Multi media automation removes constraints around digital rights management
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A team of European researchers says it has bridged the gap between the commercial imperatives of digital content providers and the requirements of users who buy content.
Project coordinator Paolo Nesi says that allowing users to access and play copyright-protected multimedia files downloaded onto their devices – PCs, cellphones, PDAs, TV set-top boxes – should not impinge on the intellectual property rights of the content provider.
In practice, however, each device has a different operating system, so the file to be downloaded needs to be coded. Using current technologies this is costly and time consuming, and especially so for multimedia and cross-media files that include different digital instructions to be used for composing the same content – such as an HTML page or an educational course – he says.
An ambitious EU-funded research project, AXMEDIS, has now addressed this by defining and developing new solutions and a system for automating the post-production formatting process of intelligent content. This makes it commercially viable to have the same multimedia and cross-media files available to download to, transfer between and play on different devices.
Nesi says that the project has also been focusing on digital rights management (DRM) to ensure that only users who have paid for content may exploit the rights specified by the licences, and that the content is protected from copying and distribution aside from the specified rights.
“Automation of production is an important focus of the project, managing the back office to automatically publish any content for the internet, TV, PDA, PC and so on. At the same time, the object needs to be protected for all channels but with only one licence required.”
Following the development phase, AXMEDIS demonstrators were given field trials by some of the biggest broadcasting and telecoms names in Europe, including the BBC, Telecom Italia, Tiscali, Eutelsat, ELION Telecom of Estonia, and TEO Telecom of Lithuania.
According to Nesi, feedback from the field trials and presentations were excellent at the IBC 2008 exhibition in Amsterdam, where some of the partners were able to demonstrate the new system and solutions in action, together with the AXMEDIS framework and tools.
A spin-off company, AxMediaTech, has now been founded by some of the partners and other parties, including BIXIO, SED and AFI, one of the largest associations of content producers in Italy.
