GeoDRM and Access Control
It's come to my attention that work is under way to separate access control of geospatial web services from digital rights management. A wise thing to do, and not only because GeoDRM is a non-starter. The access control problem has already been solved by the pioneers of internet commerce. If you don't believe me, go read the Apache httpd authorization and authentication docs. Anybody have an access use case that can't be solved by an Apache proxy, mod_rewrite fu, and tweaking of row/column privileges in your data store? It would have to be quite the corner case.
Comments
Re: GeoDRM and Access Control
Author: Andrew Hallam
Totally agree on separating access control from DRM. I've seen a few projects that wanted to control access to WMS and WFS services, but gave up when they realised that it would break interoperability. My suggestion to the OGC would be to look at standardising on TLS/SSL and HTTP authentication. Combine that with common business practice of licence agreements/contracts and most of the issues would be solved. Although, there may be some issues to work through. If that doesn't cover all the bases then DRM could be considered (shiver), but let's take care of the common cases first using established technologies.Re: GeoDRM and Access Control
Author: Sean
Andrew, the document you linked to is brilliant!