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Video: Why Has Hardware-Based DRM Become Critical to Content Protection?

Learn more about DRM at Streaming Media's next event.

Read the complete transcript of this clip:

Christopher Levy: Up until very recently, with even 1080p content and primarily out of Microsoft's Play Ready involvement in the business, this concept of hardware DRM started to evolved around 2011, 2012. There were companies in place like Trustonic and others who had software implementations that created an emulation of hardware in the sense of providing a safe place to put the actual keys to play the content back. Over time, what has happened now is that in the marketplace, because of the way the technologies have been developed, one of the clear things that's happening with 4k is that hardware is a requirement.

The reason it's a requirement is because to lose a 1080p file is kind of a big deal. But to lose a 4k file or just have it overtly be out there in the open is somewhat of a tragedy because of what people can do with it. On top of that, because of that higher target metric on 4k content, the idea now is that, for example, if you have an Android phone like my Samsung S9, it has the Widevine technology on it. But it has a trusted execution environment where when a DRM license server sends a key down to this device to watch a video, and say that key is sitting in a folder or a file that's encrypted, it's actually in a trusted space. It's in an enclave, if you will, where hardware process is managing it, preventing side attacks, brute force attacks.

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