Subscription Scenario

The Subscription scenario is one in which a limited lifetime license is proactively acquired and persisted on the client device. The license must be periodically refreshed (representing the terms of the subscription agreement). If the subscription is not renewed and the license expires, then the content is no longer playable. However, if the subscription is renewed, a new license with a later expiration date can be acquired.

Subscription services can use chained licenses, which are more effective than individual licenses for each media item to which a subscriber has access. The root license can be expired if the subscription lapses, and all of the leaf licenses that are tied to individual media items will also be expired. On the contrary, if the subscription is reactivated, the entire set of chained licenses can be reactivated simply by acquiring a new root license.

In addition to the subscription expiration, licenses can also be manually deleted. For example, if a video subscription provider is no longer allowed to provide a certain producer's videos, the licenses for that producer's work can be explicitly deleted from the end-user's media device.

This scenario demonstrates the following features:

• Persistent license
• Proactive license acquisition
• Chained license
• Selective license deletion

An example of the Subscription scenario is one in which customers of the online video store pay a monthly fee to watch up to 100 hours of television content online and download up to 20 episodes. In order to renew their subscription, they need to pay a monthly fee and to connect to the service at least once a month because the subscription license expires every 45 days. In addition, if downloaded episodes have been pulled from public viewing by the original producers, the licenses for those episodes can be deleted from the user's media devices.