The MPEG Industry Forum (MPEGIF) completed another step toward the goal of making the delivery of encrypted video a more rational process.
The organization wrapped up the requirements phase of its initiative to standardize the API between key management servers (KMS) and multimedia online content processing systems that do the actual encryption (or scrambling) to ensure secure content delivery.
Now that everyone involved has agreed what a standard interface should look like, the organization is now looking for proposals for the actual API.
For a client device to play back encrypted video, it needs a decryption key. Encryption keys are typically managed by a KMS, but in many situations, the scrambler component that encrypts the stream is in a separate system entirely; it requires access to encryption keys, too.
Frequently, the KMS and scrambler are not only different systems, but they are usually built by different vendors, the former typically by digital rights management (DRM) specialists, the latter typically by encoder vendors.
The problem is that the exchange of keys between the KMS and scrambler is not standardized, and each vendor typically uses proprietary interfaces, the MPEGIF explained. Every pair of DRM and encryption vendors has to reinvent the wheel. Thus the recent work to define a standard interface.
With ever-increasing numbers of solutions in the market to process and secure high-value multimedia content for delivery to billions of online viewers, the issue of robust, timely and efficient access to keys required for content encryption is becoming increasingly acute.
“Today, DRM/CA vendors and transcoding vendors need to bilaterally negotiate each and every key exchange API,” stated Yuval Fisher, CTO of RGB Networks and chair of the MPEGIF Working Group on Key Exchange API. “This is a very inefficient utilization of resources and slows time to market. The keen involvement of many industry players in developing the first phase of this work testifies to the clear commercial benefits such a standard API will provide.”
Companies on both the video processing and DRM side contributed to the API requirements. They included Amberfin, Azuki Systems, BuyDRM, Envivio, Harmonic, Inlet, Irdeto, Latens, MediaExcel, Nagravision, RGB Networks, Schneider Electric, Verimatrix and Wowza Media Systems.
A draft version of the requirements is being targeted for limited publication and review at IBC 2011 later this year. Furthermore, MPEGIF is collaborating on this project with the Video Convergence Forum (VCF), which promotes interoperability standardization between content owners and online delivery providers. The two organizations expect to increase the number and range of participants in the Working Group, as well as to demonstrate the relevance of the API in a variety of use cases.
“The explosive growth in the quantity and quality of online content being delivered to a wide range of viewers means that securing content is an increasingly significant part of the market,” commented David Price, vice president of business development at Harmonic and vice president at MPEGIF. “Standardization of the technological interaction between different solution providers in online content delivery is essential to ensure market growth.”