Light Reading Mobile – Telecom News, Analysis, Events, and Research
LR Cable News Analysis  

ITU, IEC Tackle Content Rights

May 23, 2013 | Mari Silbey |
Two international agencies have joined together to create a common standard for IPTV metadata associated with content rights information. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) have announced the joint effort to align the IEC 62698 standard for rights information interoperability (RII) with the ITU-T H.751 recommendation addressing the same issue.

Content security has always been one of the biggest concerns for video service providers, which is why control of the conditional access market locked cable companies into a set-top duopoly for decades. However, the rules are changing now that video is shifting toward IP delivery. (See Is the Set-Top Duopoly On Its Deathbed?)

Beyond actual security measures, an easy way to communicate content rights across multiple platforms is needed. Subscribers are no longer tied to a handful of household set-tops, but are watching TV on smartphones, tablets, game consoles and more. Therefore service providers must be able to authenticate users as paying customers and enforce the content licensing rules so they can set exactly when, where and how subscribers will be allowed to watch the content that is available.

According to a press release statement, the new ITU-IEC standard will ensure that "service providers and device manufacturers can easily exchange rights information across their current content management systems."

— Mari Silbey, Special to Light Reading Cable



Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Network Computing encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Network Computing moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Network Computing further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

 
Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
 
Related Content
Most Popular
Read
White Papers SPONSORED CONTENT
Featured
Resource Library SPONSORED CONTENT
Docsis Provisioning of EPON (DPoE)
CableLabs spec that blends Docsis-style provisioning with EPON