[Ecommerce] Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) Project

[James Love]

This is one of the projects that Mike Jeffrey (the ITU DRM rapporteur)
is involved in..... Jamie

*  Dublin, Ireland - The "Authorized Domain," a potentially troubling
concept defining what a consumer can and cannot do with copyrighted
content on the user's own electronic equipment, is quietly taking shape
in a subgroup of the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) Project. The scenario
has equal and opposite potential for liberating the legal use of
copyrighted material and for exerting an unprecedented level of prior
restraint on personal property.

* The scheme would give Hollywood the technical means to extend its
control deeper into the home, by sending invisible electronic signals to
consumers' personal electronics equipment to restrict the use of content.

* Mapping the technical spec to fit consumers' social and private
behavior at home, however, is a tricky business. The issue could prove
controversial, depending on how the spec is implemented and how the
rules are enforced.

*  One wrinkle in the Authorized Domain concept would occur when
equipment changes hands. Hibbert acknowledged that divorce is a case
when one or more devices could move from one Authorized Domain to
another. The owners "will need to decide to which Authorized Domain that
content - which is labeled as restricted to one [domain] only - will be
assigned." Not all content, he added, "will be signaled as restricted to
only one Authorized Domain; it depends on the associated distribution
rights."


http://www.iapplianceweb.com/story/OEG20040322S0022.htm


DVB copy protection plan puts limits on home use

By Junko Yoshida
iApplianceWeb
(03/22/04, 07:29:34 PM EDT)

Dublin, Ireland - The "Authorized Domain," a potentially troubling
concept defining what a consumer can and cannot do with copyrighted
content on the user's own electronic equipment, is quietly taking shape
in a subgroup of the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) Project. The scenario
has equal and opposite potential for liberating the legal use of
copyrighted material and for exerting an unprecedented level of prior
restraint on personal property.

Under the DVB's Copy Protection/Copy Management (CPCM) scheme, the group
plans to tightly embed "authorized usage" metadata in content and to
transmit "usage state information" specifying, for example, whether the
content can be copied, stored, displayed or redistributed to other
CPCM-compliant devices within a household and, if so, how many.

The scheme would give Hollywood the technical means to extend its
control deeper into the home, by sending invisible electronic signals to
consumers' personal electronics equipment to restrict the use of content.

A lingering issue, still under discussion, is how to make networks,
interfaces and varied consumer boxes understand and execute the usage
state information (USI). The concept affects the processing power,
software and user interfaces required in a system design.

In theory, USI can be handled in a system via smart cards, software,
hardware or the Windows operating system, DVB participants say.
Moreover, "Consumers won't pay extra" for making their devices DVB
CPCM-compliant, said Paul Szucs, manager of the standards and
engineering department at Sony International (Europe) GmbH's European
Technology Center. "Consumers' experience with DVB CPCM devices must be
just as good as, or even better than, [with] noncompliant devices," he said.

Although the work is far from complete, the cross-industry group that
has been crafting DVB CPCM reported its progress on the Authorized
Domain at the DVB World 2004 Conference here earlier this month. Content
owners such as movie studios, in collaboration with broadcasters,
consumer electronics companies and PC vendors, are developing the
standard for storage and distribution of content within a home.

By defining the Authorized Domain as a set of CPCM-compliant devices
that "are owned, rented or otherwise controlled by members of a single
household," DVB CPCM provides controls to "copy" and "move" content
within and across domain boundaries, according to the group.

Subgroup members insisted that the spec - the result of four years of
arduous efforts toward consensus on a definition of the Authorized
Domain - is designed to "enable, rather than prevent" the distribution
of content based on the broadest range of business models. Almost 30
companies are participating in the DVB copy protection subgroup,
including the BBC, BskyB, Disney, Intel, Micronas, Microsoft, Panasonic,
Philips, Sony and Warner Bros.

Mapping the technical spec to fit consumers' social and private behavior
at home, however, is a tricky business. The issue could prove
controversial, depending on how the spec is implemented and how the
rules are enforced.

"Our goal is to keep it simple, keep it cheap and keep it easy to
implement," said subgroup chairman Chris Hibbert, vice president of
media technology and standards at Walt Disney Television International.
According to Hibbert, DVB CPCM is intended to be self-managing, with
little or no intervention required by the user and no return path.
"There is no requirement for owners of CPCM-compliant devices to
register their devices. Quite the opposite; there is a requirement to
preserve consumer privacy." He added, "We want to do this without
depending on Big Brother."

Hibbert compared the Authorized Domain to "a modular personal video
recorder." Typical PVR functions, such as "acquisition, storage,
processing and viewing," are implemented in logically separate units in
the Authorized Domain, he said.

With the threat of movie "Napsterization" no longer theoretical but
real, the industries have every incentive to agree upon a technical
guideline - and fast. "If we don't get this done before the end of 2004,
de facto systems will take over," cautioned Sony's Szucs.

Still, some consumers may find the Authorized Domain a disturbing
encroachment. Even Szucs acknowledged the concept cold be "potentially
contentious."

Yet, "I'd estimate that 75 percent of consumers would never have a
problem with it," said Mike Paxton, senior analyst for converging
markets and technologies at In-Stat/MDR, who termed the scheme "fairly
benign." The remaining 25 percent, he said, "might be inconvenienced if
they're trying to burn a CD or copy a DVD."

But failing to reach a solution on copy protection issues could be even
more damaging, Szucs and Hibbert of Disney Television argued. If
incompatible systems were to proliferate, said Hibbert, content owners
would start "cherry-picking their own 'trusted' system. Both
manufactures and broadcasters [would then] need to deal with multiple
incompatible [copy protection] systems - and lawyers will make a fortune."

Under that scenario, said Szucs, "it would become very difficult for
consumers to get a variety of high-quality content legally, without
having to buy all the proprietary solutions."

That is exactly Microsoft Corp.'s concern, said Mark Jeffrey, the
company's program manager for European media standards and policy, based
in Geneva. If de facto systems rule the market, "we'd have to start
writing so many different interfaces for proprietary solutions - such as
one for a Panasonic device, another for a Sony device, etc.," Jeffrey said.

Not the only one

The DVB Project is not the only place copy protection debates are taking
place, nor is DVB CPCM the only spec necessary for protecting content
(see table, page 1). An end-to-end copy protection scheme often requires
various technology pieces, ranging from conditional access and digital
rights management (DRM) to broadcast flags, scrambling, encryption and
watermarking.

DVB CPCM does not touch those matters. It is "not conditional access,
and it is not digital rights management," said Giles Godart-Brown, R&D
program manager for British Sky Broadcasting and a chairman of the DVB
Commercial Module responsible for copy protection.

Rather, according to the DVB, CPCM offers "a connection point" for
various DRM and conditional-access schemes. DRM, Godart-Brown said,
involves "the prevention of illegal distribution of content via the Web,
and not directly its storage and distribution at home." Conditional
access, meanwhile, controls access to content, not necessarily its
storage and distribution. CPCM will communicate with both types of
systems, where necessary, to enable additional controls, Godart-Brown said.

Within the DVB Copy Protection Technologies subgroup, participants are
defining five abstract functional blocks, said Sony's Szucs. They are
acquisition, the point where content enters a CPCM Authorized Domain;
storage; processing; consumption; and redistribution, where content
leaves the Authorized Domain, if allowed. The group is defining firm
terminology and a concrete meaning for each block, he said, in order to
establish a reference model.

"Work is ongoing on how these abstract functions can be mapped to
logical and physical entities like devices, interfaces and networks,"
Szucs said.

Once the reference model is in place, the group must devise a system
specification, including a scrambling method. Disney TV's Hibbert listed
as big technical challenges "the security of communication between
devices; the method of securing the content; and the means of securely
binding the usage state information to the content."

In-Stat's Paxton described "the actual copy protection/copy management
software" as "the toughest piece of technology" to create. Consumer
electronics vendors, he said, have tried before to "place these
unbreakable shells of software around digital content on CDs and DVDs"
and have never really succeeded. The key challenge has been to keep the
software from being hacked. "Once the copy protection systems have been
undermined, it's simple for pirates to make unlimited copies of the
music, videos or software," Paxton said.

One wrinkle in the Authorized Domain concept would occur when equipment
changes hands. Hibbert acknowledged that divorce is a case when one or
more devices could move from one Authorized Domain to another. The
owners "will need to decide to which Authorized Domain that content -
which is labeled as restricted to one [domain] only - will be assigned."
Not all content, he added, "will be signaled as restricted to only one
Authorized Domain; it depends on the associated distribution rights."