Towards a Generic Payment Framework for Internet Media-on-Demand Services Based on RTSP

Broadband connections to Internet make possible offering new services such as multimedia on demand (MoD). To the date, content providers and distributors resort to use specifically developed software to deal with payments. The problem is that those customized solutions are limited to either a specific payment protocol, brand and payment service provider, or a determinate architecture or a concrete business model. Moreover, at the moment, there is not any general framework to make payments as a part of the MoD service. In this paper we propose a new generic payment framework for Internet MoD services based on RTSP which, being a payment-independent protocol, solves interoperability problems and links payment information with content requests. Our framework extends both SDP and RTSP to facilitate the access to pay-per-view MoD. It supports an offer/answer model that allows the choice of the quality of the streams and the payment method. Furthermore, it is extensible and not only supports payments but also more complex business models. Thus, we facilitate the incorporation of new payment methods and business models in vendor´s software.