Giving developers an outline of licensing and copyright ownership, part three of our music industry article series explains the basics of Digital Rights Management (DRM), summarizes the DRM implementation on Sony Ericsson mobile phones and presents an overview of some the various DRM technologies available.

In case you missed them, part one in the series presents the intricate web of participants involved in the music business and part two introduces data compression and bandwidth management providing a technical overview of audio codecs:

• Part 1: Understanding the players, market trends and service definitions>>
• Part 2: Understanding codecs and bandwidth issues>>

Introduction

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is perhaps the most hotly debated subject in the media business today. To truly understand Digital Rights Management is to understand that the key word is "rights".

A piece of music can belong to more than one party such as a songwriter and a composer, and they in turn often assign the management of their interests to an agent such as a music publisher, a record label or a Performing Rights Organization (PRO). Those companies in turn, are responsible for managing the rights of the owner of the work and ensuring that a piece of music is not used in a way that is not covered by a license. DRM simply adds software automation to this process.

Licensing music

The right to use a piece of music for a specific purpose such as a sale, broadcast or use as a soundtrack must be negotiated with different organizations depending on the nature and location of the use. For example, a recording of a song used in a TV commercial needs a Master Use license from the record label and a Synchronization license from the publisher. The same piece of music may have a different record label and different publisher in other countries. If that commercial will run in more than one country, the same set of licenses is needed from the record labels and publishers in each country.

A song is automatically covered by copyright once it is in a tangible form such as a recording. The copyright owner has the right to reproduce the copyrighted song, to create derivatives or variations of the song, to distribute it to the public, to perform it publicly, and to display it publicly.

After the song been publicly distributed, it is covered under the category of compulsory licensing which allows others to perform, record and distribute their own version of the song as long as they notify the copyright holder of the release, pay a statutory royalty and send monthly royalty statements.

A person purchasing a CD is not actually purchasing the music on the CD, but rather a license to play the music in the disk, much in the same way that software is licensed.  Ownership of the music contained on the CD, tape, or digital file remains with the copyright holder.

There are four basic license types:

1. Mechanical
Mechanical licenses are granted by a music publisher and give permission to mechanically reproduce the music on some form of media such as CD, tape, or vinyl intended for public distribution. In the case of mobile music, downloads are simply mechanical clearings. A mechanical license must be acquired for each country where the music will be sold.

2. Performance
PROs grant performance-rights licenses, which allow a piece of music to be performed live or broadcast as a recording.  Examples of PROs are ASCAP in the US and PRS in the UK. In the case of broadcast, paying for a "blanket" license that covers a PROs entire catalog is the norm.

3. Synchronization
PROs also grant synchronization licenses, which cover the use of a piece of music as a soundtrack for film, video, radio, and even games. If a specific recording of a piece of music is used as a soundtrack, it is also necessary to get a Master Use license from the record label.

4. Print
A print license is administered by the music publisher and allows for the sale of printed sheet music.

DRM: the basics

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a generic term for technologies used to control and manage the way digital content can be purchased, distributed and used. The purpose of DRM is to make it possible to protect digital content by the means of limited usage. Copy protection is the simplest form of DRM.

DRM has two characteristic components: encrypted content and an expression of rights allowed to the licensee. The complexity of a DRM system depends on the value of the digital content to be controlled; the "richness" of the rights and the use cases to be supported.

Using DRM, different usage rights can be applied to the same content for different users. Here are some examples of rights that can be controlled with DRM:

• The number of times it can be used, for example, a song can be played five times.
• The length of time it can be used, for example, two weeks or one day.
• Whether the song can be burned to a CD.
• If the user has the rights to listen to a specific audio stream or song playlist in the case of a subscription-based services.

This control enables content providers to create sophisticated subscription and pay-per-use models. This is clearly a benefit for content creators, content providers, network operators, and everyone else involved.

DRM and Sony Ericsson

Sony Ericsson's mobile phones support OMA DRM versions 1.0 and 2.0 from the Open Mobile Alliance. The scope of OMA DRM is to enable the controlled consumption of digital media objects by allowing content providers to express usage rights, for example, the ability to preview DRM content, to prevent downloaded DRM content from being illegally forwarded to other users, and to enable super distribution of DRM content.

OMA DRM versions 1.0 and 2.0
There are two versions of DRM implementation in the Sony Ericsson mobile phones; OMA v1.0 and OMA v2.0. The differences between the versions are the security level in DRM content transportation, receiving rights objects and the constraints set on the content by the provider. Another difference that affects the user is the possibility to share DRM content between different media devices.

Sony Ericsson DRM Packager
The Sony Ericsson DRM Packager is a PC software tool which enables third-party content providers and developers to protect their content. This tool focuses only on the packaging capability of content protection. The DRM Packager comes in two versions:

• A graphical stand-alone application for Windows and Mac OS X
• A command line utility for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris

Overview of DRM technologies supported by Sony Ericsson mobile phones

OMA DRM 1.0

• Standard targeted at low value content
• Rights expression language derived from ODRL (Open Digital Rights Language) (accepted standard)
• Optional content encryption AES (Audio Engineering Society)
• No key management infrastructure (low security)

Advantages:

• Simple security scheme with no requirements on robustness rules or device key provisioning
• Content type agnostic
• Supports super distribution
• Large installed base of devices (mobile phones)

OMA DRM 2.0
What's new?

• ROAP (Rights Object Acquisition Protocol) secure key distribution protocol
• Devices can share content (Server Defined Domains), although this is not supported by Sony Ericsson's Symbian OS phones 
• Embedded plaintext
• Bundling
• Subscription, Automatic subscription renewal

What's not included?

• Broadcast

Advantages:

• State of the art security scheme
• Content type agnostic
• Supports super distribution
• Over-the-air (OTA) download and transfer to/from PC supported (although not domains)

More information:

• Getting the hang of the music industry:
  • Part 1: Understanding the players, market trends and service definitions>>
  • Part 2: Understanding codecs and bandwidth issues>>
• Mobile Music applications developer resources>>
• Sony Ericsson DRM Packager tool>>
• Open Mobile Alliance>>