Advances in Digital Video Content Protection

TLDR

Digital video enables widespread distribution, but its ease of perfect copying fuels piracy, plagiarism, and misappropriation, prompting content owners to seek DRM solutions. This paper surveys video DRM concepts and approaches, outlining encryption, watermarking, and key‑management techniques while highlighting remaining challenges and future research directions. Current DRM efforts focus on encryption, watermarking, and key‑management, addressing technical challenges in securing digital video.

Abstract

The use of digital video offers immense opportunities for creators; however, the ability for anyone to make perfect copies and the ease by which those copies can be distributed also facilitate misuse, illegal copying and distribution ("piracy"), plagiarism, and misappropriation. Popular Internet software based on a peer-to-peer architecture has been used to share copyrighted movies, music, software, and other materials. Concerned about the consequences of illegal copying and distribution on a massive scale, content owners are interested in digital rights management (DRM) systems which can protect their rights and preserve the economic value of digital video. A DRM system protects and enforces the rights associated with the use of digital content. Unfortunately, the technical challenges for securing digital content are formidable and previous approaches have not succeeded. We overview the concepts and approaches for video DRM and describe methods for providing security, including the roles of encryption and video watermarking. Current efforts and issues are described in encryption, watermarking, and key management. Lastly, we identify challenges and directions for further investigation in video DRM.