Cryptography Research, a San Francisco—based computer security firm, is circulating a proposal that it claims will solve the problem of protecting digital content. While the new proposal is aimed at the music, movie, pay TV and DVD industries, it will certainly be of interest to e-book publishers and vendors.
The authors of the new security proposal, called Self-Protecting Digital Content, say their approach would switch the focus of digital protection away from the various devices that play digital content to the digital content itself. The report notes that despite successfully lobbying for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, "publishers have failed to present a coherent long-term technical strategy."
Available through the Cryptography Research Web site (www.cryptography.com), the report describes an encryption process that includes embedding "programmable code with encrypted content."
Benjamin Jun, coauthor of the report, told PW that his company "specializes in high risk, high threat" content in the areas of banking, pay TV and DVDs. "Movie studios want rigid magic bullets," he said, "but a lot of content doesn't need that kind of protection. Consumers want to be able to use an e-book like a regular book." But Jun also expects that as e-books become more popular "there will be a bigger e-book piracy problem."
Jun said the research proposal offers an approach that will create content that "can make decisions, content that can act on its own by using embedded cryptography and other techniques." This new approach will allow the content to update its own security or allow publishers to revoke a particular content-player platform that may be identified as pirated.
Allan Adler, the v-p of legal and governmental affairs at the Association of American Publishers, told PW the report was "an interesting analytical approach, and they are correct in their analysis of current trends in digital security."
Adler agreed that content providers have not provided long-term technical solutions. But he also emphasized that "a long-term solution requires a coherent business model and that takes time." He also said that "publishers don't control the development of technology. We're dependent on software and hardware vendors that want proprietary solutions. But the report is very interesting and we'd like to see more."
