Paul Kocher, President, Cryptography Research, Inc.

Paul Kocher, President of Cryptography Research, Inc. (CRI), a San Francisco-based security company, has devised a new method, a new architecture, for protecting the valuable digital content contained in DVDs.

Rather than depending on often-inadequate anti-piracy protection provided by the manufacturers of consumer electronic (CE) devices, CRI's innovative Self-Protecting Digital Content (SPDC) system would allow content producers and distributors to put flexible and state-of-the-art anti-piracy software on the DVDs themselves.

All the CE manufacturers would need to do is put a "virtual machine" on their boxes that would allow the on-the-disk protection to carry out its anti-piracy functions. This system gives responsibility for protecting content to those with the biggest stake in doing so: the studios and distributors. It also allows for implementing constant improvement in security procedures according to what has worked or not worked in the past, since each new release (or re-release of existing material) can take advantage of the latest technical innovations and information about previous versions' success or failure in thwarting attempts at piracy.

To hear Paul Kocher talking about Cryptographic Research's Self-Protecting Digital Content system, voting security, quantum computing, and the importance of Stanford University in the cryptographic universe, click here.

This is a link to information about Self-Protecting Digital Content (SPDC) on the CRI web site.

For a PowerPoint presentation explaining the Self-Protecting Digital Content approach, click here.

This is a link to Cryptographic Research's home page.

For more about Paul Kocher, click here.

For a comprehensive and very readable report from Bloomberg.com about digital piracy and the threat it poses to the entertainment industry, click here.