License to read: Sealed Media's data rights management system features a variety of marketing methods for content.

A new wave of content security technology sweeps publishing

At a time when content providers -- such as newspapers and magazines -- are trying to ensure security on the Web, some publishers are looking to digital rights management (DRM) technology to make their content more secure before it is distributed by themselves or others.

Through encryption -- that mathematical method of mixing up the data bits of a digital file so that no one, except someone with the key to decrypt the file, can read or view it -- DRM secures the properties of a file and its content to prevent any modifications. With its implementation, users cannot misuse the information.

"Digital rights management is a way to secure content so it can't be copied or used in an unauthorized manner," said Alan Mutter, president and chief executive officer of Sealed Media, a digital rights management provider in San Francisco. "Without registration, a document can be reused, printed or copied as many times as a user wants. The DRM system may limit a document from being copied and keep it from going where it is not supposed to go."

Just how much has it affected newspapers?

"It hasn't affected the newspaper industry much yet," Mutter said. He should know: in a previous life, Mutter was a news executive at the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. "Most newspapers sell clips from their archives, but as they try to extract revenues through investments on the Internet they create valuable content. Newspapers have not been rapid adapters to digital rights management."

In addition to securing the work, DRM systems prevent users from duplicating copyrighted material and distributing it illegally.

"DRM is protected content so users who view it on the Web can't break its copyright," said Bill Rosenblatt, a New York City consultant who specializes in DRM. "The basic problem is that if the content is in digital form, it can be reproduced. In this form, perfect copies can be made with little or no cost. The public has now become concerned with making sure that copies are not being made without copyright infringement."

Digital products can be easily secured over the Internet with patented digital rights solutions.

"Technological solutions are sent to a user in an encrypted form to decrypt the content," Rosenblatt said. "This restricts its use and only allows the user to view or print a certain amount of copies. Digital rights management originated by having users fill out a form in which they would be charged some money for it. It became a hassle for the user because the content was too much of a bother to put articles into that format. Since this was such a difficult process, newspapers feared their readers would just go to another newspaper."

Proprietary digital products are specifically encrypted so they may be viewed, listened to or interacted with only by the customer. This particular protection is necessary for many content holders before they will post content electronically. In addition, end users require guaranteed privacy and want to ensure the information being addressed is in its original form.

Encryption is the most popular solution to securing a document; concurrently, the end user must decrypt the material being distributed.

In addition to the secure distribution of digital products on-line, the features of a DRM distribution system include operations on content (permitting copy to be viewed, printed or transmitted to another party), setting specific conditions for granting access and accepting payment for that content as well as restrictions on allowing a user to view, print or copy the content a limited number of times.

More than encryption
In an effort to further protect a document, digital watermarking may be used. This technology places invisible marks in specific content to later identify a user to whom the content was given. Some people have claimed that this use invades the end-user's privacy, while others maintain the content owner is merely able to identify a user who is misusing original content.

Document authentication involves the technology of digital signatures. Once a document is signed, an end user can verify that a document has not been tampered.

"Many companies are using the QPass system [from QPass Inc. of Seattle], which is not a digital rights management solution but a content sales mechanism," Rosenblatt said. "They sell archived articles but the problem with this system is that it doesn't protect the content being provided. QPass should integrate with a digital rights management vendor to protect work, but they haven't done that yet."

Although newspapers have not fully adopted DRM techniques, there are many other print publications that are already benefiting from its use.

"DRM is taking off in areas where it is valuable like in newsletters," Rosenblatt said. "Market researchers use DRM technology by charging a lot for its content to protect revenue. In the newspaper industry, there are syndicates to subscribers. DRM will prevent unauthorized copy for e-book readers, Palm Pilots and web cell phones. It will just be a while for the newspaper industry to adopt DRM."

The computer-research firm International Data Group reports the market for on-line content sales will increase to $300 billion by the end of 2003. In order for this to happen, content suppliers must successfully manage security and license content efficiently for on-line distribution.

"DRM is an area that occupies the minds of editors everywhere," said David Tomlin, assistant to the president at the Associated Press' AP Digital in New York City. "AP has retained the Cyveillance system to control the Internet for AP trademark. The system makes sure that the copy appears to be from AP and matches it with a list of authorized AP members. Cyveillance gives us a monthly report so we can see any unauthorized use on the Web and we can contact these individuals."

Cyveillance Inc. of Arlington, Va., has a proprietary technology, which it calls NetSapien, that "scours the Internet at high speeds to identify information that meets customer-defined e-business criteria and provides performance metrics for the new Internet economy." In other words, it reads web pages and detects patterns in their content.

"There are various ways of tracking digital files, including graphics or audio files through digital watermarking. AP uses the Cyveillance system, which focuses on recognizing text on the Web," said George Galt, in-house counsel and director of business affairs for the AP. "Cyveillance is a spider-like search engine that looks for AP text material on the Web and lets us know what it finds. It has a list of licensed AP text users that it compares it to."

Without security, there can be no guarantee that original content will be protected from unauthorized use.

"DRM is not well understood by populations at large," Galt added. "Many people often don't realize it is a problem. If a commercial organization uses unauthorized AP content and they know what they are doing and don't care, then our approach is more aggressive. We have seen some organizations take an AP story and put their own rights on it and not give the appropriate credit to AP. They are trying to make money off our work. We try to make people aware of the value and content they own and wake up to the fact that they are in competition. People are now being made more careful and are aware of the content use by others."

Advertising and non-advertising
While newspapers may not be acknowledging the immediate need for DRM, others see valuable results from using the technology, which requires the user to identify him or herself and then assigns an identification symbol to them. When a customer requests permission to download specific content, the data is encrypted -- scrambled -- for the user. Once the user purchases a license to view the data, most systems will not permanently decrypt -- unscramble -- the digital content, but keep the file encrypted and allow the user only specific rights to the content, making unauthorized distribution of it virtually impossible.

Therefore, when a user purchases the rights to specific on-line content and tries to forward it to another user, the recipient is not able to open the encrypted file. If the original user tries to forward a decrypted file, most systems are able to track its destination as being illegally forwarded.

"DRM systems are important for advertisers who support publications and non-advertising publications," said Sanford Bingham, president of FileOpen Systems Inc. of New York City. "DRM is primarily applied to the second group where revenues come from the buyer of information rather than the advertiser. Content that flows into a newspaper is valuable and can be packaged in different ways. The tools my company provides are for newsletters because we are able to control the number of times a document is being printed."

Copyright enables legal protection for authors' original content, granting the owner of the work exclusive rights to control the copying, distribution and preparation of other works based on the original form.

"We have about 170 customers right now," Bingham said. "The first step for newspapers is electronic distribution on their web sites. For example, the Wall Street Journal has its users pay to view a section of their web site to see the on-line current edition. It has lots of users. The trouble is users may look to a different publication if they do not want to pay to access the site. I can see the future of newspapers protecting their high-value content by being able to see it on-line with a direct pay-per-view model."

In the United States, penalties for violating copyrights vary from up to $150,000 per title infringed for civil cases and in criminal cases the user may even receive up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine. On-line protection extends to books, articles and e-journals.

"I give permission for people to reprint an article but I do not allow an article to be put onto a web site because then whatever happens to it is out of our control," said Kathy Foley, assistant managing editor of Texas' San Antonio Express-News. "We negotiate for specific data to be put on the Web and the user purchases the content. We also have a contract with the Copyright Clearance Center that deals with these requests. Some requests are referred to them and they charge a reprint fee. They deal with larger companies, universities and Fortune 500 clients. The main concern is that we want to be able to protect the value of our original content."

Internet changes business models
The United States recently passed legislation to prevent unauthorized use of copyrighted information. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides both civil and criminal penalties for any hackers who are able to break into on-line locks that protect original copy. This law is only able to protect the coordination of the database.

"It is clear with the Internet that it is dramatically changing business models for content. It may be an overly simplistic way to think, but content will soon be free," said David Morgan, chairman of Real Media in New York City. "It is hard to create proprietary content. There have been lots of attempts to manage digital rights through watermarking and copyrighting but they are likely to fail because it is too easy to distribute. Rights management will be less of an issue than people trying to copyright. The next focus will be on brand licensing."

There will have to be a clean line to distinguish original content, syndicated content and wire news for newspapers.

"Out of all the newspapers accessed on the Web, 50 percent is from Reuters," Morgan, a former executive with the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers Association, added. "It will be interesting to see where these syndicates go. Brand value will become more important than content with more free content exchanges."

Morgan said that in the print media world, it is important to have direct revenues that are not significant in businesses. "If they did an intellectual property audit on most newspapers, the actual newspaper owns very little original copy. They may end up with about 20 percent in original content. The rest is wire stories, advertising, free-lance work, etc. Digital transmission is better because it can be delivered faster and can profit from DRM."

In the digital environment, the ability to alter a database makes it easy to engage in database piracy. These information providers are able to use contract law to protect their rights on-line with license agreements.

DRM protects the user by controlling access to the information and allows the provider to track its use and distribution.

"We have a restrictive policy on reprints," said Jan Dennis, managing editor for The Pantagraph in Bloomington, Ill. "We get a lot of requests for reprints but we are not considering a digital rights management system yet. For now, we require a waiver for a user to sign that doesn't allow the user to reprint under specific considerations. The web site is a problem for us. People can get news without paying for the copy. We used to protect ourselves by posting the day's news at 11 a.m. Now, we do a summary posting at midnight and more in-depth coverage at 11 a.m. The way people are receiving information is changing. We are not considering a digital rights management system now but we may have to in the future whether we want to or not."

Without strong, effective licensing agreements, content owners will not be able to assign usage rights to protect their original copy.

-- Kellie K. Speed, kkspeed@colepapers.net

The Associated Press,
(212) 621-1500;
Cyveillance Inc.,
(703) 351-1000,
e-mail: info@cyveillance.com;
FileOpen Systems Inc.,
(212) 501-9567,
e-mail: info@fileopen.com;
QPass Inc.,
(206) 447-6000,
e-mail: info@qpass.com;
Real Media Inc.,
(212) 725-4537,
e-mail: info@realmedia.com;
Sealed Media,
(415) 394-9999,
e-mail: us.info@sealedmedia.com.

From THE COLE PAPERS, October 2000, Copyright © 2000, All Rights Reserved.