Protecting Privacy with the MPEG-21 IPMP Framework

A number of authors have observed a duality between privacy protection and copyright protection, and, in particular, observed how digital rights management technology may be used as the basis of a privacy protection system. In this paper, we describe our experiences in implementing a privacy protection system based on the Intellectual Property Management and Protection (“IPMP”) components of the MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework. Our approach allows individuals to express their privacy preferences in a way enabling automatic enforcement by data users’ computers. This required the design of an extension to the MPEG Rights Expression Language to cater for privacy applications, and the development of software that allowed individuals’ information and privacy preferences to be securely collected, stored and interpreted.