Chinese MPEG-21 rights expression language : enhancing digital rights management adoption to digital libraries in Hong Kong

中文化 MPEG-21 權限描述語言 : 加強數字權限保護在香港數字圖書館中的應用

Student thesis: Master's Thesis

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Author(s)

  • Eliot LIU

Detail(s)

Awarding Institution
Supervisors/Advisors
Award date2 Oct 2009

Abstract

The World Wide Web has explosively expanded over the world during these ten years and we are now facing an exciting new era which is bringing tremendous change to Internet innovation. China has witnessed a dramatic shift of the demographics of Chinese Internet users. By the end of June 2008, the population of Chinese Internet users was 253 million, ranked first in the world, and Chinese is world’s second largest language group. Digital library is widely recognized as an important infrastructure for information and knowledge sharing, as well as an essential service to help users find and access information resources in the networked information society. While enjoying the benefits that digital revolution has brought to digital library development, people also have to face the problem of protecting the usage right in the digital content lifecycle. Rights Expression Language (REL), also called rights metadata in digital library scenario, is a key technology in Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems to specify usage rights by a machine readable license. However, the research on it has just started and is immature in China and Hong Kong, and mainly about function and benefits, and comparison and evaluation of current RELs. In addition, there is no Chinese REL standard in digital library context. Motivated by the above observations, this research aims to discuss the issues of localizing MPEG-21 REL into Chinese language especially for the use in digital libraries. To achieve this aim, the current research situation of REL in digital library scenario is investigated. Then, the factors affecting localization process are identified, and an appropriate REL localization model in digital library scenario is established. Based on the model, core rights and multimedia extension rights in MPEG-21 REL are localized into Chinese language. Finally, a case example is presented to demonstrate the use of Chinese MPEG-21 REL. Results show that Chinese REL in digital library context is a necessity in providing linguistically, culturally and contextually tailored rights metadata to protect the rights of each stakeholder. The work also builds a foundation for DRM development in digital libraries.

    Research areas

  • Data protection, Digital libraries, MPEG (Video coding standard), China, Hong Kong, Computer security, Copyright and electronic data processing