Establishing Multi-Party Trust Architecture for DRM by Using Game-Theoretic Analysis of Security Policies

A successful transaction of digital contents is primarilydependent on security policies, trust mechanisms and benefits balances,as well as the simple adoption of the combination of enhanced securitypolicies would not effectively establish a trust relationship amongvarious stakeholders in the DRM (Digital rights management) -enablingcontents value chain. With respect to a generic DRM ecosystem, thehierarchy analyses of the multi-participant trust architecture wereproposed based on the game-theoretic adoptions of security policies. Byusing formalized definitions of security components and services'utilities, we presented the choice of policies with the externalrelativity, in the contents acquisition scenario, as a multi-playersimultaneous-move game referred to contents provider, digitalservices/rights provider and consumer. Also, in term of securitypolicies combinations' utilities and benefit effects on participants,we further gained the game's Nash Equilibrium, which is a stableprofile of security policies achieving the optimal balance of thesecurity and utilities, thus establishing and strengthening themulti-party trust. The analytic conclusions show that enhancedsecurity policies profile does not necessarily achieve optimal benefitsbalance in the one-stage game, for a small quantity of digital contentstransactions. Whereas, the profile could transform into NashEquilibrium with the increase of transaction sessions, meanwhile beingPareto Optimality.