Protection of MPEG-2 Multicast Streaming in IP Set-Top Box Environment

Abstract

The widespread use of the Internet has led to the problem of intellectual property and copyright infringement. Digital rights management (DRM) technologies have been developed to protect digital content items. Digital content can be classified into static content (for example, text or media files) and dynamic content (for example, VOD or multicast streams). This paper deals with the protection of a multicast stream on set-top boxes connected to an IP network. In this paper, we examine the following design and architectural issues to be considered when applying DRM functions to multicast streaming service environments: transparent streaming service and large-scale user environments. To address the transparency issue, we introduce a ‘selective encryption scheme'. To address the second issue, a ‘key packet insertion scheme’ and ‘hierarchical key management scheme’ are introduced. Based on the above design and architecture, we developed a prototype of a multicasting DRM system. The analysis of our implementation shows that it supports transparent and scalable DRM multicasting service in a large-scale user environment.