Current and emerging requirements for digital rights management systems through examination of business networks

Digital rights management (DRM) is an issue of controlling and managing digital rights over intellectual property. Research on the DRM domain focuses on specifying requirements for management systems from variety of perspectives, however, mainly concentrating on protecting rights in business to consumer trade with certain mechanisms. This article takes a novel viewpoint in evaluating DRM issues from the perspective of networked business operations. In contrast to studies on DRM, the article evaluates the creation and delivery of content in along an asset creation-delivery continuum in terms of role specifications, content processes and management of digital rights over content, i.e. assets, in formations of firms. Our interest in this conceptual study is on the issues of networked business models and, consequently, we contribute in defining and analyzing the complexities of such scenarios and from case scenario deriving emerging requirements for digital rights management in the introduced context. While simultaneously providing certain advantages to enterprises, the inter-organizational interdependencies in networked business model are prone to cause conflicts, thus, creating an increased need for control, contracting and coordination activities. We conclude that in order to build trust between various actors, multiple agreements describing rights and obligations of operation and over assets needs to be negotiated and signed, thus, establishing a requirement for utilization of standardized digital rights expressions and efficient agreement creation and management.