A Media Distribution Problem

From: Andrew Swallow (am.swallow_at_eatspam.btinternet.com)
Date: 05/26/04 

Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 21:37:12 +0000 (UTC)

Here is a theoretical problem that is likely to become real in
a few months time.

A supplier wishes to sell his goods by realtime downloading
over the internet. The goods could be a TV channel or "radio"
broadcast or constantly changing data like stock market prices.

Real time TV over internet becomes technically viable at
about 1.5 Mbps when compressed using MPEG4. Many of
the readers of this newsgroup already own modems that
fast, the phone companies have simply chosen to limit the
line's speed.

The supplier wants to get paid so he wishes to encrypt
his signal. To minimise bandwidth he wants to multi-drop
the signal; that is a common broadcast which everyone
listens to. He suspects that a second server will be
needed to handle the payment of subscription fees and
automatic distribution of daily/hourly key variables.

The supplier is willing to download a player to his
subscribers. One file of which can be unique to each
subscriber.

Threats
1. People may try and watch his shows without paying.
2. Groups of people may take a single subscription and
     send copies of the key variable to the rest of the group.
3. People may try and logon using someone else's identity.
4. Payment is to be via PayPal, credit card and phone
    type cards purchased at shops. These need transferring
    over the internet from the subscriber to the supplier in
    a secure manner.
5. Interference and lost packets may require the subscribers
    to individually resynchronise the signal.

Andrew Swallow

Relevant Pages

  • Re: A Media Distribution Problem
    ... > A supplier wishes to sell his goods by realtime downloading ... Groups of people may take a single subscription and ... imbed a watermark that's provably undetectable and robust. ... over in the media stream. ...
    (sci.crypt)
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    (uk.tech.digital-tv)
  • Aerial Rant - Rubbish on Ebay, connectors etc
    ... The F connectors photo was the EX6 and the supplier boosted 'professional parts as used by NTL, SKY etc, we use these on all our installations'. ... The supplier initially offered back the £1 for the goods but not the £3 of postage,, then after I explained my rights he offered the postage aswell but after he had seen the goods, and he would pay for return postage. ...
    (uk.tech.digital-tv)
  • Re: Online order - where do I stand?
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    ... custom made / made to my specification which are the only exceptions under DSR (which they were not incidentally, they were car body parts for a common UK car). ... They have sent a copy of a fax from their supplier as part of their defence which states they wont take it back as it was "supplied to order and imported" which is very different from custom made or made to my specification. ... If they didn't like the inability to return goods to their supplied then they should have refused to supply the goods to you or found a better supplier. ...
    (uk.legal)