Media2Mark Concept

The m2mark® concept is a true innovative approach proposing a technological bridge between:

• a priori content protection techniques (based on various cryptographic algorithms) aiming at protecting the multimedia content before the consumption process, and
• a posteriori content protection techniques (based on various algorithms of inserting invisible marks into the video audiovisual content) aiming at identifying the multimedia content after the consumption process.

The objective is to bring together the best of the two technologies through an optimized process in terms of system integration, resources consumption on client/server side and bandwidth preserving. New business models for service providers and improved user experience are enabled while keeping simple the technical concepts and the deployment architecture. Three key principles are guiding the m2mark® process:

• Content traceability on each level of the content distribution chain
• Content portability on heterogeneous devices
• Re-use of existing systems and technologies for content production / distribution / consumption.

The m2mark® concept is based is a hybrid technology integrating the DRM/CAS systems with the watermarking techniques.

Base layer: Medialiving
The medialiving is an innovative concept designed and patented by Medialive, (Please refer to the previous page).

Mid-layer: Watermarking
Watermarking is generally known as the technique allowing the insertion of a set of data into visual content by modifying some parts of the targeted images. These modifications are invisible to the human eye, but detectable using the appropriate detection algorithms. Two approaches are currently known: watermarking in non-compressed and compressed domain. Watermarking in non-compressed domain implies modifications directly on pixel level (chrominance and/or luminance buffers) , while the techniques in compressed domain relates to transform coefficients (for DCT-based codecs, the addressed coefficients are the DC/AC ones, as well as the motion vectors resulting from inter-frame coding process).
The m2mark® technology makes use of the results of the watermarking process in two steps:

• 1. Analyzing and processing the watermarking results: The results of the watermarking process (the modified information carrying the watermark payload) are analyzed and converted into a file called Mark_Object compliant with the Control_Object syntax.
• 2. Generating the Control_Object_Marker: The Marked_Object is then merged with the Control_Object in order to generate the Control_Object_Marker. This files has the same syntax as Control_Objet and Mark_Object files, contraining a mix of original values extracted during the Luring® process and modified data carrying the watermark payload.

Upper layer: Digital Rights Management / Conditional Access Systems
The consumption of the lured media requires the acquisition of the Control_Object. A Control_Object_Marker, different for each transaction, is securely distributed using classic DRM/CAS solutions. After the authentication of the end-user, the verification of his usage rights, the Control_Object_Marker data chunks are descrambled in real-time and recomposed in a volatile memory space with the lured frames, allowing the rendering of the watermarked content to the consumer.

Key aspects of the m2mark® are:

• Content super-distribution: The lured media preserves the original format, so it can be super-distributed through any existing infrastructures with no changes (P2P and cellular networks, web, DVD etc.) and can be consumed by any device equipped with a player compliant with international standards in the field of multimedia coding for video (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, etc.) and audio (MP3, AAC, etc.).
• Content traceability on each level of the content distribution chain: The same protected content can be watermarked on each level of the content distribution chain (rights holders, content distributors and consumers) providing a flexible fraud detection system and dissuading the consumers to illegally use the content.
• Multi-DRM: The same protected content can be consumed on various devices with different DRM/CAS capabilities by acquiring a Control_Object_Marker through the supported DRM/CAS system. Thus, the content sharing on user’s devices, as well as unified DRM/CAS platforms on the service provider’s side, becomes reality.
• Richer marketing services: The lured media can be protected in a scalable way, allowing fine-grained preview features, as well as advertising campaigns. These features stimulate the users into exchanging the content between them, thus enabling the viral marketing.
• Reinforced security on client side: The lured media is watermarked in the same time when descrambled, implying that the content is never present on the client side in a non-protected and non-watermarked form. In addition, Even if a terminal has been hacked, the terminal itself has no way to tell watermarking data apart from the rest of the data received in the Control_Object_Marker data.
• Lighter resource consumption on the client side: Protecting with cryptographic methods only 4% of the content instead of 100% brings important advantages for real-time applications, like live broadcast, or when deploying protection systems on low-resources platforms, like mobile phones, music players, etc.
• Flexible integration on client/server side: The system architecture allows re-using the existing DRM/CAS systems. The server-side module can be integrated before any DRM/CAS function is applied. The client-side module may be integrated directly into the multimedia player decoder, without disturbing the DRM/CAS deployed architecture.