A practical key management and distribution system for IPTV conditional access

Conditional Access (CA) is widely used by pay-television operators to restrict access to content to authorised subscribers. Commercial CA solutions are available for structured broadcast and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) environments, as well as Internet-based video-on-demand services, however these solutions are mostly proprietary, often inefficient for use on IP networks, and frequently depend on smartcards for maintaining security. An efficient, exible, and open conditional access system that can be implemented practically by operators with large numbers of subscribers would be beneficial to those operators and Set-Top-Box manufacturers in terms of cost savings for royalties and production costs. Furthermore, organisations such as the South African Broadcasting Corporation that are transitioning to Digital-Terrestrial-Television could use an open Conditional Access System (CAS) to restrict content to viewing within national borders and to ensure that only valid TV licence holders are able to access content. To this end, a system was developed that draws from the area of group key management. Users are grouped according to their subscription selections and these groups are authorised for each selection's constituent services. Group keys are updated with a key-tree based approach that includes a novel method for growing full trees that outperforms the standard method. The relations that are created between key trees are used to establish a hierarchy of keys which allows exible selection of services whilst maintaining their cryptographic protection. Conditions for security without dependence on smartcards are defined, and the system is expandable to multi-home viewing scenarios. A prototype implementation was used to assess the proposed system. Total memory consumption of the key-server, bandwidth usage for transmission of key updates, and client processing and storage of keys were all demonstrated to be highly scalable with number of subscribers and number of services

A manifesto for the creative economy

The UK\u27s creative economy is one of its great national strengths, historically deeply rooted and accounting for around one-tenth of the whole economy. It provides jobs for 2.5 million people – more than in financial services, advanced manufacturing or construction – and in recent years, this creative workforce has grown four times faster than the workforce as a whole. But behind this success lies much disruption and business uncertainty, associated with digital technologies. Previously profitable business models have been swept away, young companies from outside the UK have dominated new internet markets, and some UK creative businesses have struggled to compete. UK policymakers too have failed to keep pace with developments in North America and parts of Asia. But it is not too late to refresh tired policies. This manifesto sets out our 10-point plan to bolster one of the UK\u27s fastest growing sectors

Net Neutrality

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Chris Marsden maneuvers through the hype articulated by Netwrok Neutrality advocates and opponents. He offers a clear-headed analysis of the high stakes in this debate about the Internet's future, and fearlessly refutes the misinformation and misconceptions that about' Professor Rob Freiden, Penn State University Net Neutrality is a very heated and contested policy principle regarding access for content providers to the Internet end-user, and potential discrimination in that access where the end-user's ISP (or another ISP) blocks that access in part or whole. The suggestion has been that the problem can be resolved by either introducing greater competition, or closely policing conditions for vertically integrated service, such as VOIP. However, that is not the whole story, and ISPs as a whole have incentives to discriminate between content for matters such as network management of spam, to secure and maintain customer experience at current levels, and for economic benefit from new Quality of Service standards. This includes offering a ‘priority lane' on the network for premium content types such as video and voice service. The author considers market developments and policy responses in Europe and the United States, draws conclusions and proposes regulatory recommendations

AXMEDIS 2008

The AXMEDIS International Conference series aims to explore all subjects and topics related to cross-media and digital-media content production, processing, management, standards, representation, sharing, protection and rights management, to address the latest developments and future trends of the technologies and their applications, impacts and exploitation. The AXMEDIS events offer venues for exchanging concepts, requirements, prototypes, research ideas, and findings which could contribute to academic research and also benefit business and industrial communities. In the Internet as well as in the digital era, cross-media production and distribution represent key developments and innovations that are fostered by emergent technologies to ensure better value for money while optimising productivity and market coverage

Net Neutrality

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Chris Marsden maneuvers through the hype articulated by Netwrok Neutrality advocates and opponents. He offers a clear-headed analysis of the high stakes in this debate about the Internet's future, and fearlessly refutes the misinformation and misconceptions that about' Professor Rob Freiden, Penn State University Net Neutrality is a very heated and contested policy principle regarding access for content providers to the Internet end-user, and potential discrimination in that access where the end-user's ISP (or another ISP) blocks that access in part or whole. The suggestion has been that the problem can be resolved by either introducing greater competition, or closely policing conditions for vertically integrated service, such as VOIP. However, that is not the whole story, and ISPs as a whole have incentives to discriminate between content for matters such as network management of spam, to secure and maintain customer experience at current levels, and for economic benefit from new Quality of Service standards. This includes offering a ‘priority lane' on the network for premium content types such as video and voice service. The author considers market developments and policy responses in Europe and the United States, draws conclusions and proposes regulatory recommendations

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Third International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Automation for Space 1994

The Third International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Automation for Space (i-SAIRAS 94), held October 18-20, 1994, in Pasadena, California, was jointly sponsored by NASA, ESA, and Japan's National Space Development Agency, and was hosted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the California Institute of Technology. i-SAIRAS 94 featured presentations covering a variety of technical and programmatic topics, ranging from underlying basic technology to specific applications of artificial intelligence and robotics to space missions. i-SAIRAS 94 featured a special workshop on planning and scheduling and provided scientists, engineers, and managers with the opportunity to exchange theoretical ideas, practical results, and program plans in such areas as space mission control, space vehicle processing, data analysis, autonomous spacecraft, space robots and rovers, satellite servicing, and intelligent instruments

Lessons from the Millennium Villages Evaluation: Where Next for Integrated Development?

Integrated development projects seem to have largely fallen out of favour since their heyday in the 1970s and 1980s. Integrated projects are by their nature often complex and messy – and this has thrown up challenges for researchers and evaluators attempting to assess the benefits of simultaneous implementation. This IDS Bulletin explores recent evidence on integrated approaches in rural development. One of the observations in writing this IDS Bulletin, is how much the evidence base has improved, and there is now a greater understanding of where knowledge gaps exist. Amongst other examples, this IDS Bulletin looks at lessons from evaluating the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) in northern Ghana. The MVP was initiated in 2005 to implement the previous Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in rural villages in sub-Saharan Africa. The MVP is seen as being one of the most prominent examples of integrated development in recent years, with new evidence now emerging about its effectiveness. Meanwhile, there is a renewed interest in interconnectedness, including finding ways that work across different sectors in order to implement the current Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Inherent in the SDGs is the recognition that the goals are interdependent, although it is noted in the articles here how integrated development approaches have yet to resonate fully with the SDG agenda. The articles are deliberately diverse, covering everything from systematic reviews to randomised trials, to mixed method designs and immersion approaches. When reviewed together, they highlight several reoccurring themes, including: the challenge of assessing synergy effects; the cost-effectiveness of integration; the value of mixing methods; and dealing with multiple outcomes on different timelines.Department for International Development (DFID

Diseño centrado en calidad para la difusión Peer-to-Peer de video en vivo

El uso de redes Peer-to-Peer (P2P) es una forma escalable para ofrecer servicios de video sobre Internet. Este documento hace foco en la definición, desarrollo y evaluación de una arquitectura P2P para distribuir video en vivo. El diseño global de la red es guiado por la calidad de experiencia (Quality of Experience - QoE), cuyo principal componente en este caso es la calidad del video percibida por los usuarios finales, en lugar del tradicional diseño basado en la calidad de servicio (Quality of Service - QoE) de la mayoría de los sistemas. Para medir la calidad percibida del video, en tiempo real y automáticamente, extendimos la recientemente propuesta metodología Pseudo-Subjective Quality Assessment (PSQA). Dos grandes líneas de investigación son desarrolladas. Primero, proponemos una técnica de distribución de video desde múltiples fuentes con las características de poder ser optimizada para maximizar la calidad percibida en contextos de muchas fallas y de poseer muy baja señalización (a diferencia de los sistemas existentes). Desarrollamos una metodología, basada en PSQA, que nos permite un control fino sobre la forma en que la señal de video es dividida en partes y la cantidad de redundancia agregada, como una función de la dinámica de los usuarios de la red. De esta forma es posible mejorar la robustez del sistema tanto como sea deseado, contemplando el límite de capacidad en la comunicación. En segundo lugar, presentamos un mecanismo estructurado para controlar la topología de la red. La selección de que usuarios servirán a que otros es importante para la robustez de la red, especialmente cuando los usuarios son heterogéneos en sus capacidades y en sus tiempos de conexión.Nuestro diseño maximiza la calidad global esperada (evaluada usando PSQA), seleccionado una topología que mejora la robustez del sistema. Además estudiamos como extender la red con dos servicios complementarios: el video bajo demanda (Video on Demand - VoD) y el servicio MyTV. El desafío en estos servicios es como realizar búsquedas eficientes sobre la librería de videos, dado al alto dinamismo del contenido. Presentamos una estrategia de "caching" para las búsquedas en estos servicios, que maximiza el número total de respuestas correctas a las consultas, considerando una dinámica particular en los contenidos y restricciones de ancho de banda. Nuestro diseño global considera escenarios reales, donde los casos de prueba y los parámetros de configuración surgen de datos reales de un servicio de referencia en producción. Nuestro prototipo es completamente funcional, de uso gratuito, y basado en tecnologías bien probadas de código abierto