ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses an important aspect of streaming media content protection: streaming media encryption to ensure confidentiality and assist content access control and digital media transmission through a packet-switch network, such as the Internet only. Streaming media refers to digital media being transmitted through a network, from a server to a client, in a streaming or continuous fashion. A generic streaming media service may include the following basic components: streaming media request, coding, packetization, packets transmission, rate adaptation, error control, reassembling, decoding and client device playback. To transport streaming media over the Internet, appropriate protocol aiming at delivery of delay sensitive media streams is needed. The traditional online encryption model was designed to serve small amounts of data, such as credit card information, typically exchanged in a secure transactional manner. Transcoding safe streaming media encryption has been reported in the literature. The availability of streaming media services is providing with an exciting new set of applications.
