The Digital Rights Management system ensures secure delivery of the content in accordance with business rules defined by the contracts. The monies collected then are apportioned by the contracts management payment to the relevant parties. Content distribution Although an artist may want to sell work directly to the consumer, most content is sold though a conventional distribution chain. A DRM system should support the classic supply chain: content creator, publisher, aggregator or portal, distributor, retailer, and finally, the consumer. The DRM also should support traditional product marketing tools like promotional offers and viral marketing. Finally, the methods of payment have to be flexible, all the way from subscriptions to micro-payments and electronic purses. Digital Rights Management Digital Rights Management is the use of computer technology to regulate the authorized use of digital media content, and to manage the consequences of such use; for example, a payment. A Digital Rights Management (DRM) system encrypts the content so that distribution can be controlled in accordance with the agreed rights and their terms and conditions. To this end, it wraps prices and business rules around the content to enable the payment transaction. For the transaction, the DRM is tightly integrated with the chosen e-commerce systems. Streaming media is representative of the many formats that an Internet content provider may want to manage, deliver, and sell. The digital information also could be electronic books, research reports, or graphic images like still photographs. Most DRM systems are designed to protect some or all of these different media formats. The initial developments in DRM were for text files. Not all these systems can handle streaming media. Encryption tends to be at file level. For a streamed file the encryption has to be implemented at packet level, otherwise the media playback cannot start immediately. This, plus the intimate connection required to the player, has led naturally to many DRM solutions being proprietary to the codec format. The MPEG-4 format has a standard intellectual property management protection (IPMP) interface, so potentially will offer a more open environment. Why do we need DRM? Digital content is subject to many forms of piracy: Rights management 265
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partly because consumer resistance to banner advertising is increasing, and also as a result of the often-limited revenues generated from advertising. The page-based Internet media (HTML) mainly has used the banner, with pop-ups also being popular. Streaming media offers the possibility of following the television model, with interstitial spots or breaks as well as banners. Conditional access Television broadcasters have chosen closed systems of conditional access to protect subscription and pay-per-view channels. The receivers or set-top boxes use smart cards and possibly a phone back-channel as part of the authorization procedures. Streamed media often is viewed on PCs. These users have great resistance to add-ons, software dongles, and other additional hardware, so other methods have to be used to authenticate consumers. The value chain Content and payment form a cycle. The content is delivered to the consumer for use and the consumer then pays the intellectual property owner (through intermediaries) for the content. 264 The Technology of Video and Audio Streaming Artist Contracts management Digital rights management Consumer Author Composer Watermark Content Payment Figure 14.2 The payment cycle.
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As the user views the content, usage reports are returned to the content provider. Conditional access the television model Television is funded by advertising, subscription or, in the case of statecontrolled networks, from government taxation (in some countries independence of the state networks from government interference is provided by the use of a license rather than an income from taxation). A limited number of channels also offer pay-per-view, primarily for movies and for major sporting events. Channels funded by advertising, sponsorship, or taxation can be broadcast free-to- air, or open. Subscription-based channels and pay-per-view use encryption to protect content against unauthorized viewing conditional access. Advertising and sponsorship When corporations first started to use the Internet, funding for the web site came from either the marketing budget or from advertising. The subscription model is starting to become popular, especially for sites providing information. This is Rights management 263 right to use content user provider usage contract usage reports Figure 14.1 Usage contract.
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There is a certain amount of controversy around digital rights systems. Perhaps the medium with the longest history of rights is the printed book. It is recognized that the intellectual property of the author is protected against unauthorized imprints. But there is also the concept of fair use, without which the public library would not exist. To make a copy of a book using a photocopier is expensive and the result usually lacks an adequate binding, so it is easier to buy a new book. As we migrate to the electronic medium, a digital clone can be made simply at no cost (ignoring the disk space). So fair use with the attendant risks of illegal copying becomes difficult to police. E-commerce systems already exist to protect the integrity of financial transactions when ordering goods. Traditionally these goods are physical, and the online transaction merely replaces mail order or telephone order. The goods then are delivered by mail or parcel service. When the goods are streamed media, not only does the transaction have to be secure, but the goods also have to be protected against unauthorized access. Authentication and trust Consider a person going to the local store to make a purchase. The storeowner will recognize that person by their gait as they walk in, their physical appearance, and their voice. They already have authenticated the customer as a trusted customer. The customer pays by check; the storeowner hands over the goods. The key words here are authentication and trust. The same customer now travels to an out-of-town store. The checkout clerk does not know the customer, so refuses the check. The customer has the option of paying by charge or credit card. The card is authenticated, then the transaction is authorized by the terminal. The store trusts the credit card company to pay them for the goods. The customer walks out of the store with the goods everyone is happy. As retail transactions become globalized, the opportunities for fraud escalate. The mail order/telephone order sector has procedures in place to authenticate customers. Most will ship goods only to the address where the payment card is registered. Card suppliers have added extra digits to the card number that are not printed as part of the embossed number, or carried in the magnetic strip. This can be used during a phone transaction to confirm that the purchaser has the actual card in their possession, not an impression. The usage contract Digital commerce is based on the usage contract. The content provider and the user agree to a contract, possibly involving the payment of fees. Then the user receives the right to use the content. 262 The Technology of Video and Audio Streaming
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14 Rights management Introduction The Internet is a public network and open to all. Owners of content who want to distribute over the Internet may want to restrict access to their intellectual property. It may be confidential corporate information, or it could be entertainment media sold through an e-commerce site. Unfortunately, content with value is also of interest to unauthorized users. It could be the piracy of digital entertainment: music, movies, or games. Some Internet piracy is in the domain of the lone hacker, who treats unauthorized access as a challenge. A bigger problem is piracy for commercial gain. Therefore, digital assets have to be wrapped securely to prevent access to all but authorized users that have been properly authenticated. File security and digital rights management becomes more of an issue when content is delivered over the public Internet. If a system is deployed entirely within the corporate firewall the risks will be lower and easier to police. Digital rights management offers systems that can control access and aid the successful monetization of streaming media. Like many other issues related to streaming, there are numerous choices to consider when buying a digital rights management system. In choosing a system, you will have to judge the level of threat; the more secure a system, the more it will cost. With increased security, authorized users will find it more difficult to access the required content. So there is a trade-off between cost, security, and ease of use. Even the most secure systems can be cracked: One clear copy can be distributed in a flash all around the world. There are two main facets to rights management. The first is the maintenance of artists and producers contracts and royalty payments. The second is the secure delivery. The latter commonly is referred to as Digital Rights Management (DRM). It is the technology that allows owners, distributors, and providers of content to deliver content securely to consumers. The rights management also can control who has access to content; for example, restrictions to geographic areas. DRM also can be used standalone, to protect confidential information.
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Section 3 Associated Technologies and Applications
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information, or it could be to encrypt pay-per-view movies. The MPEG-4 Intellectual Property Management and Protection (IPMP) framework leaves the details open to different DRM system vendors. A group of leading providers, the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA), have cooperated to create the ISMA Encryption and Authentication Specification based on the IPMP framework. Such specifications promote interoperability, a feature lacking in proprietary DRM schemes used with other architectures. Summary This has been a brief chapter, but players have to be simple to gain general acceptance by users. Many proprietary players have come and gone. The installed base is dominated by the three main streaming architectures, Microsoft, Real, and Apple. These players can be used as media portals, as players, or as plug-ins to a web browser, and all have similar feature sets. New players were emerging in 2004 to view MPEG-4 compliant streams. One issue with MPEG-4 is that there are many possible profiles and levels. Most players are designed for specific applications mobile, VOD, IP-TV and support only the relevant set of profiles. The majority support the Visual Simple Profile and AAC LC audio. Beyond that, you will need to check the supplier s specifications. The choice of player is largely personal; they all produce a roughly equivalent video and audio quality. New codecs are released at regular intervals, so the quality improves year after year. Many users are happy to install all; some may want only the pre-installed codec that comes with the operating system. All the main architectures offer fully featured portals, but for many applications the chrome is a distraction from the content; compare them with digital interactive television, simple navigation, and discrete packaging. The portal is useful for locating content, but can be replaced by a browser plug-in for display of the wanted content. Perhaps the audio player is the exception, where the portal provides visual stimulation and information to accompany the music. A core component of the player is protection of intellectual content, or digital rights management. This enables content vendors to successfully monetize their content by protection of their intellectual property. The player has broken free of the reins of the PC, and is finding its way into everything from hand-held wireless devices to the television set-top box. Media players 257
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devices at data rates ranging from as low as 9.6 kbit/s to more than 768 kbit/s. It is optimized for embedding into cell phones, PDAs, laptops, and other mobile devices with varied display sizes and constraints on the power usage and consequent battery life. To give bandwidth-efficient wireless distribution, the pvPlayer has error detection and concealment. This masks data loss in poor wireless propagation conditions, while supporting true MPEG-4 compliant scalability. Audio players Audio-only players were the first to become popular, spurred on by the huge demand from music lovers to download tracks over the Internet. Many do not support true streaming, but can download and play MP3 files. They act as a jukebox inside the PC, with the ability to rip CDs, store MP3 files on the hard drive, and download to portable music players like the iPod. Some form of library management is included to find tracks and set up playlists. A typical example is Nullsoft s WinAmp. The major operating systems offer similar products with iTunes from Apple and integral music facilities in the Windows Media player. Music download is now a feature of third-generation cellular phones. The lack of video has led many of the players to offer a number of visual features. One that is popular is the ability to change the look or chrome of the player by reskinning with any number of different designs. Another is the visualization, where random colored patterns change in time to the music. Digital Rights Management Several players have integrated Digital Rights Management (DRM) clients. Determined hackers can extract the media data when it is in the clear between the DRM client and the media player. Most of the clients have means to detect tampering, and to report this back to the rights server and shut down the streams. Microsoft has taken this a step further by integrating the decryption into the operating system kernel. By these means a secure audio path to the sound card can be ensured. You could still extract the video data, but what use is a movie without a soundtrack? MPEG-4 Intellectual Property Management and Protection MPEG-4 has accepted the principle that one-size-fits-all is not wholly appropriate for DRM. Instead, the level of complexity and the security offered is left to the application developer. In other words, the complexity can scale with the cost. This reflects the different demands for DRM: it may be to protect confidential 256 The Technology of Video and Audio Streaming
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Wireless and portable devices Now that we are familiar with streaming to PCs, we want the same access to information while out on the road. The third generation of wireless devices offer wider bandwidths than the early cellular phones, with the ability to display pictures and video, and, using integral cameras, to transmit. Media players 255 Figure 13.11 P800 phone from Sony Ericsson. The MPEG-4 standard has many features that make it particularly suited to wireless delivery. Now such devices have color displays with sizes of 320 240, they are large enough to watch video. Companies like PacketVideo and Emblaze have end-to-end solutions for encoding and serving streaming media to hand-held devices. The connection could be to a third-generation cell phone or, via wireless networking, to a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). The streaming client usually is embedded to give the small footprint demanded by these devices. For example, the client application, pvPlayer, from the PacketVideo product line can decode streamed media for viewing on mobile
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a regular television receiver. Such boxes support MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4, and proprietary formats like Windows Media 9 and On2. Video over IP is a simple way to set up a video-on-demand system and offers an alternative to conventional RF cable systems. Video over IP can be used to deliver video over DSL or cable television systems, or can be used for closed networks. It means that businesses like hotels can deliver video and data services direct to the room using low-cost Ethernet cabling. On2 On2 Technologies has focused on high-end streaming. Rather than follow the rich-media vein of the three main architectures, On2 has developed codecs aimed at the broadband VOD market. Their codecs can be used with embedded chipsets as well as the PC. The VP6 codecs can be used with HD video resolutions up to 1920 1080 pixels. VP6 is the first On2 encoder to offer different profiles. This allows content to be optimized for the target device, whether it is a low-cost embedded processor, a high-quality set-top box, or low bit-rate for mobile applications. The On2 codecs potentially open the VOD market to DSL and cable modems. By using set-top boxes for playback, streamed movies can be displayed on the television rather than the PC for the shared experience of television viewing, as opposed to the lone and interactive PC user. 254 The Technology of Video and Audio Streaming Figure 13.10 TrueCast Player from On2 Technologies.
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