org, 2010) and the new Advanced IPTV terminal (AIT) (ISO/IEC, ISO/IEC JTC1 SC29/WG11 N11230, 2010), which together will form a future second edition of the MXM standard (renamed to Multimedia Service Platform Technologies) are presented. On the other hand, the DMAG’s (Distributed Multimedia Applications Group (DMAG), http://dmag.ac.upc.edu, 2010) Multimedia Information Protection and Management System (MIPAMS) (Torres et al., Springer, Heidelberg, 2006) is also presented, highlighting the common ground and differences between MIPAMS and the standards. A set of usage scenarios is also proposed to show how MIPAMS enables the development of applications, on top of it, which deal with the needs of content creators, distributors and consumers according to different business models.

Use of rights expression languages for protecting multimedia information

Digital rights management is a key issue in music distribution throughout the Web. The authorization model is an important concept in DRM because it is used by any implementation which makes an authorization decision, for example when trying to decide if a user can exercise an action over a music album or a track. We present in this paper an implementation for the authorization model defined by the MPEG-21 REL standard. It is currently the only one that has been presented as reference software. The definitions of the data types for the different elements that form the authorization model are presented too.

Overview of the MPEG-21 Media Contract Ontology

The MPEG-21 Media Contract Ontology (MCO), a part of the standard ISO/IEC 21000, is an ontology to represent contracts dealing with rights on multimedia assets and intellectual property protected content in general. A core model pro-vides the elements to describe the permissions, obligations and prohibitions exchanged in the clauses of a contract. Specific vocabulary is defined in a model extension to represent the most common rights and constraints in the audiovisual context. Design principles, a methodology and a comparative analysis are given, as well as the practical guidelines to use the standard. A thorough description of the contract creation workflow from an original contract is given, including a sample contract text, the RDF version, the detailed mapping of the most relevant clauses and the reconstructed version. A set of MCO-related tools is described, including (i) the reference software to create and edit MCO contracts; (ii) modules to identify, store, search, vali-date and deliver MCO contracts and (iii) a tool to convert between the akin Contract Expression Language (CEL) contracts and the MCO contracts and (iv) the actual use of MCO in the Rightsdraw family of services.

Standards-Based Architectures for Content Management

Standards-based middleware architectures for content management are suitable for a range of business scenarios. In this context, the authors review the MPEG-M standard and the MIPAMS standards-based architecture. They describe a selection of relevant deployment scenarios, from content licensing to authorization-based content access control, including a specific case for mobile scenarios. They illustrate each of the scenarios with real MIPAMS implementations developed in several research projects and under contracts within the industry.

Digital rights and privacy policies management as a service

Controlling, protecting and managing access to multimedia content could be a difficult task if a system was not prepared for it. To solve this situation minimizing the impact on the existing system, we propose the use of a modular architecture which provides digital rights and privacy policies management features. It can be integrated just invoking some web service calls, depending on which services are needed. To show its use, we present several scenarios where we have successfully integrated it, like distribution of content for digital terrestrial television broadcasting and access to personal health information.

Improving privacy in JPEG images

The massive distribution and sharing of images increases the risk of privacy losses. There are several image formats, but one of the most used is JPEG. To take care of this, the JPEG standardization committee is promoting an activity on privacy and security, in order to provide protection at image level. This paper presents a mechanism to improve privacy in JPEG images by adding privacy policies inside them and encrypting both policies and images to perform access control based on those policies. Results of a feasibility experiment are also described. Part of our contribution is intended to be proposed for JPEG standardization.

MPEG-M: A digital media ecosystem for interoperable applications

MPEG-M is a suite of ISO/IEC standards (ISO/IEC 23006) that has been developed under the auspices of Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). MPEG-M, also known as Multimedia Service Platform Technologies (MSPT), facilitates a collection of multimedia middleware APIs and elementary services as well as service aggregation so that service providers can offer users a plethora of innovative services by extending current IPTV technology toward the seamless integration of personal content creation and distribution, e-commerce, social networks and Internet distribution of digital media.

Implementing Mobile Applications with the MIPAMS Content Management Platform

New mobile devices (pda’s, tablets) permit the implementation of new business models as they are always connected and provide multimedia capabilities for capturing images, videos, music or even conversations. Together with an architecture for the secure management and distribution of multimedia content called MIPAMS, we propose a mobile business model with the implementation of a mobile application based on iOS (Apple operating system for mobile devices) for publishing added value content captured with a mobile device.

Trusting Software Tools in a Secure DRM Architecture

In this paper we propose some security mechanisms that can be used in a multimedia content distribution system with digital rights management (DRM) to ensure that the software tools used in the client side are trusted not only in the moment when they are installed but during their whole life operation. For this purpose, certification, verification, reverification and recertification mechanisms are described, discussing the advantages as well as the drawbacks of using such techniques. A complex use case is presented to complement the description of the proposed mechanisms. The presented architecture and mechanisms are being implemented in the AXMEDIS project, which aims to create an innovative technology framework for the automatic production, protection and distribution of digital cross media contents over a range of different media channels, including PC (on the Internet), PDA, kiosks, mobile phones and i-TV.