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Digital rights management for interoperable mobile services: how the Open Mobile Alliance enables increased revenues for handset vendors and mobile operators.

Article Excerpt
Managing content in the next few years is only going to get more complicated. Luckily standards are on the way.

The sharing of media and entertainment via mobile devices is becoming an increasingly popular pastime and one of the most widely used mobile services. People download content to their mobile phones or receive information by MMS every day, thereby allowing content to be passed along from one to the other, finding the natural path toward the perfect target audience.

Typically, the media consumed on a mobile device today includes light media content types, with a lower value of around $1.00-$2.00 per item, such as screensavers, wallpapers, or ringtones. Content providers and mobile carriers are facing piracy issues similar to those caused by peer-to-peer networks on the Internet, and they are losing revenues since much of today's lower-value content is forwarded from one user to the next for free. As new smart phones and other devices with color displays and richer audio capabilities penetrate the market, and as network capacities increase thanks to a growing number of WLAN hotspots, consumers are demanding access to higher-value content. Recognizing the revenue potential of these services, mobile carriers and content providers aim to fulfill these consumer demands, while at the same time looking to protect their investments in high-value content.

They are looking for a copy protection solution that is specifically designed for the mobile environment (i.e., mobile digital rights management [DRM]). Addressing the most critical dilemmas in the life cycle of premium content--intellectual property, integrity protection, security, and privacy--successful DRM solutions enable the operation of high-quality mobile services with secured revenues, while also allowing super distribution--the easy, secure forwarding of content from one person to another.

DRM solutions need to work across different devices, geographies, operators, and mobile terminals. They need to escort protected files wherever they go and enforce administrator-defined policies, including who can read what, what content can be duplicated or e-mailed, and how long a user can view a file. Without a secure and interoperable DRM solution, the full potential of mobile media and entertainment delivery cannot be realized.

Defining Open Standards for Interoperable Mobile Services

This is where...

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