Contents:
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Representation and preservation of digital rights
- 3 Classification and evaluation of DRM and DRM systems
- 4 Review of DRM use and dealing with digital rights
- 5 Results of the APARSEN DRM Survey
- 6 Best practices and recommendations
- 7 Conclusion
- References
This deliverable of the APARSEN project is specifically concerned with approaches for dealing with digital rights and protection mechanisms (known as DRM or DRM systems) in order to achive the long-term archiving and ongoing accessibility of DRM-protected objects. After the introductory section, the authors depict in short how digital rights of digital content can be preserved over the long-term. It includes and explanation of what preservation metadata are, as well as the OAIS reference model, the (history of the) PREMIS data model and other rights expression languages (Open Digital Rights Language, METSRights, XrML, CopyrightMD and MPEG21-REL). Section 3 provides an overview of the key Digital Rights Management technologies, systems and concrete examples of implementation. A selection of the main representatives of all available DRM tools and systems is examined, classified and then evaluated according to the four DRM variants (categories) identified: Data carrier copy protection; Lightweight DRM; Encryption-based password protection ; DRM system. Section 4 and Section 5 examine how the long-term preservation community is currently coping with the challenges arising from DRM and digital rights. The user scenarios (section 4.2) describe the observations and experiences of the four National Libraries participating in this project. Furthermore a DRM survey was conducted, with the low response of 18 respondents: half national libraries, half other institutions such as research facilities and archives. Section 6 contains a list of the previously identified current best practices in handling DRM and digital rights and presents the recommendations from the work package in the form of a catalogue. It is noted that there are only few truly reliable practical experiences beyond prototypical experiments with the execution of preservation actions on DRM protected materials. And it identifies some open research questions for the research map. The report concludes with an outlook for the future, a.o. pointing out: that safeguarding the protective rights of their archived assets, which is essential to memory or cultural heritage institutions, requires that the digital archive is a durable trusted archive and that the owner of the objects trusts the repository; the importance of using open, standardized components and open metadata standards (section 2); that it is essential to invest in training and qualification of personnel; that the proposed catalogue of recommendations (section 6) might function as ‘first aid’ support for the issue that access and use restrictions could hinder the preservation of the object in such a way that the long-term preservation of rights information is problematic.
Good read for those who are responsible for the issue of how to represent and administer digital rights and eventually of how to archive them. The report is both comprehensive and practical. It provides clear insight into the DRM techniques that are widely used and how the risk of archiving might be assessed on protected objects. The importance and the complexity of preserving rights information and preservation metadata along with the other representation information and the bibliographical information of records is made clear.