Widevine claims to have solution to DRM controversy
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Feb 20, 2007 at 11:08am
Brian Baker, CEO of Seattle, Washington–based Widevine, has developed an alternative digital rights management (DRM) system that isn’t tied to any specific device or software. His approach is a departure from the strategies of technology giants such as Apple and Microsoft, which are fighting to lock in content creators and consumers to their proprietary copyright protection software, reports Red Herring.
In December the company was awarded a patent (number 7,150,045) for digital copy protection. This patent covers “innovative new techniques that are essential to securing Internet delivery of premium multimedia content to untrusted platforms such as personal computers.” The new patent also includes methods for monitoring, detecting and responding to piracy in what is known as the “digital hole”— the location within digital consumer devices where content is unprotected, usually after content is decrypted by a conditional access or digital rights management solution. Widevine Digital Copy Protection monitors this hole for piracy behaviors, blocks them and evolves response mechanisms to thwart future attacks, the company says.
“To foil multimedia piracy acts, Widevine developed genetic programming, artificial intelligence and intrusion detection methods to create a shifting sands environment that it is extremely difficult for pirates to beat,” says Glenn Morten, Widevine’s chief technology officer. “These patented protection methods are important as mainstream television migrates to webisodes and webcasts that are streamed to PCs across the Internet. Other methods of protecting content have been devised including Microsoft Windows Vista™, CableLabs DCAS and other secure video processor initiatives. However, while these are good security practices, they are static and lack the ability to perform dynamic evolution in the face of new piracy attacks. Evolving detectors taught within this new patent give Widevine the unique ability to adapt our content security mechanisms in real time.”
Baker said his company’s technology could break the stranglehold certain companies have in different markets—such as Apple in the digital music realm or Scientific Atlantic in the set-top box segment. But there is no evidence yet that Widevine will be able to do so, notes Red Herring.
Widevine’s technology works in two steps: it encrypts digital content and then creates a virtual key with which consumers can unlock scrambled movies or music files once they have bought and downloaded them from the internet. By providing the virtual key online, content creators and distributors can, at least in theory, sell their movies or music to all consumers, regardless of the type of computers or digital music players they own.
“Still, there is little likelihood that Apple or Microsoft would be inclined to adopt a rival DRM standard for use on their digital music services, each of which sells copyright protected tracks and movies designed to play only on their proprietary digital media players,” Red Herring says.
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e:leaf Says:
I’ll say it again. I want fewer layers surrounding my content, not more. This sounds like more. Until I can buy music DRM-free from a mainstream online music vendor (iTunes, etc), like I can at allofmp3[dot]com or mp3sugar[dot]com (not to mention that I can choose format and bitrate at allofmp3[dot]com, including FLAC), I simply won’t buy from them. The RIAA can kiss my (_|_), and so can any DRM-laden tracks.
That said, I hope that this company makes other products, as neither Apple nor MS (particularly since it has 3 differing sets of DRM that it’s trying to rule the planet with) are going to adopt this technology, and if this technology is it, they surely won’t last.
Posted on February 20, 2007
MacManic Says:
What a muppet!
Plug a recorder into the audio out and you can pirate music. For low quality you can even film a screen with okay results.
DRM will not stop piracy. It’s just a waste of resources. Don’t pirate, don’t buy DRMd anything.
m
Posted on February 20, 2007
get real Says:
The reason that DRM exists is because piracy. Since the typical user still thinks that pirating a song is okay, we will always have DRM. Put the blame for DRM where it belongs: with the selfish pirates.
Posted on February 20, 2007
MacManic REALLY Says:
My mum can copy a music CD. Don’t even try and get her to tell you what DRM is. I’d describe it as crippling for those who actually pay for their music, not the other way round.
She wouldn’t buy music online because it’s just too complicated. If she worked that out I’m sure she could just as easily pirate it online if she felt like it. So what’s the point of DRM at all?
Get real indeed.
DRM is an honest and failed effort to stop humans from doing what we do best. Lie steal and cheat. It attempts this by doing the same 3 things and it wont work.
Bygons.
What we need is a simple distribution model for media content that competes with the piracy model. Money spent on DRM is money that should be spent finding new business models, I personally believe give ‘em what they want. Subscriptions to massive libraries are the way of the future.
Yeah, REALLY.
Posted on February 20, 2007
Rainy Day Says:
“The reason that DRM exists is because piracy.”
Only in the sense that is what the purveyors of DRM, like Macrovision and Microslut, want you to believe. Not because DRM is necessary to keep content providers in business.
After all 80% of all music sold today is DRM-free, and 100% of it was DRM-free only a few years ago. The content business thrived and grew most of the last century, even after the advent of the cassette tape, which enabled easy duplication on a mass scale for the first time.
Most people are honest, but we have to put locks on our doors because a very small segment of our society isn’t. So most people won’t steal music, even though there is a small segment of the population who will. Digital pirates are like shoplifters, except that what they steal does not cost the content provider anything to produce, like a physical piece of merchandize does. The only loss is the mythical lost profit (but a pirate probably never would have paid money for their ill-gotten gains anyhow, so this is really Monopoly money, not real money).
I don’t steal music, but i’m not lazy or stupid enough to buy DRM-laiden music. I only buy DRM-free music.
BTW, there is nothing revolutionary in the DRM scheme mentioned in this article. It is basically the same way PGP encrypts a message.
MW: Fear, as in fear of piracy is what sells DRM.
Posted on February 22, 2007
J. Scott Anderson Says:
Actually, it isn’t feat that is selling DRM. It is a dream. The dream that the content producers can actually complete control all aspects of something that they want to sell. If they could, they would charge you every time you hummed a tune in your head. And, yes, if they can figure out how to do it, then expect to see it that charge on your credit card.
If they want to fear something, then they should fear the free internet. Not because of piracy. Rather because, for the first time, content producers have a way of getting exposure to an audience without the record producers in the middle. Irrelevancy is what they should be afraid of. Imagine bands going going more and more into podcasting their music and putting it on the iTMS channel for podcasts. There is no RIAA. They can even set up a subscription or or donation system for access to the cast. Does that mean that no one will steal it. No. But enough will buy the stuff they like to keep their favorites in business.
Posted on February 22, 2007
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
J. Scott Anderson Says:
Red Herring seems to want to report both ways. Either Jobs and thus Apple are fighting to get rid of DRM or they are using DRM to keep their customers locked in to their proprietary systems…which is it?
Posted on February 20, 2007