Christen at work

An Aboriginal community in Australia's Northern Territory has developed a culturally-upheld means of digital rights management (DRM), the BBC reports.

The Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari computer archive, which houses historical photos of community events, asks participants for their name, age, sex, and social standing, according to BBC News. The info determines what they can access.

The archive was built with the help of Dr Kimberly Christen. "The Warumungu community people […] were really interested in repatriating a lot of images and things that had been taken from the community," she explained.

This Aboriginal variant of DRM is upheld by users' acceptance of what is appropriate for certain age groups and sexes to view. For example, men cannot view women's rituals.

When Christen conducted a slideshow of archived photos for members of the group, she observed people turned away when certain images came up.

She and a team of programmers then replicated the system with a website and detailed log-in process.