Currently, multimedia technology provides the different players in the multimedia value and delivery chain (from content creators to end-users) with access to information and services from almost anywhere at anytime through ubiquitous terminals and networks. However, no complete solutions exist that allow different communities, each with their own models, rules, procedures, interests and content formats, to interact efficiently in complex, automated e-commerce scenarios. In addition most multimedia content is not governed today by IPMP systems. Where they do exist they are rudimentary and do not interoperate. This creates a major barrier to the rollout of complex multi-media services that require this interoperability and respect for IPR such as media sharing, retailing or superdistribution of video content.

The VIDSHARE platform will identify and define the key elements needed to support these multimedia services and their delivery chain as described above, the relationships between them and the operations supported by them. Thus the key objective of the VIDSHARE project is to research and develop a peer-to-peer e-commerce platform, that will enable the distribution of multi-media content (with a particular emphasis on video) across heterogeneous access networks (Internet, Mobile, Digital TV) with a management framework that enables interoperability of content and Intellectual Property Management and Protection (IPMP) systems.

A key objective of the VIDSHARE platform is to facilitate a number of innovative peer-to-peer based digital business models in a secure protected way including:

• Rights based personal media sharing – for example one user sharing personal video content, such as a family occasion, with the other family members in a secure, rights based manner (i.e. named users only can play the video, no editing or forwarding – a time limit of 1 month is specified).
• Rights based distributed corporate multimedia database – for example the Dublin office creating and locally hosting content that the New York office can securely access and consume and visa versa. With rights based access, content can also be restricted by, for example; organization security clearances.
• Rights based e-tailing of video content. In this scenario users will have the capability of searching for and then downloading and playing movies such as “The Day After Tomorrow”. In this scenario the user has the right to play a trailer for the movie and then has the option to rent or buy the movie.
• The super distribution of video content. In this scenario the content the user has downloaded has rights that enable the content to be forwarded to another user. The second user should be able to play the trailer and then have the option to rent or buy the movie. If the second user makes a purchasing decision the platform should have the flexibility to enable the original user to receive a percentage of the purchase price as a reward, in addition to settling with the players in the distribution chain.

To enable these business models the VIDSHARE project will research and develop the following technologies:

A distributed Peer-to-Peer (P2P) architecture. This is a pure peer-to-peer network similar to the architecture of Gnutella for person-to-person and organisation-person sharing of secure rights based multimedia. This network will be augmented with the VIDSHARE management system to support the retailing and superdistribution of value based content to enable, content identification and IPR verification, the establishment of Trust relationships, value chain support, payments, accounting and settlement.

A client P2P application that will support:

• User profile and preferences, content searching and downloading.
• Functionality to enable a user to upload their personal video and encode/decode it with rights using the MPEG-21 REL standard.
• Functionality to create a local, standards based, media database of sharable content for Peer-to-Peer sharing.

A management platform that oversees the Peer-to-Peer network which will support:

• A framework to manage the P2P network including a register of peers.
• A central index database for organisations and/or media companies where IPR validated content can be listed. Note: for legal reasons, private individual’s content databases will be held locally and not in the central index database.
• Value Chain Management and License services. This includes content License generation and distribution, content identification (and verification of IPR), content tracking and business model services such as superdistribution.
• Trust Management Services. Registration of value chain participants, user certification and credential management services, trusted time services.
• Security and Protection Services. Secure channels, key management, trusted software and execution environment.
• An e-commerce framework: Payments services, accounting services and settlement services.
• Transaction, audit and log services. These services can be monitored by content providers and rights holders for auditing purposes.

The management platform will be retained as WIT IPR but the breakthroughs made on this platform will be made available to MPEG as a reference implementation of the MPEG IPMP standard.