Secure music sharing with improved potato system using cryptographic techniques

In recent years, availability of digital content over cyberspace has grown exponentially, which can be found using both legal and illegal means. The wide spread availability and access to Internet and also the relative ease of sharing content illegally has made music piracy a big menace. Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems have been introduced to restrict and control the unwarranted consumption and illegal utilization of music. Most publishers depend on DRM to prevent regulation violations, thus hoping to nip piracy in the bud. The Potato System was one such system wherein the aim was to achieve better optimization in legally distributing music content. It is based on an unique idea designed to motivate users to buy a song first, after which he can further sell it to others legally, thus allowing him to earn money for every song he sells. However, there are some drawbacks in the original system, which we aim to address in this paper and propose an improved version. In our system, we encrypt the transaction details in the file itself and make it tamper proof. Also, each user gets his unique copy of music every time he pays up for it.