Project information
| Status | Finalist |
| URL | Go to website |
| Category | Culture New media |
| Country | Hong Kong |
| Operational areas | Urban |
| Target groups | Children, Youth, Women, Men |
| Fixed connection | DSL |
| Wireless connection | N/A |
| Access points | Business, Home, School |
| Interact | Desktop Computer, Cellphone, Laptop, PDA |
| Software License Types | Proprietary |
Project location
Random images Challenge 2008
DigitalCopyright.hk - a trusted digital content marketplace
- Brief description
- Aiming at preserving creativity and realizing the profitability of creativity in the digital economy, the project is a one-stop trusted e-biz marketplace, and a centralized clearance solution to bridge both digital content owners and consumers who treasure creativity. It fosters owners selling contents in a self-service mode and also flexibly setting various business rules for the contents. It meanwhile serves as a trusted source for consumers to buy copyrighted contents by observing the owners’ business rules. In this way, contents are distributed in a controllable manner and thus unlawful replication and distribution of contents can be greatly deterred. ISO MPEG-21 framework, which empowers a highly interoperable DRM system, is implemented. Web 2.0 services are also implemented to support other third-party portals which require DRM protection service. An extended platform is already built for over 1,200 schools to download DRM protected Education TV programmes for classroom learning.
- Vision, Objectives and Goals
In a few words, our vision is to make the wisest use of technology to protect everyone’s Intellectual Capital in daily life. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is our technical means. Our aims to achieve are further elaborated hereunder:
- To encourage and preserve creativity with advanced DRM technology. By applying start-of-the-art encryption and setting different business rules and usage rights to their corresponding content, content owners no longer need to worry about unlawful download, dissemination or misuse of their creative works. This secure platform is developed to encourage more and more publishing and distribution of diversified creative works.
- To build a very flexible e-business model to realize the profitability of digital content distribution with advanced DRM technology. This reliable central marketplace helps the content owners to earn income whenever consumers download their content. It also cultivates the habit of consumers to purchase copyrighted content. “More Download, More Income” can be achieved.
- To serve as a trusted platform between content owners and consumers. Content owners need a trusted central place to publish and store contents, to provide content protection and management service, etc. whereas the content consumers need a trusted central place for them to acquire various copyrighted contents conveniently whenever they want.
- To apply DRM technology to fight against rampant copyright infringement problems found in Hong Kong, China and even the worldwide creative industries.
- To set example of how to apply DRM in daily life for the industry practitioners to follow and provide consultancy service to facilitate them to customize.
- To educate the public to respect intellectual property for digital content. This platform educates the public especially the students and youngsters about the importance of consuming copyrighted contents through a legitimate channel. The heart and soul of content creators have to be protected with greatest collective effort of every single consumer. Consumers are accustomed to use DRM technology to observe limited usage privileges and to consume the digital contents.
- How does ICT contribute to the organisational objectives
Our platform is purely Internet-based. IT is our key enabler to provide the service in the cyberspace anytime, anywhere and with any devices. This is a living example in the world to implement digital content description basing on ISO MPEG-21 Digital Item (DI) metadata standard and usage rights description with MPEG-21 Rights Expression Language (REL). The platform is to provide a unified and interoperable DRM system for tracking and licensing digital contents by means of registration, description, usage rights declaration and archive. To facilitate the exchange of information, web service is used for passing content metadata and usage rights information in XML format between servers and clients. The XML files are based on ISO MPEG-21 specification to allow maximum interoperability across different kind of systems.
Via common web browsers, the centralized platform offers a very user friendly interface to both content owners and consumers. Content owners can achieve content upload, usage rules and pricing rules setting merely within several clicks. The contents are encrypted silently in the backend and then ready for consumers to download. Consumers can download the content anywhere and anytime within several clicks as well. Usage license can be obtained and renewed transparently to the consumers.
- Transferability
- Since we are emphasizing the role of being a trusted and central platform, commercial entities would not be appropriate to replicate our project. Our governmental background is thus of advantage. However, we strongly recommend the transfer of our experience in developing DRM applications for the society. We welcome any small private groups to join in and will provide with any necessary assistance.
- Project summary
Some of the many activities include:
- Study different DRM technologies and conduct technology evaluation on DRM platform integration;
- Purchased ISO specifications for platform construction;
- Evaluation on different digital content identifiers for use in DRM platform and decided to support International Audiovisual Number (ISAN) for digital item registration;
- Attended 71st MPEG meeting in HK (17-21 January 2005);
- Development of DRM application for portable devices consumption;
- Adopt ISO MPEG-21 based metadata format for digital item tracking and description on DRMM platform;
- Meeting with Library of Academy of Science (LAS) on China development of DRM and library standards. (December 2005)
- Demonstration of DRM platform and music licensing platform to IFPI (December 2005)
- Conducted evaluation on different storage technology for Digital Vault usage, including storage solution from Permabit, Data Domain and EMC;
- Attended training from Phoenix Technologies (11-12 December 2005)
- Evaluation on different content encoding system for media conversion, including solution from Optibase and Digital Rapids.
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