A portable DRM scheme using smart cards

The Internet is a relatively friendly and convenient environment for allowing music, audio, video files, and other digital contents to be copied, modified, and distributed easily. Nevertheless, from the point view of content owners, copyrights protection and intellectual property rights are critical issues that involve revenue loss. The current digital rights management (DRM) systems provide an acceptable copyright protection solution. The DRM venders usually provide a function allowing consumers to migrate their authorized license from one device to another. Still, this function is restricted by the device type and network domain, which does not completely satisfy consumers' needs. However, a successful DRM system should make consumers willing to use it. Therefore, improving copyright protection convenience for consumers is a significant issue. In this paper, a portable DRM scheme in which the usage-rights follow the consumer, but not the device, is presented for constructing a flexible DRM system that improves portability, therefore allowing users to have content use rights on any devices. In addition, an awkward storage system for encrypted data does not need to be maintained by the proposed scheme, thereby giving a more secure, cost-effective solution.