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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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.
