Digital Rights Permission Code (DRPC)
Author: Takahito Iida
Director
Platform Business DivisionDentsu Inc.

This proposal was introduced at ALAI Dublin 2011 in July 1st,2011.

INTRODUCTION

In the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011, I have come to believethat content is spiritual nourishment for people and I consider it indispensable for Japan’srecovery.

Content may be family photographs and videos that we shot when our children were still
small (user-generated content, or UGC), or comics, anime, TV shows, and movies that we
enjoyed in our childhood. Content created in the past by professionals and amateurs isimportant because it stimulates our memories, while newly fashioned, contemporary
content is also important because it continues to inspire the young.

What I have realized in facing this reality is that we must fundamentally rethink our energy
policies in the wake of the disaster that struck Japan last March. It is necessary to
promote greater energy conservation and so we must avoid unnecessary downloads,
redundant ownership of files, and excessively robust security systems built in fear of piracy.
It is not difficult to anticipate that cloud computing will gain momentum as a solution tothese challenges. Indeed, that is where we need to ensure convenient access to content
by consumers while achieving the appropriate distribution of revenues to content

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producers and rights holders, if we hope to see the concurrent presence and coexistenceof the two parties. Without that, we cannot hope for intellectual and cultural evolution on a
global scale.

To realize this vision, a technically and legally common language for licensing will beessential.

New terminal devices and new forms of services developed by engineers must

be able to understand the licensing conditions defined by content producers and rights
holders.

Licensing information provided by the rights holder has to be read by thesedevices.

The Digital Rights Permission Code (DRPC) system created by Dentsu is just such acommon engineering and legal language developed for this purpose. Although it wasdeveloped in 1997, DRPC has not yet been put into widespread practical use and thereasons for this will be explained later in this paper.

The situation around the world at present does not allow us to adopt a wait-and-see
stance any longer. I sincerely hope that this paper will serve as a stimulus to theinternational legal community and help promote cooperation between you and theengineering community.

ISSUES

1. Fundamental Issue

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Needless to say, the discrepancy between technical evolution and copyrights has
continued to be a major issue, particularly since the mid-1990s, with the arrival of theInternet.

The distribution of digital content has been made possible by advances in technology, but
the theory and interpretation of copyrights have not been able to keep pace with theprogress of such services, which has left both consumers and rights holders dissatisfied
by the lack of security and certainty regarding the legality of these services.

However,the situation cannot be corrected through the efforts of the legal community alone.
Because a private contract precedes a copyright in every country, we should takeadvantage of this legal underpinning more effectively.

Who granted permission properly to use which content to whom under what conditions?
We need to establish an information management system that keeps this information up todate at all times.

2. Presence of Rights Organizations—Meddlesome concept of general licensing—

When I presented the newly devised DRPC system to Japan’s largest rights organizationin 1997, they pointed out that it was a general licensing system.

At the time, nointegrated management system whatsoever existed among the various rights
organizations and unfortunately the situation remains unchanged today.

Use common ID groups and a common interface to realize efficient operation:

the DRPC

system created by Dentsu is the concrete manifestation of this proposal. All
organizations agree with the proposal in general, but positive discussion stops whenconfronted with the issue of which organization will take on the role of initiator. In August3

2009, the deadlock put an end to Melodies and Memories Global Limited, a company that I
founded in April 2001 to promote DRPC.

Due in part to reviews of general incorporated

associations and public interest incorporated associations in Japan that took place during
this time, rights organizations have been going through a period of transition.

It would be

ideal for individual rights organizations to function well to realize quick processing oflicensing information across rights management organizations.

Furthermore, it would be

more ideal if such processing took place in an instant, horizontally across national borders.
However, it is obvious that creators, producers, and rights holders will lose patience andthat fewer will agree with this ideal if individual rights management organizations remain
wedded to preserving their vested interests for some time to come.

SOLUTIONS

Implementation of the DRPC system

Explanation of the DRPC system

Devised by Dentsu in 1997, the DRPC system is a method of managing licensing
information that can deal with the distribution of content in the digital era. In June 2008, it
was designated the Japan-proposed international technical standard IEC 62227 followinginternational voting.

This technical standard makes it possible to simplify the elements of complex licensing
information related to the rights holders of various content, which is subdivided into usage
purpose and usage conditions, among others, using a numerical code, so that the
information can be understood by devices owned by consumers, including mobile phones,
mobile terminals, household TV sets/STBs, and personal computers. This technical4

standard was examined closely and deliberated upon continuously by the Japan
Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA)1 from 2004.

The DRPC system is comprised of four elements, as described below.

—Who grants permission to use which content to whom under what conditions?
Content ID: Specifies content
From ID:

Specifies rights holders/license managers

To ID: Specifies distributors, consumers, and devices
N Permission Code:Expresses detailed, concrete usage conditions

By imbedding the above-mentioned four elements (IDs and N permission code) into thecontent itself (a file or other forms of digital data) at the time of its distribution, it ensuresthat the content users will use it in the proper manner while enjoying it and that the content
owner/rights holder will receive an appropriate usage report.

In addition, its common

usage across related rights organizations enable sharing of rights among all organizations
concerned with accuracy and clarity.

—Vertically and horizontally—
Now is a time when content is travelling across national borders.

Now is a time when theadvent of social media, including Facebook and Twitter, has turned consumers
themselves into distributors, content producers, and rights holders all of a sudden.

Taking those two matrices into consideration, the concept of “vertically and horizontally”
becomes a prerequisite for global processing of licensing information.

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http://www.jeita.or.jp/english/51. Method of Specifying Content

Music:How many genres of digital content come under the “music” category? The

answer should be at least five, including the following:

Music enjoyed aurally; information recorded on CDs
Music enjoyed visually and aurally; information recorded on DVDs
Music enjoyed visually and by playing musical instruments manually; information
recorded as scores
Music enjoyed visually and by singing; information recorded as lyrics
Music enjoyed by arranging with a computer and the like; information recorded as
modifiable MIDI data

For the processing of licensing information for music, different processing is applied toeach of the above-mentioned genres 1 to 5. The first thing we need to do is establish a
globally common issuing method for differentiating and specifying the genres of digitalcontent. The above-mentioned genres 1 to 5 are identified by two initial letters, as shown
below, under DRPC’s content ID system.

SM (Sound - Music)
VM (Visual - Music)
IM (Image - Music)
TM (Text - Music)
PM (Program - Music)

6After classifying the content genre vertically, a WIPO2-defined two-letter country code isadded to the two initial letters to enable horizontal identification within each content genre.
For example,
SMJP: Sound-Music of Japan (Japanese music enjoyed aurally)
VMUS: Visual-Music of the US (Promotional music video from the US)
IMFR:Image-Music of France (Score of a French song)

TMKR: Text-Music of South Korea (Lyrics of a Korean song)

Application of a common content ID can only be realized by promoting vertical andhorizontal classification in parallel.

The above-described four-letter code is then followed

by a two-letter “center code,” to create a code of 16 letters in total.

2. Method of Specifying Rights Holders and Users

In line with the approach to specifying and identifying content, there are two codes for
specifying and identifying rights holders and users, as shown below.
Rights Holder:

H

Rights User:U

In order to deploy these two classifications horizontally, a WIPO-defined two-letter countrycode is added to the single-letter code above.
HJP:

Rights holder in Japan

UUS:

Rights user in the US2

http://www.wipo.int/portal/index.html.en

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For example,

HFR:

Rights holder in France

UKR:

Rights user in South Korea

Meanwhile, rights holders and users are classified as entity types and vertically integratedusing the single-letter codes O, C, and I, as shown below.
Organization:

O

Company:C

Individual:

I

Adding the above entity codes gives the following examples:
HJPO: Rights holder organization in Japan
UUSC: Rights user company in the US
HFRI:

Individual rights holder in France

UKRI:

Individual rights user in South Korea

In addition, existing groups of cultural organizations are classified as follows to realize
vertical integration into the two categories of H and U.

Groups that manage the text and literature genres
Groups that manage the music genre
Groups that manage the art and image genres
Groups that are responsible for the movie and video genres
Groups that are responsible for the performers genre

8Groups that are responsible for the mass communication, advertising, andcommunications genres
Groups that are responsible for the technical assistance and post-production
genresGroups that are responsible for interactive content and advanced technology
genresIn Japan, a private organization associated with the Agency for Cultural Affairs called theConference on Copyright for Digital Millennium (CCD)3 took the lead to define
identification codes for groups using four-digit numbers.

For example,

HJPO1000:

Groups that manage Japanese text and literature genres

HJPO2000:

Groups that manage Japanese music genre

HJPO3000:

Groups that manage Japanese art and image genres

HJPO4000:

Groups that are responsible for Japanese movie and video genres

HJPO5000:

Groups that are responsible for the performers genre

HJPO6000:

Groups that are responsible for the mass communication, advertising,and communications genres
HJPO7000:

Groups that are responsible for the technical assistance andpost-production genres
HJPO8000:

Groups that are responsible for the interactive content and advanced

technology genres3

http://www.ccd.gr.jp/pdf/Report_H16english.pdf

9The DRPC system expresses all common IDs, namely Content ID, From ID, and To ID, in
16-digit codes and the above-mentioned entity identification codes accordingly aresupplemented with eight zeros to create 16-digit codes.

3. Method of Specifying Consumers

3-1. Specifying consumers by issuing IDs

Consumers are specified as below:
Japanese consumers:

UJPI

IDs have not yet been defined for devices owned by consumers and services purchasedby consumers. We hope to establish them jointly with the International ElectrotechnicalCommission (IEC)4 and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)5 through JEITA.

3-2. Toward an era of subrogation of rights holders and consumers

Consumers who hitherto have passively enjoyed content created by professionals aretransformed into UGC creators and rights holders all of a sudden.

Conversely,

broadcasters, who have been visual content creators, are also transformed into users of
UGC created by consumers.

4

http://www.iec.ch/5

http://www.itu.int/en/Pages/default.aspx

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UJPI --> HJPIHJPC --> UJPC

Switching the initial letters of H and U enables the subrogation of one’s capacity according
to the situation.

3-3. Licensing of consumer information—Common traits of and relevancy of personal information protection law and copyrightlaw—

Personal information, such as one’s medical history, annual income, family composition,
activity history, and current location, could be valuable for a company’s marketing
activities.

In some cases, businesses pay for such information or are willing to obtain it

legally under certain conditions.

It can therefore be said that personal information

represents content owned by the individual consumer and that it too should beaccompanied by detailed licensing conditions, including how it will be used. In March
2002, Mr. Nicholas R. Givotovsky who was in the US, and Takahito Iida established theabove-mentioned concept of licensing by consumers in the US by extending the conceptof licensing by rights holders and adopting a “reversal” approach.

In July 2011, aninternational law society began debating for the first time the relationship between theprivate contract governing UGC and copyright law at the annual conference of the
Association Litteraire et Artistique Internationale (ALAI, or International Literary andArtistic Association)6 in Dublin, Ireland.

Further discussions on the approach toconsumers’ personal information as UGC are expected to take place from now on basedon the new concept of licensing by the consumer while taking into consideration its
relevance for personal information protection law.

6

http://www.alai.org/

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I would like to see the development of flexible licensing conditions in response to thearrival of individuals who possess the dual character of rights holder and consumer as
described in the preceding paragraph. I also expect to see the global deployment of aflexible interface for defining two-way licensing conditions rich in diversity that goesbeyond a one-dimensional “black-or-white” approach.

4. Method of Expressing Detailed, Concrete Licensing Conditions

4-1. Summary of the N (Narrow) permission code

The N permission code is comprised of classification and restricting elements and as suchenables the flexible description of contract and licensing conditions.

4-2. Classifications (mandatory)

Classification by extent of openness
Open licensing or Closed licensing
Classification by usage purpose
For commercial use and/or Public use and/or Educational use
Classification by charge
With or Without charge
Classification by sponsorshipWith or Without sponsorshipClassification by usage

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Exclusive licensing
Broadcasting licensing, and/or
Streaming licensing, and/or
Physical rental
Ownership licensing:

Described side by side with various restricting

elements such as life control, restriction on recording medium, and the like
Without (= free) or With restriction on recording medium
Downloading licensing
Without life control (free) or With life control (Number of plays,
Time limit of play, Terms of play)
Secondary use licensing
MoveLife control elements or Elements restricting recording medium
Copy
Life control elements or Elements restricting recording medium

Classification of territory
Japan and/or China and/or Korea ...

These classifications are mandatory.

There are six categories expressing details of

licensing contracts for using content and they are intended to control the behavior of thedevice being used with the help of information on restricting elements.

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Meanwhile, the restricting elements are optional. When there is a need to apply
restrictions to a specific device and/or usage environment, the related information
complements licensing details that cannot be expressed by the classification information
alone.

4-3. Restricting elements (optional)

Elements restricting recording medium
Without restriction (free)With restriction
CDs
MDs
HDDs (including PCs, STBs, and mobile devices)DVDs
SD cards
Memory sticks
Specified quality/compression format
Bit-rate restricting element
Life-control element
Without life control (free)With life control (Restricted number of plays, Restricted terms, Time limit)
Specified security
Digital watermark and/or Specified DRM and/or Encryption

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Elements restricting communication channel
Without restriction (free)With restriction (Ground broadcasting and/or CATV and/or Internet and/or
Wireless)
Elements restricting the location where content is obtained
Without restriction (free)With restriction (Shop and/or Home and/or PC and/or Mobile device)

5. Legal Positioning of the DRPC System

The WIPO Copyright Treaty was signed by member countries following a proposal by theWorld Intellectual Property Organization.

Article 12 (on Obligations Concerning Rights

Management Information) stipulates that “Contracting Parties shall provide adequate andeffective legal remedies against any person knowingly performing any of the following
acts: (i) to remove or alter any electronic rights management information without authority;(ii) to distribute, import for distribution, broadcast or communicate to the public, withoutauthority, works or copies of works knowing that electronic rights management information
has been removed or altered without authority.”

The “electronic rights management information” used in this article is defined as“…information which identifies the work, the author of the work, the owner of any right in
the work, or information about the terms and conditions of use of the work, and any
numbers or codes that represent such information, when any of these items of information
is attached to a copy of a work or appears in connection with the communication of a work
to the public.” The DRPC system clearly falls under this definition.

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According to Japan’s Copyright Law, “right[s] management information” is defined in
Clause 21 of Article 2 as “…information concerning moral rights or copyright…orrights…which falls within any of the following (a), (b) and (c) and which is recorded in amemory or transmitted by electromagnetic means together with works, performances,phonograms, or sounds or images of broadcasts or wire diffusions…:(a)information which specifies works, etc., owners of copyright[s], etc. and othermatters specified by Cabinet Order;(b)

information relating to manners and conditions of…exploitation in case[s] where

the exploitation of works, etc. is authorized;(c)information which enables…[the specification of] matters mentioned in (a) or (b)above in comparison with other information.”

In addition, Items 1 and 2 of Clause 3 of Article 113 regard such acts as the intentional
addition of false information to “rights management information” and the intentionalremoval or alteration of “rights management information” as infringements.

The DRPC system is “rights management information” and applying the DRPC system tocopyrighted objects can be considered from a legal perspective to be a means ofprotecting the copyrights of authors and the like.

More specifically, if the DRPC system is designated globally as “rights management
information” in the eyes of copyright law, it opens the way for a rights holder to takemeasures against piracy across national borders more easily by, for instance, embedding
DRPC in the content file itself with watermarking technology and the like. This is because
the embedded rights management information is likely to reduce the burden of the rights
holder’s presentation of proof of the infringement, while legal protection is provided in thecase of alteration of the rights management information.

Moreover, this secures thelegitimacy of DRPC from the viewpoint of copyright law as well.

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In addition, widespread use of DRPC can be expected to contribute to boosting fairlicensing businesses, as well as to strengthening measures for detecting pirated content.
We have high expectations for the creation of an international management organization
as a coordinator in line with the above-mentioned activity.

Dentsu has worked jointly with

the Association of Copyright for Computer Software (ACCS)7 for several years to promotewidespread use of DRPC.

Since its establishment, the ACCS has made continuous

efforts to maintain order for intellectual property through the implementation of antipiracy
measures for digital content, including software, in Japan and elsewhere in Asia. The
ACCS will remain committed to the monitoring and detection of improper/illegal distributionof digital content while promoting awareness of copyrights, so as to drive further
development of legitimate licensing businesses and contribute to the Internet society as a
responsible organization that protects intellectual property. The two parties will continue
their joint efforts to establish the above-mentioned international management
organization.

6. Milestones

As mentioned earlier, the DRPC system was devised in 1997 by Dentsu. It would not be
an overstatement to say that Dentsu’s unique position was the driving force behind theinvention.

Dentsu serves to connect consumers and advertisers via the media.

Sometimes Dentsu produces content jointly with a media company. Other times Dentsu
plans and promotes a new content distribution service together with a client, for instance,
a consumer electronics company.

Moreover, Dentsu is naturally pursuing its main business activity as an advertising agency,
conducting advertising operations (production of advertising, media buying) by utilizing themedia. This multifaceted company standing in the middle was faced with narrowly

7

http://www2.accsjp.or.jp/en/

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defined copyright issues and it devised the DRPC system as a way of dealing with thisreality.

In the following, I would like to outline the developments that have led to DRPC winning
recognition as an international standard.

April 2001:

Dentsu founded Melodies and Memories Global Ltd (MMG), through which

we undertook aggressive proposal activities regarding standardization in the national andinternational arenas. (MMG was liquidated in August 2009.)
March 2002:

MMG submitted a proposal on the DRPC system to the Conference on

Copyright for Digital Millennium (CCD).

The Japan Photographic Copyright Association8

subsequently decided officially to adopt the DRPC system, which had been under review
by the organization for some time, acting on the occasion of a demonstration test of avirtual market for copyrighted works conducted by the Agency for Cultural Affairs in
October 2003. The association has been utilizing the rights holder ID and content ID in
its operations to date.
January 2004:

MMG submitted a proposal on the DRPC system to the review meeting(subcommittee) of G DRM dealing with TC 100/TA 8 of JEITA.

The development of atechnical standard to realize a common description of licensing information opened up in apositive manner.
March 2006:

Following three years of deliberations, the CCD released a common

content ID and a common business operator ID as the CCD’s ID model.
June 2007: A content portal site operated by the Federation of Economic Organization in
Japan called the Japan Content Showcase9 began service using the CCD ID model ofcommon content ID and common business operator ID.

8

http://www.jpca.gr.jp/index.html

9

http://www.japancontent.jp/18February 2008: Through international voting held on the 15th of February, DRPC won
recognition as international standard IEC 62227 after three years of deliberations,following the proposal to the IEC by JEITA in December 2004.
June 2008: The specifications of the DRPC system were released on the IEC’s website.
August 2008: The IEC’s Central Office issued a recommendation letter for the DRPC
system.
November 2008:

At the IEC’s annual convention held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, a proposal for

fixed-length coding of DRPC was approved.

At a high-level meeting attended byexecutive members of the IEC, the ITU, and the ISO10, which was held during theconvention, it was agreed to establish a Rights Information Interoperability (RII) ad hocgroup promoting licensing information communalization by utilizing DRPC as the basic
resource.
January 2009: The Soushakusha Dantai Kyogikai (Association of Creators’ Groups)11
announced that ID issuance under the DRPC system would be employed for the releaseof its database of rights holders’ information.
End of January to February 2009: The IEC released a liaison letter for the DRPC system
to the ITU and the ISO at the ITU’s IPTV meeting held in Geneva, Switzerland and at the
MPEG general meeting held subsequently in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Sections handlingthe issue at the ITU and the ISO were defined.
June 2011: The DRPC system was introduced at ALAI 2011, held in Dublin, Ireland.

7. Conclusion10

http://www.iso.org/iso/home.html

11

http://www.sousakusya.jp/

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I was given the honor of making the first presentation to the international law society of the
ALAI in Dublin and this paper has enabled me to present a more in-depth discussion.

Iam very grateful for this opportunity.

Humans are valuable when they are alive. We live feeling joy and sorrow. What weneed then is content.

Content that stimulates our brain and our five senses.

It is said that the brain of each of the world’s seven billion people has 14.5 billion cells.
This multitude can communicate every second; this possibility has been secured byadvances in technology.

UGC made by someone in a faraway country can move people

beyond nationality, age, and gender thanks to the advancement of communications
technology.

Humans are helpless when faced with a natural disaster.

However, as I pointed out atthe beginning of this presentation, content gives people courage and helps them put theirlives back together. To revitalize content distribution in a legal environment in an easier,more convenient manner, Dentsu and I would like to take this opportunity to make twosuggestions, as follows:

Dentsu will establish a global system for issuing content IDs, rights holder’s IDs, andconsumer IDs vertically and horizontally.

To that end, we will seek to collaborate withinternational authoritative organizations.
Dentsu will establish a format to describe licensing conditions legally for the usage ofcontent and submit DRPC as a working draft to international authoritative organizations.

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