Digital Rights Languages

The second speaker is Renato Ianella, from the Open Digital Rights Language Iniative. This project focusses on one of the three components of Creative Commons licences (human-, lawyer-, machine-readable): the machine-readable representation of licences. This is linked to digital rights management issues: on a technical level, DRM covers rights information management (RIM: rights holders, royalties, licence management) and technical protection measures (TPM: security, encryption, trust). RIM metadata is usually captured in an XML-based "Rights Expression Language" (REL).

Two standards bodies exist for DRM: the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and the MPEG-21 (parts 4, 5, 6) group. Both promote their own rights expression languages - the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL, as used on OMA), and the Microsoft-backed Extensible Rights Management Language (XRML, as used by MPEG-21(5)). Additionally, Creative Commons is also involved in this battle.

REL's scope covers the recognition, assertion, expression, dissemination, exposure, and enforcement of rights (see e.g. http://www.intrallect.com/drm-study/). ODRL is an open and free initiative with an independent governance board, developing standards adoption strategies and working with a number of external partners. Its key process is managing the relations between rights, owners, and content. In the Creative Commons framework, there are three key components - permissions, prohibitions, and requirements - attached to each licence. The joint working group between ODRL and CC is now working to develop an expression of CC semantics in the richer ODRL language.

A problem in this process was that the CC prohibitions were not immediately able to be expressed in the ODRL model (it contains not negative prohibitions restricting usability, but only positive permissions detailing what uses can be made of content). On the other hand, the greater detail in the ODRL framework allows for more specificity in the granting of permissions than is possible under the CC framework. ODRL also controls the licencing transaction more directly, where CC mainly operates on the licensor's side.

A similar process is now also underway for the AEShareNet licences, with its specific requirements. This is not an attempt to usurp the existing licence frameworks, however - ODRL recognises the specific consumer and provider needs in these different contexts and merely provides a vehicle to express such licencing schemes clearly and semantically correctly. An ODRL 2.0 standard is now also in the works, extending the existing language framework (and importantly also adding the opportunity to state prohibitions as well as permissions).

And this wraps the conference proper - there will be some additional sessions after lunch, focussing on the computer games industry, though!