The digital rights management game in peer-to-peer streaming systems

In this paper we model the digital rights management (DRM) for peer-to-peer streaming (P2PS) systems as a game. We construct the DRM game from both content service provider (CSP) and user's aspects, and propose a design of DRM policy based on homogeneous peers and homogeneous digital goods, which gets the maximal utility for the CSP as well as the criterion whether the DRM is fit for a P2PS system. Another sort of games in this paper consider how a peer deals with digital goods with regard to various situations in P2PS systems with DRM, together with the CSP's response to the peer's actions. We construct different games to avoid three notorious misbehaviors of peers: freeriding, jailbreaking and whitewashing. We take examples to show how these games work in P2PS systems with DRM and how equilibria are established in these games. Numerical experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the strategies devised from these games.