feature digital asset protection
With the likes of Google TV, Virgin-Tivo and YouView poised to usher in a new era of Internet-connected media this year, content will become increasingly easy to copy, mash- up, share and distribute to any place at any time. While this opens up a world of opportunities, it also raises the fundamental question of how video content rights owners can take advantage of the new multi-screen, multi- platform environment without succumbing to piracy. Emmanuel Josserand, marketing director, Civolution, reports.
Content protection: holding the key to connected TV
willing to pay a premium VoD rate to see new movies before they are released on disc, either at home or while travelling.
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Yet despite the lure of significant revenue opportunities for the PayTV and hospitality industries, this demand is not yet being served today. It’s not hard to see why - content owners need a convincing assurance that piracy can be effectively deterred. They have every reason to be concerned, especially with the emergence of new attacks using a high quality camcorder. Indeed, by the time the content reaches the screen, all conditional access encryption and digital rights management coding - which only protect against signal theft, not content theft - has been removed. Fortunately, new technology solutions are now being deployed that will allow the multi-media industry to evolve, based on content identification
ake the case of early-release HD movies. Families or busy people with only a limited amount of leisure time are just two types of consumer that would be more than
identification technologies - offers a number of solutions not only to protect media content, but also to facilitate the creation of a new revenue stream (or ‘monetisation’ in jargon).
At the Content Protection Summit industry event held last December in Los Angeles, there was a general consensus that the media industry needed to make it simpler for consumers to access content - and that viewers would much prefer genuine content to copies if this was easy to obtain and pay for at the click of a button.
Figure 2: High-level schematic of a CDN network.
technologies known as watermarking. Digital watermarking
Figure 1: Simple watermarking process.
Video and audio watermarking technology embeds extra information that gives each piece of content a unique identity. Imperceptible to viewers, these digital watermarks can be detected by monitoring software even after processing such as format conversion, compression, or indeed analogue capture by a camcorder. While it cannot physically prevent the illegal copying of an analogue video output, digital watermarking provides a deterrent by ensuring that the pirate is no longer anonymous and can be traced.
Civolution, provider of content identification technologies - with a unique portfolio of both watermarking and fingerprinting content
30 l ibe l january/february 2011 l
www.ibeweb.com
Eager not to repeat the piracy pandemic that has afflicted the music industry, the video industry is now looking at how content identification technologies can help bring legitimate media access into the modern age. It’s not only premium early-release content that’s at stake here either - quite rightly, consumers will demand a wide range of high quality programming from a whole series of open platforms, both on the connected TV at home and through the multiple viewing devices of tomorrow. One example of the latter is the growing number of games consoles now connected to the Internet. The original purpose of this connection was to facilitate an interactive network environment, through which users can share online gaming, chat with other members, and surf the web. Games console manufacturers and telco operators have decided to
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