David Chung Wai-keung, an engineering doctoral student at City University of Hong Kong (CityU), led the “DigitalCopyright.hk, One-Stop Digital Content Marketplace” project to win the World Summit Award (WSA) 2007 in the e-business category. It is the only winning project by a Hong Kong representative in the past three WSAs.

Held every two years since 2003 under the auspices of the United Nations World Summit on Information Society, WSA is the world’s premier contest for excellence in e-content and creativity.

This year, the jury evaluated more than 650 entries from 168 countries. The five most outstanding products were selected as winners in each of the eight WSA Categories, namely e-Government, e-Learning, e-Health, e-Inclusive, e-Business, e-Culture, e-Entertainment and e-Science.

David Chung, the “DigitalCopyright.hk” project initiator and coordinator, currently works for Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited as Senior Manager of Information and Technology Operations. Under the supervision of Dr Richard Fung Ying-kit, Associate Professor in the Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management, David Chung carried out his thesis project — “An Interoperable Digital Rights Management (DRM) platform based on ISO MPEG-21 Framework for the Hong Kong creative industries”. It was a vital component of the winning project.

“While demand for online digital content is increasing, this winning project is a great contribution to the further development of those content providers as it protects their intellectual property and encourages legal downloading,” said David Chung. “I am honoured to take the lead and win the international award thanks largely to the invaluable academic assistance of CityU.”

“DigitalCopyright.hk” is a unified Digital Rights Management (DRM) platform for intellectual property protection assisting content owners in publishing quality audio and/or visual materials through the internet by means of providing content identification and robust protection with DRM technologies.

David Chung started the DRM research at CityU in 2004. He was thankful for the expertise of the University’s academic staff which was also a key to the success of the project.

Cyberport obtained the Innovation and Technology Fund in 2004 from the HKSAR Government to develop the platform primarily for the Hong Kong creative industries. Meanwhile, a vast array of content is available on the platform for the content lovers to download legally and safely.