NEMO, or Networked Environment for Media Orchestration,
is Intertrust's reference technology environment for interoperability
between different DRM systems. As people build diverse
proprietary DRM functionality into devices and services,
the problem of transferring content from one to the other becomes significant.
DRM systems are typically very protective of their content, and resist transferring
that content to other DRM systems.
Traditional approaches to DRM interoperability have either
required universal use of the same DRM system or for DRM
systems to be connected to each other in a bilateral agreement.
The former eliminates freedom of choice and creates dependencies
on a single platform that can limit device and service
performance. The latter does not scale and again limits
the market to a small number of options. NEMO resolves
the issue of incompatible DRM technologies by leveraging
service-oriented architectures (SOAs) to create a secure
medium through which DRM systems can communicate dynamically.
In this sense, NEMO is to DRM systems what TCP/IP is to
computers – a way of networking processors to exchange
information. Of course, with DRM systems, secure networking
is essential, and NEMO offers ways to achieve this. Using
SOAs, NEMO provides proprietary DRM services with a way
in which to communicate and request each other's operations,
without needing to know anything about the proprietary
workings of the services.
Click here to download a presentation describing the interoperability
problem, and how NEMO offers a solution to it.
Octopus
Octopus is a toolkit for building DRM engines. In a market
where true DRM interoperability is present, people will
be free to build their own DRM systems for a given application.
Unlike traditional DRM technologies, it is, by design,
an open specification for enabling implementers to DRM-enhance
their systems, applications, and devices without giving
up control of their platforms. By being an open specification
rather than a black-box implementation, Octopus leaves
the choice of cryptography, operating system, software
vendor, implementation, and business model in the hands
of the adopters.
Octopus is made up of a simple and powerful architecture
consisting of basic building blocks. These basic building
blocks provide ways of protecting digital content, expressing
usage rules for the content, evaluating usage rules, and
binding content, encryption and usage rules with a variety
of models.
When combined with other technologies (i.e., cryptographic
ciphers, multimedia file formats and codecs, application
user interfaces, and web services) developers can design
and implement complete DRM systems rapidly.
Octopus initially targets the protection and consumption
of digital multimedia, but can be used for any type of
digital content. Octopus was designed to be implemented
in systems as small as smartcards and as large as enterprise
servers that power e-commerce back-end systems. Octopus
runs on a variety of different operating systems and a
wide range of hardware platforms.
