A Benefits-centric Multi-participant Trust Architecture for DRM-Enabling Digital Contents Value Chain Ecosystem

A multi-participant trust relationship is essential to implement a successful business transaction in DRM (digital rights management)-enabling digital contents industry. The simple adoption of several increasingly enhanced security policies does not necessarily establish the mutual trust relationship ultimately, and even has a negative effect on the usability and acceptability of DRM system. Therefore, various participantspsila benefits should be emphasized in the contents value chain. First, a general DRM contents value chain ecosystem was presented without a loss of generality. Then, a benefits-centric multi-participant trust architecture (abbr. MPTA), which is based on game-theoretic rational adoptions of security policies for participants, was proposed through an anatomy of existing value chain ecosystems. Finally, we formalized the definitions of the security component and service, the security policy and its utility, as well as the Nash equilibriums of the multi-participant game under pure and mixed security policy profile. Due to the introduction to game theory, MPTA enables participants to acquire optimal benefits balance when fundamental security requirements are met, and Nash equilibrium of the game is the chosen security policies combinations from the participantspsila perspectives.