feature digital asset protection
When we discuss content protection, we are normally looking at a specific technology to protect a piece of content in a specific way. So iTunes users become familiar with Apple FairPlay (even if they do not realise it), viewers of digital television broadcasts see content through a conditional access system, if you have Blu-ray discs they are secured with Advanced Access Content System, and so on. Tony Taylor, chairman and CEO of TMD, reports.
Managing content protection
hese are all important technologies, and each contributes, more or less successfully, towards ensuring that the creator or owner of the content earns a fair return. That is an important aim: without reward content creators will be unable to make innovative and engaging movies, television programmes or music.
T Tony Taylor,
chairman and CEO of TMD.
Each of these individual solutions, though - and there are plenty more - are tuned to the requirements of a specific delivery platform. That is only right: different technologies are suited to different applications. But it is an increasingly rare situation for a content owner to produce something
It's not just digital content that
requires protecting!
that will be delivered on only one platform. Even digital broadcasting will use different conditional access structures for terrestrial, cable and satellite.
More commonly, broadcasters will also want to make content available online, which will mean a different set of rules as well as a different content protection platform. The BBC iPlayer, for example, has proved to be massively popular. But it has to deliver content in a number of formats, such as Flash for the conventional web and H.264 for modern appliances like the iPad. The availability will vary, too, with some content only being accessible in the UK and some worldwide, some for a limited period and some indefinitely. We should not think of content protection as being solely the preserve of delivery platforms, either. The growing use of collaborative workflows means that content needs to be moved from facility to facility. If you are working on a major movie, for example, then individual clips are of huge value to pirates and those who would release them early as spoilers, so tracking and protecting the raw material is essential.
Lifecycle
To understand the full requirement for content protection, we should consider
34 l ibe l january/february 2011 l
www.ibeweb.com
the lifecycle of a piece of media. A television programme or movie today will be touched by many people. Certainly they will be numbered in tens, probably in hundreds. If it is a major movie then thousands will be involved in its creation. Each of these is a potential risk to the security of the content, a point at which content can be leaked to unauthorised distribution. This is a new area for traditional broadcast engineering. System designers need to work with experts to ensure that there are no back doors through which content can leak, that strong passwords are implemented, and firewalls prevent unauthorised attack.
It is now routine for movies and big broadcast series to be worked on in parallel, with different tasks completed in different places. A movie may be shot in the UK, have CGI elements added in the Philippines, be colour corrected in Santa Monica and edited in Cape Town. Whether the materials are moved by FedEx or by IP, they will be stored on SANs in each facility and transferred to countless workstations - and each is a risk. One of our clients, ITFC in London, regularly sees media delivered by security guards who are required to watch as the content is ingested, then take the tapes away again. How do they know what happens to the content once on the SAN?
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