A P2P cultural multimedia network - maximizing cultural dissemination and supporting copyright protection and management

This paper presents a novel implementation for the distribution of cultural heritage digital images via a Peer-to-Peer network. This implementation consists of a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network for the distribution of cultural heritage digital images and Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies for the copyright protection of these digital images. In this approach, we design and implement a software in which each peer of P2P network performs the functionalities of three basic entities of a typical DRM system. That is, each peer of P2P network acting as Content Owner, as Trusted Third Party and as User, simultaneously. The Content Owner uploads cultural heritage images to P2P network, these images are at protected format. The protection of digital images is achieved with watermarking techniques and encryption techniques. The License Broker controls the usage of digital images and detects the infringement of copyright. The User performs a search to a list with the available cultural heritage images. Then, the User downloads the images that chooses and uses these images with the terms of usage license. The purpose of this implementation is the legitimate distribution of cultural heritage digital images in a P2P network. The legitimate distribution achieved with the use of DRM technologies. Finally, we are trying to achieve a distributed DRM and P2P architecture for our implementation.