Marlin (DRM)

Marlin is a DRM platform, created by an open-standards community initiative called the Marlin Developer Community (MDC). The MDC develops the necessary technology, partners, and services for enabling the creation of interoperable digital content distribution services.

Marlin technology provides capabilities for consumers to manage the relationships among devices, network services, and digital content. With Marlin, service providers and device markers can create and support content services over open networks.

The MDC was formed in 2005 by five companies — Intertrust, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony. The MDC released the first set of specifications in May, 2006. The Marlin Founders also formed the Marlin Trust Management Organization (MTMO) to act as a neutral trust management and licensing organization. The MTMO started commercial operations in January, 2007.

Marlin was created with specific design goals. First, Marlin allows consumer devices to import content from multiple independent services and accommodate peer-to-peer interactions. Second, Marlin is based on a general-purpose rights management architecture. Marlin specifications define the capabilities and architecture so that devices and services can interoperate.

Most Marlin implementations include the core system specification which defines the basic components, protocols, and consumer domain model that enable the interoperability between Marlin-enabled devices and services. This specification is based on the Octopus and NEMO reference technologies, which have been adapted for peer-to-peer device interactions.

The rights management within Marlin is based on Octopus which is a general-purpose DRM architecture. At the center of an Octopus system is a graph-based relationship engine. In Marlin, Octopus node objects are used to represent system entities (such as users and devices), and links between nodes represent relationships. The system of nodes and links manages where, how, and when content can be used in a Marlin system. Octopus runs on various platforms and is media format and cryptographically agnostic.

NEMO is an acronym for Networked Environment for Media Orchestration. It provides a services-based framework for trusted connections between various components of a Marlin DRM system. Based on Web Services standards, NEMO defines service interfaces, service access policies, and support for trust relationships among distributed entities that play well-defined and certified roles. The NEMO framework allows Marlin components to deliver protected messages and exchange them between authenticated and authorized entities. The services supported by NEMO may be operated together with other, application-specific media services that are not required to be NEMO-compliant.

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