Theta protocol integrates Microsoft PlayReady industry-standard DRM to enable MGM video streams
THETA.tv fans have had plenty of new MGM Studios content to watch in the last two months, with live watch parties for classic MGM movies like Return of the Living Dead and the Amityville Horror. But what many didn’t realize is the behind-the-scenes work needed to integrate industry-standard digital rights management (DRM) into the Theta protocol, assuring MGM that their content would be distributed over the Theta Network but not pirated.
As you’d expect, a major Hollywood studio like MGM has a serious interest in protecting their content rights and had some reservations about distributing their content over a peer-to-peer protocol like Theta Network. While decentralized, peer-to-peer sharing protocols have come a long way since the early 2000s, many studios still associate the technology with the content piracy they encountered on early p2p protocols like Napster, Bearshare, and Kazaa. Theta Network allows any partnered video platform to determine which content to host so DRM is not required by any means, but the protocol must at least offer the option of DRM to alleviate the concerns of major content owners.
To accomplish this, the Theta development team integrated Microsoft’s industry-standard DRM service to the Theta protocol, allowing video platforms to enable Theta video relaying while ensuring only legitimate Theta users can request video segments of specified licensed content. This essentially enables any Theta content partner to deliver live and on-demand content encrypted dynamically with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-128) including Microsoft PlayReady as well as Google Widevine and Apple FairPlay. The Theta DRM platform is able to deliver AES keys and DRM licenses to authorized clients by leveraging Microsoft Media services.
In the end, the Theta development team successfully integrated the THETA p2p delivery library with the DRM system given that the THETA network is content agnostic. “As in the case of plain or unencrypted streams, for each viewer, the THETA delivery library was able to identify a set of peers that possess the desired video stream data encrypted by the DRM system,” said Jieyi Long, Theta Labs CTO and co-founder. “After gathering the encrypted data from the peers, a player can effectively decrypt the stream with the keys provided by the DRM backend.”
In the case of THETA.tv, this meant ensuring that MGM copyrighted movies could not be diverted to illicit file sharing sites, but you can imagine many different applications now enabled by this feature. Below are some additional examples:
- Live sports streaming is a multi-billion dollar business in the U.S. alone, and rights holders won’t use a video distribution network that allows users to pirate the stream and reduce their customer base. But with optional DRM features added to Theta protocol, a content owner can allow only their actual customers to view streams.
- If a game service like Steam platform uses the Theta protocol in the future to deliver games or updates/patches to its users, they must be assured that only customers who own the game in question are allowed to download it over Theta Network.
- An emerging category of cloud gaming services such as Google Stadia stream game data in real-time from their servers, if Theta protocol were powering it behind-the-scenes, Google would require DRM capability to ensure only those that have purchased have access to their content.
This important enabling step will help Theta Network go beyond ad-supported content like THETA.tv and integrate with major content rights holders of subscription/paid content.
