Digital rights management using a mobile phone

This paper focuses on the problem of preventing illegal copying of digital assets without jeopardising the right of legitimate licence holders to transfer content between their own devices, which make up a domain. Our novel idea involves the use of a domain-specific mobile phone and the mobile phone network operator to authenticate the domain owner before devices can join a domain. This binds devices in a domain to a single owner, that, in turn, enables the binding of domain licences to the domain owner. In addition, the way in which we control domain membership, and the use of the domain-specific mobile phone that enables a domain owner to add devices wherever he/she is physically present, ensures that devices joining the domain are in physical proximity to the mobile phone, preventing illicit content proliferation.