可權限轉移之數位版權管理系統的研究與實現

Abstract

隨著網際網路與數位科技的發展，使用者可以利用各種傳輸方式取得未經授權的數位內容。數位內容的非法複製與大量散佈，不但嚴重危害到數位內容提供業者的利益，而且也違反了智慧財產法與著作權法，同時更遏阻了數位內容產業的發展。所以如何防止數位內容被不當的大量散佈給其他沒有經過合法授權的使用者，遂成為大家關心的話題。因此，數位版權管理(Digital Rights Management，DRM)系統被提出來解決這個問題。亦即我們可以經由DRM系統控制並設定存取權限，使得只有經過適當授權的使用者，才能夠使用這些受保護的內容，避免數位內容被不當的散佈與使用。 DRM系統雖然提供了數位內容的權限管控及保護，但目前的DRM系統卻不存在「權限轉移」的功能，以致一些消費者傳統的使用行為，例如:租借、轉售等交易行為，到目前為止都還沒有辦法實現。而這些使用行為會嚴重影響消費者購買受DRM保護的數位內容的意願，同時也遏阻了DRM系統的發展。在本論文中，我們提出一個具有Transferable Rights機制的DRM系統，可以讓我們解決有關「權限轉移」的問題，亦即讓購買的數位內容可以合法轉售或借給他人。基於Transferable Rights的實現，我們也可以展示兩個新的商業應用情境:一個是數位學習教材出租中心－消費者可以在線上租用數位學習教材的數位內容；另一個是數位學習教材二手商店－消費者可以轉賣他們已購買的數位學習教材的使用權利。透過這兩個應用情境，讓我們的DRM系統顯得更有彈性而且合理。

While the digital technologies have become highly utilized in the Internet, the on-line users are able to acquire the digital contents very easily in variant ways. However these emerging trends did not benefit the content providers because of their copyrights had been violated. This drawback restrained the development of the digital content market. The content providers would need some mechanisms to enforce access policies and to enable the consumers for better utilizing the licensed contents with extended allowances. The approach, DRM (Digital Rights Management) system was proposed to resolve these related problems. The DRM system is a system to protect and manage digital contents, and to control the usage and distribution of digital contents. It is intended to only allow proper authorized user to access the protected digital information. Although DRM systems have already prevented digital contents from unauthorized access, it is still insufficient to provide the adequate functions to address the “Transfer Rights”. For example, the possible transactions of digital contents might occur at rental store, secondhand market, etc. These traditional business behaviors were not well considered and put into design of current DRM systems. This ignorance definitely lowered the consumer’s desire for purchasing the DRM protected contents. Furthermore, consumer still cannot resell copyrighted contents arbitrarily within the existing DRM systems. This limit violated the common use of property in a real world. In this thesis, we proposed an enhanced mechanism in which the “Transfer Rights” should be allowed in a DRM system. Based on implementation of transferable rights in DRM systems, we proposed two new business scenarios. One is an “e-Learning Content Rental Store” in which consumer is able to rent the e-Learning content media via on-line. The other is “e-Learning Content Secondhand Store” in which consumers can resell the e-Learning content media, specifically for those they purchased from others. These two proposed scenarios would enable the transferable rights with more reasonable and legal use in the DRM systems.