CONTENT ROAMING SERVICE
The Methodology of using Digital Content across Devices
Kyle Ko, Aircozy Chang, Jay Stu, Yuting Lin and Chuo-Yen Wang
IDEAS, Insitiute for Information Industry, Taipei, Taiwan
Keywords: Digital Right Management, Seamless Reading, Service Experience, e-Book.
Abstract: e-Book reading is very popular in nowadays so that people often use their laptop, smart phone or specific e-
book reader (e.g. Amazon Kindle, iRex iLiad, and Apple iPad) to read anywhere. However, users always
encounter the obstacles such as switching to different mobile devices and synchronizing the latest reading
history. In this research, we proposed a separated license methodology to achieve the purpose of content
roaming in order to not only overcome the users’ obstacles, but also provide total technical solution to
ebook businesses. The methodology includes four processes: 1) license release and deployment; 2) licenses
verification; 3) content transfer and 4) tracking user’s records, enabling user to transmit their licenses
offline. Grounded on the research contribution, both the demand side and the supply side in ebook market
could benefit from the seamless reading convenience and the copyright issues.
1 INTRODUCTION
Awareness and ownership of ebooks reading devices
are growing, spurred by marketing campaigns from
Amazon.com or Apple.com recently as well as press
coverage and word-of-mouth buzz. Users nowadays
possess various digital devices (e.g. desktop, laptop,
smart phone, and specific e-book reader) to utilize
abundant digital contents. However, there is a main
obstacle to the user: content transferring. Users
usually have to register all of his device information
first to let the devices have the rights to open digital
content and the device has to connect to internet first.
To let the users have better reading experience than
before. This research reveals a content roaming
mechanism to enhance the usability between devices.
Content roaming is a general concept that digital
content and its related information can easily
transferred between devices. In this research, we
deal with the digital right transferring and reading
log transferring. Digital Rights Management (DRM),
is an access I/O mechanism which combines devices
and software (Dahl and Kevorkian, 2001;
DigitalConsumer.org). DRM sets the access for
digital content and combines the access with storage
media to protect the copyright of digital content
from published, used to remove. DRM protect the
digital content from pirated, however, there are pros
and cons of this mechanism. When DRM protecting
the copyright also limit the behaviour of uses and
make users feel inconvenient. For these reasons,
mentioned in declaration of consumers’ rights,
consumers have the “Space-shifting” which implies
they can convert or play their digital content on one
device to another once their content were legally
acquired.
In order to accomplish “Space-shifting”, we
presents a solution based on the methodology of
separated licenses for digital copy protection.
Separated license implies the mechanism to divide a
single authorized license, for example Xml, ODRL,
to multiple copies of licenses, the mechanism also
includes the solution of release, deployment,
verification and transfer as mentioned above. By
implementing this methodology, digital content can
be transferred through various devices without
verified by distant servers. Besides, the personal use
record can be converged seamlessly via separated
license mechanisms to overcome the barriers of
using digital content across various devices.
2 RELATED RESEARCH
Today, the importance of customer experience and
customer satisfaction has attracted increasing
attention as both the concerns of service design and
development in service-related industry has been
677
Ko K., Chang A., Stu J., Lin Y. and Wang C..
CONTENT ROAMING SERVICE - The Methodology of using Digital Content across Devices.
DOI: 10.5220/0003499106770680
In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (SSeB-2011), pages 677-680
ISBN: 978-989-8425-51-5
Copyright
c
2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
extended to service science in recent years in order
to provide multi-disciplinary topics improving the
service quality for service-based businesses (Hefley
and Murphy, 2008; Parasuraman et al., 1988). In
order to thoroughly build customer-centered service
systems, the initial requirement analysis plays an
essential role in the system development life cycle.
Thus service blueprinting is the study of service
systems design, which aims at the application of
scientific, management, and engineering disciplines
to improve service systems, particularly those
involved in complex, IT-enabled services (Hefley
and Murphy, 2008).
In addition, a DRM system usually involves
four parties. First, content providers offer content;
they own and want to protect its copyright. Secondly,
distributors acquire digital content from content
providers and deliver digital content to consumers’
devices. Thirdly, clearinghouse operates the
financial transaction as well as record status of
users’ licenses. Lastly, consumers acquire and use
digital content in rules of use such as download or
streaming. Based on different business models,
DRM construct and adjust various structures for
copy-protected digital content. One of famous
examples is Microsoft Media Digital Right
Management Software, which connected with
Windows Media Player. Microsoft Media Digital
Right Management Software, which combines
windows media player, when users play protected
digital content (e.g., audio or video), management
software connects to access control center (also
called rights issuers) to get the license to play the
digital content. Other business cases, for example,
Adobe‘s ADEPT also integrates electric reading
devices to implement the purpose of e-books copy-
protected technology. In application researches of
offline copyright management, Sarmenta et al.
(2008) presented the methodology which assisted
through hardware devices, can verifies the number
of times been used in offline status. Moreover,
Kravitz and Messerges (2005) proposed 5 processes
to deliver that digital content can be used through
devices and copyright can also be protected, most of
these processes, put their emphasis on discussion
and design the content delivery between two
endpoints, or communication process of permission
request and content encryption. However, these 5
processes limited mentioned the topic of offline
content and copyright management by designing
separated licenses.
3 RESEARCH PROPOSTIONS
3.1 Service Analysis
In this research, service blueprinting tool is adopted
to discover the fail points of an e-book user in his
daily life. A service blueprint emphasizes different
systemic layers overlapping in a service, from the
layer of customer interaction and physical evidence
to the layer of internal interaction within the service
production process (Shostack, 1982; 1984).
Accordingly, we depicted user’s reading behaviour
during a day after observing approximately 20 focus
users. Take a knowledge worker’s profile for
instance, user may read news in the beginning of his
day. In this morning time frame, eReader is the
contact device of front stage (i.e. the visible artifact
which user contacts). The back stage is the requested
news downloading function of this eReader while
the informational website is the support process to
sustain the operation infrastructure. Based on
collected users’ behavioural data, the blueprinting
figure reveals a major fail point that user feels
inconvenient in switching their devices to read the
same digital content. The phenomenon is usually
happened when users need to use their mobile
devices outside and to use desktops/laptops back to
home or in office. The content in this switching
moment is the same but the display devices could be
multiple so that reading services should be
synchronized within various devices in order to
assist users to have seamless reading experience.
3.2 Content Roaming Architecture
To eliminate the above fail point, there are two
important problems. One is to make the digital
content transfer legally, the other is to let users
switch their devices and receive the reading content
easier than before. We propose a “content roaming”
concept to reach a new level of e-reading. Content
roaming represents that digital content can be used
by different devices legally and seamlessly. This
research presents a digital copy-protected solution
which is based on the concept of separated license to
implement legal transferring. The core concept of
this methodology builds on separating traditional
single license to Information license, Control license
and adds Journal license.
In Figure 1, after distributed into different
components, different separated licenses will pick
out required data to be verified in verification stage.
The details of essential modules are illustrated as
follows.
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678
Journal
Module
Verification
Module
Browse
Module
Packaging
Module
Authorized
Verification
Module
License
Generation
Module
Control
License
Server
Server
Client
Client
Information
License
Journal
License
Repository
Configuration
Content
Transfer
Module
Content
Management
Module
Content
Figure 1: Methodology Structure.
License Generation Module: This module aims
at generating and encrypting separated license.
Separated license contains information license,
control license and journal license. After licenses
generated, license generation module encrypts the
licenses and transfers to the configuration and
repository on client side.
Packaging Module: The main function is
packaging 1.Control licenses, 2.Journal license,
3.Digital content and 4.Prefixes for describing DRM
information and packaging into a single format to
release, in which, Prefixes are plain texts. Control
licenses and journal licenses are encrypted with RSA
encryption. The digital content is encrypted with
AES encryption.
Configuration: Configuration on client side
stores all verified information licenses. After
generated and encrypted, information license will be
transferred to client side and stored in configuration
of client side.
Repository: This is a storage unit for digital
content storage. Both control license and journal
license will be sent to packaging module and
packaged into deployment format.
Verification Module: This module will capture
the information hidden in information license,
control license and journal license, to verify the
access.
Content Transfer Module: This module
provides copyright protection mechanism. The main
task ensures information license transaction can be
executed safely and digital content be transferred
correctly.
4 SERVICE DEMONSTRATION
In this section, we based on the above methodology
structure to illustrate the three fundamental functions.
4.1 Release and Deployment
of Separated License
According to the objectives of content roaming, this
research designed a mechanism for separated license
release and deployment. The core concept is
dividing and deploying separated license into
different components. Meanwhile, the information
components and elements which the license located
can be highly connected; moreover, mechanism also
enables to encrypt and capture necessary
information in verification period.
(1) Client send download request to server.
(2) Server Processes identity and access
verification after receiving the download
request.
(3) Generate separated license: Information license,
control license and journal license when the
identity and access has verified.
(4) Deploy information license to configuration on
client side; Send control license and journal
license to packaging module.
(5) Packaging module obtains digital content from
content management module.
(6) Package control license, journal license and
digital content into the file in deploy format.
4.2 Verification of Separated License
The verification mechanism of separated license is
dissimilar to which of traditional single license.
(1) Certify identity by information license. Take
hardware ID, software ID user account and
password apart to process identity
certification.
(2) Confirm access after passed identity
certification.
(3) Identify the access of control license and
journal license. Control access encrypted and
acquired from control license, browse record
encrypted and acquire from journal license.
Access verification will be finished after
control access and browse record matched.
(4) After access identification passed, browse
record will be sent to journal module.
(5) Journal module writes browse record into
journal license.
(6) Confirm (5), then open browse module and
digital content.
CONTENT ROAMING SERVICE - The Methodology of using Digital Content across Devices
679
4.3 Digital Content Roaming
The design for separated license deployment enables
the function of digital content roaming; transaction
transfer is the key of the design.
(1) After original and new devices connected, ID
of new device’s hardware and software can
be obtained, so that a new information license
is also generated.
(2) Generate transfer record, and attach transfer
record to new information license.
(3) Prepare to deploy new information license to
new device, and save in configuration.
(4) Execute (3).
(5) Send request to abolish data license.
(6) Abolish original data license.
(7) Request digital content transfer.
(8) Acquire file from repository in original
device.
(9) Transfer the file to repository in new device.
5 CONCLUSIONS
People nowadays have different kinds of digital
devices to access abundant digital contents at
various locations including desktop at home,
smartphone on the bus, eReader on the way, and son
on. Hence, the content transferring legally is an
important issue to deal with. We first employed the
service blueprinting tool to discover users’ potential
needs in digital reading. Also we discussed the usage
of offline content and presented the methodology of
separated license distribution for using digital
content across mobile devices and synchronizing the
use record. In this research, we proposed a robust
solution for licenses distribution and encryption
method, in addition, the system implementation of
license release and deployment, license verification
on client side, content roaming (transfer) across
devices are also explained above. For transferring
copyrights and usage, there are limits and difficulties
still existed in digital right management. However,
our proposed methodology assists digital content to
transfer among different devices without connecting
to distant server for verification. Furthermore,
personal usage can be recorded in journal license
through the design of separated license which can
control the access without connecting to server side
to rewrite the use access (e.g., frequency of use),
meanwhile, use progress of digital content (e.g., the
chapter or page number been read for the last time)
can also be synchronized across two devices to
diminish the barrier of record synchronization across
devices and to reach the seamless use experience for
digital content.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study is conducted under the “Project Digital
Convergence Service Open Platform” of the Institute
for Information Industry which is subsidized by the
Ministry of Economy Affairs of the Republic of
China.
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