A Model for Credential Based Exception Management in Digital Rights Management Systems

While digital rights and policy management (DRM/DPM) technologies have matured to become mainstream they are now poised to thrive in all aspects of our daily electronic lives and digital assets. A key issue remains however unsolved with respect to managing exceptions in the context of DRM enabled systems and information assets. This paper addresses this issue defining the problem and proposing a model based on credentials allowing to dynamically account for lawful unanticipated usage situations while still maintaining a given level of persistent protection, governed usage and audit trails.