New optical formats only a temporary content security solution

By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(04/21/04, 3:45:13 AM PT)

Las Vegas, Nev. -- Security expert Paul Kocher warned at the National Association of Broadcasters meeting here that the next generation optical media formats that the entertainment and content industry is hoping will eliminate piracy may only be a temporary solution.  

He believes that future optical media formats -- the successors to today's DVD -- will require dramatically advanced content protection technology and enforcement measures just to keep up with the better-funded and more-determined adversary of tomorrow. Kocher believes the current pay television piracy can be seen as a harbinger of things to come for optical media.

"Movies are still difficult enough to copy, so that for most people, it isn't worth the hassle," he said. In the United States today, the movie industry is primarily chasing mischievous college students, internal leakage and low-quality analog recordings as the sources of piracy, according to Kocher. 

"By contrast, in the pay television industry, we routinely face well-funded, technically sophisticated pirates, many of whom are closely connected with organized crime networks," hr said. "It's ultimately a question of whether people perceive piracy to be worthwhile." 

Kocher believes the very thing that makes successors to DVD more attractive to consumers -- high-definition content -- will also make them more attractive to pirates. The larger file size of new high-quality optical media formats like Blu-ray or HD-DVD movies, he said, will slow many pirate efforts only by perhaps two years. 

"High-definition content is a much more attractive target for attackers because, in many cases, it represents the best quality studios have to offer," he said, "While it's unfortunate that security on the current DVD format is broken and can't be reprogrammed, HD is what really matters. Once studios release high-definition content, there will be little or no distinction between studio-quality and consumer-quality." 

What this means, said Kocher is that HD is probably Hollywood's one and only chance to get security right." 

Unfortunately, he said, Hollywood is following a path common to other industries facing similar problems. "Typically, first-generation security systems fail irrecoverably, but later generations are designed to recover from failures," he said. 

As an example, he cites K-band ("big dish") satellite TV systems, which suffered from devastating piracy because security flaws could not be corrected. Having learned this lesson, modern pay TV systems place critical security components in smart cards or security modules that can be replaced. 

While this approach is not optimal because hardware upgrades are expensive, it has enabled the industry to keep piracy at survivable levels. For movie studios, optical media has so far followed a parallel path. The content protection system for DVDs was designed without renewable security, and has now been broken irrecoverably. 

"Just as the transition to digital broadcasts provided satellite providers with the opportunity to change to a better approach for security, new format initiatives such as Blu-ray and HD-DVD present an opportunity for the optical media industry to correct its dysfunctional security architecture," Kocher said. "The problem is urgent because it takes several years for security efforts to pay off. Everybody's worst fear is that Hollywood will follow in the music industry's steps and fail to make progress due to political maneuvering and a lack of technical leadership."

On the other hand, said Kocher, if security decisions reflect a disciplined analysis of the long-term business requirements, I still think it is possible to keep piracy at a manageable level. Even in the best case, though, things are going to get much worse before they get better."

For more info on this topic go to www.cryptography.com. 

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