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

 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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Journal

Module

Verification

Module

Browse

Module

Packaging

Module

Authorized

Verification

Module

License

Generation

Module

Control

License

Server

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.

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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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