ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the technical aspects of specific content protection schemes. The ongoing digital revolution has presented both a threat and a promise to the entertainment industry. Digital technologies promise inexpensive consumer devices, convenient distribution and duplication, and flexible new business models. In the late 1980s, the consumer electronics industry had developed a new technology called Digital Audio Tape. Broadcast encryption brings with it several desirable properties, not the least of which is that it needs substantially less device overhead than public key cryptography. The consumer promise of the personal digital domain is enticing. Freed from having to count copies, consumers could make unlimited copies for backup and for the convenience of playback at various places and times. The Serial Copy Management System is the heart of simplicity. Two bits in a header are used to encode three states: “copy freely,” “copy once,” or “copy never.” The Content Scrambling System works by assigning each device manufacturer a single key.
