Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Wired: "Pay Once, Share Often With LWDRM"
Posted by Suhit Gupta in "THOUGHT" @ 09:00 AM
"Germany's Fraunhofer Institute has developed a technology that could potentially end the ongoing worldwide war between the music industry and consumers who copy music clips by the millions. The institute, which developed the MP3 format in the first place and is therefore partly responsible for the digital-rights controversy, has conceived a new technology called Light Weight Digital Rights Management.
LWDRM gives consumers more freedom. Like any other digital-rights system, it starts with a payment that gives consumers the right to use the song or video clip on their PC. But with LWDRM, from that point on consumers decide what may be done with it. They can copy the clip to another device like an MP3 player or distribute the file to a limited number of friends and relatives. In order to do so, the buyer has to download a digital certificate from a certification authority. The certificate attaches itself to the file like a watermark and records exactly what is done with it."
I recommend reading the article as it gives a lot more details. This seems like a good idea and I am sort of surprised that it took so long for someone to put something like this together. Go Fraunhofer!. They also promise a fully integrated digital-payment system to go with LWDRM which will be demonstrated next spring.
LWDRM gives consumers more freedom. Like any other digital-rights system, it starts with a payment that gives consumers the right to use the song or video clip on their PC. But with LWDRM, from that point on consumers decide what may be done with it. They can copy the clip to another device like an MP3 player or distribute the file to a limited number of friends and relatives. In order to do so, the buyer has to download a digital certificate from a certification authority. The certificate attaches itself to the file like a watermark and records exactly what is done with it."
I recommend reading the article as it gives a lot more details. This seems like a good idea and I am sort of surprised that it took so long for someone to put something like this together. Go Fraunhofer!. They also promise a fully integrated digital-payment system to go with LWDRM which will be demonstrated next spring.
