Towards a Digital Rights Expression Language Standard for Learning Technology

This report has been generated within the context of the Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC) of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). The LTSC develops accredited technical standards, recommended practices and guides for learning technology.

"Digital rights" is an area of vital importance to all industries that deal with digital content, including the industries of learning, education, and training. As a consequence the LTSC formed a study group in 2002 to examine digital rights standards and standards development efforts in light of applications to learning technology.

This effort has focused on digital rights expression languages, i.e., languages in which rights can be expressed and communicated among cooperating technologies. Digital rights themselves exist as policy or law and are therefore not within the scope of a standards development organization.  Technology is involved in enforcing digital rights, for example by disabling the ability to make unauthorized copies, but the LTSC almost exclusively deals with standards that support interoperability and not with implementation issues of this type.  In this spirit the LTSC study group concentrated on making recommendations for standardizing a digital rights expression language with the specific charge to

• Investigate existing standards development efforts for digital rights expression languages (DREL) and digital rights.

• Gather DREL requirements germane to the learning, education, and training industries.

• Make recommendations as to how to proceed. Possible outcomes included, a priori, recommending the adoption of an existing standard, recommending the creation of an application profile of an existing standard, or creating a new standard from scratch. 

• Feed requirements into ongoing DREL and digital rights standardization efforts, regardless of whether the LTSC decides to work with these efforts or embark on its own.

This report represents the achievement of these goals in the form a of a white paper that can be used as reference for the LTSC, that makes recommendations concerning future work, and that can be shared with other organizations.

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