DRM for streamed MPEG-4 media

Changes in internet and network environment have make it possible to provide high-quality content services in real time. As demand for digital content is increased, problems related to intellectual property rights are getting more important. Streaming service like video-on-demand solved this problem by preventing content from being saved. But, as the advent of several tools able to save streamed content, the streamed content is not free from these problems any more. So, with security countermeasure like access control, new technologies to control and manage rights for content are needed. One of the solutions is DRM. In this paper, we propose a DRM-based streaming system which can not only protect streamed MPEG-4 content but be easily integrated with existing MPEG-4 streaming system. To protect MPEG-4 content more effectively and more securely, encryption should be considered on encoding phase and also stream server should be designed to support DRM. However that means it cannot support the existing MP4 streaming servers such as QuickTime streaming server. Our approach is to design a DRM system independent to the streaming server. More precisely, we encrypt MP4 files without breaking file format so that it can be sent by any MP4 streaming server. So, we used an encryption method which can be applied to compressed MPEG-4. We made some performance tests on the system, and present the result of the tests.