Design and implementation of digital right management in acollaborative peer-to-peer network

P2P (peer-to-peer) applications have enormous successes in information sharing, although there exist illegal distributions of copyright-protected works and anonymous malicious attacks. A P2P research network prototype, called vuCRN, was developed collaboratively by IT professionals using JXTA technology. It allows its peers freely download shared files with upload permissions being monitored and controlled by decentralized-user authentication using local LDAP (lightweight directory access protocol) servers. This paper presents the second-stage implementation of the vuCRN in digital right management (DRM). Two types of licenses can be issued by a authorized team in the vuCRN system. Eight open content licenses with one license for personal use only. According to the legal requirements, the IT team incorporates these licenses into the vuCRN via metadata data management. The step-by-step design and implementation of DRM for sharing PDF files in the vuCRN are detailed in this paper.