Due to its nature, the Higher Education sector is one of the most important ones on the creation and usage of Intellectual Property (IP) content. Is the largest consumer of IP creations and the entity responsible for reuse new IP content and incorporating existing IP content into new creations. The IP content production is incorporated in the knowledge transmission being core business part of any university institution, and the researchers, teachers and students are the main actors in such processes[1][2]. Academic environment is very genuine in this area. Any good/resource can have associated a first complex of rights layers associated to its transfer and reuse. This way, the identification of all actors involved in this process, the types of layers of associated rights, as well as the main functions and models in which the systems of Digital Rights Management (DRM) can be inserted, are so important that will pay an objective attention in this work [3]. The processes related with the creation, distribution, acquisition and use (life cycle) of content form the structural base under which seats DRM[1][4]. This make obligatorily to support them using methods where applying the rights definition, acquisition/distribution are used jointly with content usage tracing.[5][6] The systems that generate and supply goods/resources need to be linked with the systems that generate/manage rights. The emergent current solution capable to give reply to this problem passes for the identification of the goods and its detainers, associated with restrictions/permissions on using it and capable to trace it usage. For such they must make resource to description, identification, negotiation, protection and tracing of rights (permissions/restrictions), as well the management of the relations between some detainers of rights over goods/resources in its tangible or intangible form [7],[8]. To support the enormous and diversified activity of education/learning and inquiry and development become necessary that the DRM system is practical and capable to effect: • rights Recognition, • rights Expression, • rights Exposition, • persistent rights Application, • rights Dissemination, • rights Affirmation. Through this article we present an architecture DRM, called OpenSDRM,[9] that possess all the potentialities to be fit and have success in the academic environment capable to control not only the access but also the academic content usage in a ruled way being a very promising tool/system in this area.

Normally in education environment, the production/use of content travels in closed circuit being its use done inside the institution. On other hand the controlled access to documents on-line is seen as something usual, beeing control access mechanisms normally accepted and seemed an unimportant question; control is normally based on IP addresses or passwords. To maintain the mission and activities of education institutions any DRM solutions need to: • be easy to use, • be safe and flexible for user and deliverer, • support rights exemptions associated with academic area, • support the declaration and expression of the duties/rights associated with goods/resources, • support rights/duties throughout good/resource life cycle, • support different content applications types in academic environment(institutional repositories, long-distance education, digital libraries,…). To have success these are the principal functions that any DRM must obey in academic environment and we must grant in OpenSDRM system.

The OpenSDRM answers to these questions, implementing a set of functionalities that make possible to support most common distribution model in academic area; the model of Subscript and Payment for use (pay-per-use). Although the content has its proper security when transferred to devices terminals, OpenSDRM also implements a process of license management, centred in clearinghouses assuring and making possible compatibility between deliver and user transferred rights. This service gives information to producers/publishers on customers used devices and also gives support to alternative models of business pay-per-use or models of prices based on subscript in accordance with the emitted licenses. Applications with Internet connectivity makes easy to support and verify security on-line and download of security updates. The architecture of the OpenSDRM platform is adaptive [6], because can be configured to be used in diverse models of business and with different types of content granting the basics needs identified previously.