Windows Media Rights Manager «locks» digital media files with a license key to maintain content protection, even if these files are widely distributed. Each license is uniquely assigned to each computer. This prevents illegal distribution of digital media files.

Windows Media Rights Manager includes proven encryption schemes that ensure distributed digital media files are not exposed to piracy or other illegal use.

Windows Media Rights Manager makes each player unique by linking a player to the host computer. This prevents a compromised player from being widely distributed over the Internet. With individualization, any compromised player can be identified and disabled during the licensing process.

Licenses are issued independently of the actual digital media files, providing maximum flexibility and allowing wide distribution of content. Each time a digital media file is played, Windows Media Rights Manager checks to see if the consumer's computer has a license. Consumers who do not have a valid license are directed to a license registration page.

Windows Media Rights Manager ensures content protection in the operating system from the player to the sound card driver in the Windows Millennium Edition and Windows XP operating systems. This secure relationship reduces the likelihood that any unauthorized program will capture a digital media stream within a computer.

Windows Media Rights Manager enables compromised players to be revoked when new players become available.

Because licenses and digital media files are stored separately, licensing terms can be changed on the licensing server without the need to redistribute or repackage the digital media file. You can generate a complex set of rights for each Windows Media file, ranging from minimal control over playback to restrictions such as counted operations and expiration. You can also control how to issue licenses and when. For example, you can pre–deliver licenses to simplify the process for consumers.

For example, you can distribute a song that is valid for one week. When you want to charge full price for the same song, you simply issue a different license when payment is made, you do not have to create and distribute a new version of the song. In addition, you do not have to ask consumers to download the same Windows Media file twice.

You have great control over setting up your digital rights management (DRM) system. If you have a large amount of Web activity, you can easily divide the different functions of the Windows Media Rights Manager SDK across any number of servers. If you use a distributed retail model to protect, distribute and license Windows Media files, you can easily divide these functions among different organizations and track the source of each Windows Media file. In addition, because the Windows Media Rights Manager SDK uses COM objects, you can integrate the functions of Windows Media Rights Manager SDK into existing system that uses your current database.

Allows content service providers to create «root» licenses (which contain information that governs whether or not a file can be played, such as expiration date) and «leaf» licenses for the content itself. This is useful for subscription services because only the single root license needs to be updated each renewal period as opposed to renewing hundreds or thousands of individual content licenses.

Minimizes delays as consumers acquire more DRM licenses on their computers; allows the purging of older, timed-out licenses; and scales well as a digital media library increases.

Automatically synchronizes count–based or time–based licenses on devices.

Allows content service providers to create «root» licenses (which contain information that governs whether or not a file can be played, such as expiration date) and «leaf» licenses for the content itself. This is useful for subscription services because only the single root license needs to be updated each renewal period as opposed to renewing hundreds or thousands of individual content licenses.

Extends subscription business models by enabling the anonymous reporting of tracks played. This provides the business infrastructure that allows subscription content to be transferred to portable devices.

Provides the capability for devices to acquire and play subscription music content according to the business rules associated with the license.

Enables devices that are capable of connecting directly to content service providers to acquire content directly rather than having to connect through a computer.

Allows content owners to specify different rights for devices and the PC.

Content service providers can control license start times, stop times, and duration to create innovative business models. These different rights let content providers optimize their own business rules and let consumers enjoy their content on virtually any device, and under purchased, rental, or subscription plans.

Lets consumers play content in a protected form over home networks without requiring local storage.

*SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a lightweight protocol for exchange of information in a decentralized, distributed environment. It is an XML–based protocol that consists of three parts: an envelope that defines a framework for describing what is in a message and how to process it, a set of encoding rules for expressing instances of application–defined data types, and a convention for representing remote procedure calls and responses. SOAP can potentially be used in combination with a variety of other protocols; however, the only bindings defined in this document describe how to use SOAP in combination with HTTP and HTTP Extension Framework.

XML–RPC (Remote Procedure Calling) is a protocol that allows software running on disparate operating systems, running in different environments to make procedure calls over the Internet. Its remote procedure calling uses HTTP as the transport and XML as the encoding. XML–RPC is designed to be as simple as possible, while allowing complex data structures to be transmitted processed and returned (Figure 4 — Public Web Site => XML–RPC => DRM Packager).

This additional module provides extended statistics from consumer's Media player: how many times media file was played, when, for how long, etc.

Developed to let film/content owners (usually, movie studios) to control distribution of their content. With this module content owners can receive various statistic information related to streaming their content.