Irdeto-Owned Cloakware Launches DTCP-IP Media Player Solution

Irdeto-owned content-security software company, Cloakware, on Wednesday launched a DTCP-IP (Digital Transmission Content Protection-Internet Protocol) Media Player solution which it says is designed to enable cable operators to secure and monetize programming content within the home entertainment network. The solution, which is part of Irdeto's overall solution for cable operators, is billed as providing a robust and secure transmission path on the home network for content to be distributed to all home-based digital devices, including the PC, and as allowing content owners to securely distribute content on the cable platform without the risk associated with an open platform.

According to Cloakware, the solution is fully compliant with DTCP-IP, a protection mode backed by CableLabs that serves as the link protection mechanism between the cable modem and a subscriber's home digital devices. Supported by the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) and its consumer electronics certification program, DTCP enables, Cloakware says, seamless content exchange between authenticated devices in the home through an encrypted exchange of content and copy control information across a range of standard interfaces, including IEEE 1394 and Internet Protocol (IP) over Ethernet, MOCHA or 802.11 (WiFi). "DTCP-IP is designed to limit authorization of usage of content in order to assure content owners they would be able to generate new revenues with multiple device usage," Jan Steenkamp, Irdeto's VP for the Americas, said in a prepared statement (note: for an in-depth overview of Irdeto and its offerings, see the interview with Steenkamp that was published on itvt.com, August 7th). "Finding a robust solution using DTCP-IP to broaden the reach and distribute content to consumers on multiple platforms has been of great interest to operators and to the content community. A solution that satisfies the content owners' needs for security will allow cable operators to distribute throughout the home or business the content consumers are demanding, including on the PC. Content distribution to the PC presents a real threat to the content industry if it cannot be done in a manner which maintains the integrity of the content. The content industry is spending millions of dollars to produce the content and is looking to ensure that it can be controlled and monetized. Failing to do so will result in the ultimate demise of high-quality programming that cable operators can provide to their customers. The Cloakware DTCP-IP Media Solution successfully addresses the security and monetization issues, significantly helping both industries."

In the past, Cloakware says, the fact that the Internet and consumer devices are effectively open platforms has presented a host of challenges to content providers and platform operators that wanted to embrace those platforms, because they could not ensure that access to content distributed on the platforms would be granted only to individuals authorized to receive it. The company says that its technology overcomes vulnerabilities that traditional encryption-based IP solutions cannot address: although in recent years, it says, hackers have developed many ways to gain access to conditional access keys--including the use of logic analyzers to discover the encryption key algorithm by reading power consumption or electromagnetic wave patterns--it applies several techniques to defeat such hacking. By applying mathematical transformations to software and to computing devices' internal representation of data, it says, these transformations have the added benefit of rendering cryptographic keys, as present in the runtime system, useless to an attacker. The company also claims that its platform ensures that content is encrypted when crossing the PCI Express bus and that content remains encrypted for storage and transfer to external devices.

Irdeto claims to bring to the cable PCTV service environment an architectural approach to use of DTCP-IP link protection that simplifies integration with DRM's--a multi-DRM framework that allows operators to deploy DRM solutions on-demand as new devices and applications require. It says that this architecture has been widely used by OEM's, enabling it to bring "pre-hardened" implementations of the major IP DRM's into the cable services space, thereby assuring operators and their OEM and content suppliers that the requisite conformance to robustness and compliance rules has been met.