Intellectual Property Management and Protection for MPEG Multimedia Content: A Structured Language for Interoperable IPMP Systems

摘要

In this article a new approach to intellectual property management and protection (IPMP) is described. The novelty of the approach resides in the definition of a new simple language expressly conceived for the platform independent description of IPMP tools. The definition of such an IPMP-structured language can achieve two fundamental goals not fulfilled by current approaches: (1) full interoperability between content protection and decoder platforms originated by different content producer and platform manufacturers and (2) the possibility of renewing IPMP systems whenever needed. The approach is similar to other meta-languages such as Structured Audio, used to describe sound processing and synthesis algorithms. The proposed solution is an alternative to the full standardization of several IPMP algorithms, an approach that cannot achieve full interoperability among different vendors' platforms and does not allow the possibility of renewing IPMP systems. In the proposed technology, platforms supporting the standard IPMP primitives can be configured on the fly to run the appropriate protection algorithm. Ideally a specific IPMP tool can be defined for each content item to be protected. The new approach requires the implementation of a "secure IPMP virtual machine" on the target device. This concept can be derived by means of an extension of the original OPIMA specification enabling the OPIMA virtual machine to manage and execute IPMP structured descriptions. The presence of such a (normative) secure virtual machine on different platforms together with the normative definition of the meta-language can assure a standard execution of the structured description of IPMP systems without the need of cross-platform adaptations. The approach is fully compliant and may be part of an extension of the MPEG-n IPMP frameworks.