Digital rights management for the online music business

Abstract

Digital rights management has become a pressing concern for the online music business. Existing digital rights management systems are backed by two license management models, the tethered model and the untethered model. These two license management models focus on the management of payments and usage rights. The problems with these models are that the tethered model forces consumers to be online, while the untethered model provides relatively less security to the license residing locally. This paper proposes an enhanced license management model for the online music business, which integrates both models together and thus enables online and offline purchasing.