Pushing the Internet direct to the user - security issues
Deborah McGovern · 2003
A broadcast-based Internet is architecturally quite simple, and it offers a number of advantages in terms of coverage, and user value in terms of content quality and cost. Its primary use of multicast in a very efficient mode means that new opportunities are presented for marketing all forms of multimedia content. To enable this, a family of open security standards is required. The Internet Engineering Task Force is probably the best-qualified body to develop these standards, and is making good progress in its MSEC Forum on aspects of protecting streamed (or real-time) data. The commercial drivers for extending the scope fully to include mass-market issues are not yet in place. These include very large multicasts, the problems of large number of joins and leaves, and efficient source authentication and user non-repudiation. Similarly, protection of offline content is not yet the focus of the standards bodies. The content industry has to some extent been caught out by the rapid growth of unauthorised file sharing among Internet users, and has a number of proprietary solutions for Digital Rights Management. For reasons of transparency and universality it is hoped that the main de facto standards will be developed into open standards. (6 pages)