You can already buy a lot of things on-line - books, software, airline tickets etc. So long as you are dealing with a company you know and trust, the risk is no greater than buying something by telephone or mail order. But what if you don't know the company and the product you are buying is high-value information that will be delivered over the net?
Both parties need protection. You need to know that they have the right to sell the information to you. They need to know that you will actually pay for what you use before providing you with samples or demonstrations. Many ACTS projects have contributed to the development of a framework and a set of tools for secure electronic commerce. Some have looked specifically at the tradign of multimedia information.
GAIA has developed a sector and supplier independent Generic Architecture for Information Availability to support multilateral information trading. The GAIA architecture facilitates location and delivery of information, content and digital services through a scaleable brokerage model broadly applicable to distributed information supply chains and networks. The project has demonstrated applicability in three sectors: Music, Publishing and Technical Data.
The advantage of the GAIA Standard is that it is generally applicable, scaleable via distribution, capable of coping with heterogeneity, and is extensible to cater for future technologies, ensuring that it has and ongoing future. In particular, the Functional Architecture demonstrates the potential for object-oriented service provisioning, with CORBA and IIOP offering significant benefits in the integration of distributed systems and dynamic response to requirements. The service creation issues addressed by GAIA are relevant to both large and small service providers.
The GAIA service framework has been tested over a variety of network infrastructures, with access provided via desktop and mobile connections. Detailed evaluation of brokerage traffic has been carried out for several network technologies.
The Music demonstrator showed how a fully-functional brokerage service can be provided in a commercial context, enriching the market from both suppliers' and users' perspectives. Not just an Internet store, the Music Broker allowed small suppliers to participate in electronic commerce, gaining important access to overseas markets without some of the problems of the traditional distribution chain. Two partners, FD and Warp, are continuing pilot trial beyond GAIA.
The Technical Data demonstrator showed how manufacturing industry can benefit from information brokerage services, with on-line delivery of multimedia product catalogue information bringing together valuable improvement on practices involving unwieldy paper-based catalogues. The nature of the electronic components industry also provided commercial motivation for the trail of the intelligent agent service.
The Publishing demonstrator was hosted in three European countries, giving the European research community access for the first time to the entire set of scientific journals from one of the largest publishers worldwide. GAIA partners DTV are now extending the trial software and making arrangements with other suppliers, in order to run a publishing brokerage service on a commercial footing. Through a service like the Publishing Demonstrator, researchers throughout the world can have access to the full text 24 hours a day- a significant benefit to the research and product development community in Europe.
OCTALIS has developed a secure trading environment for audio-visual materials, whether they be static images or video clips. It uses a combination of conditional access and watermarking to prevent unauthorised access to or use of the materials.
The watermarking techniques allow successive watermarks to be applied as an image is dealt with by a number of traders. The project conducted two trials:
Conditional access only protects access to an object. After it has been accessed, the owner cannot control how it is used. Watermarking techniques allow its subsequent use to be tracked. The OCTALIS system uses both techniques and also includes a management layer, to monitor trading.
The OCTALIS tools were integrated and validated through large scale trials with real users. These trials are being followed up by presentations to the relevant standards bodies and demonstrations at major events (eg IBC) in order to present the OCTALIS solution to interested players.
A Multidisciplinary Expert Group, involving lawyers, commercial and technical specialists was used to specify the trading environment so that OCTALIS could define the tools and integrate them into trial scenarios.
OCTALIS exchanges digital creations remotely in a secure way. The system consists of two stages.
1. Work protection. This is done once for each creation. The creator or designated Service Producer embeds a unique identification message within the first copy of the image. A thumbnail of the image is sent to the registration authority. This authority assigns a unique identification number to the image, archive and thumbnail, and sends the number back to the owner. The owner of the image will then secretly embed a unique identification message the original image and insert openly aceessible data, such as the registration number, into a file header or the image itself.
2. Secure exchange. This can be repeated indefinitely. When a trade occurs, a contract is signed. Once the contract is signed (electronically or physically), a link needs to be established between the sold image. A further watermark is applied and this peocess is repeated each time the image is traded, so that the set of watermarks create an audit trail.
The watermarks are embedded in the image and cannot easily be removed. OCTALIS has developed monitoring equipment to detect the presence of these watermarks and thus prove legitimate (or illegitimate) use of the images.
The low bitrate trial took place on the Internet. The equipment used was low cost because image vendors cannot invest in expensive equipment, and the image buyers are expected to be residential users.
The project has included a comparison with an off-the-shelf product which claims to provide secure data exchange through the Internet. Thei was the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) which is part of the current versions of the Microsoft and Netscape browsers.
The processes tested in the trial were:
1. Certification of all the players by a Trusted Third Party or a Certification Authority,
2. Delivery of the original image, copyright and license information, from the Copyright Owner to the Service Provider who digitises the image,
3. Registration of the creation at the Registration Authority,
4. Watermarking and generating the label,
5. Deliveriy of the watermarked images to the service provider who sells them
6. Negotiation of the sale, establishment and signature of a contract, insertion of a further watermark and downloading of the images.
In the second phase of the trial, four image providers offered images to the sellers. The next step is the establishment of registration authorities in each of the European countries, where trials sites are located. At the same time, the OKAPI kernel will be implemented as a plug-in for the Netscape and IE browsers. At this point, the Website will be publicised vigorously with the aim of turning the trial into a commercial service offering by the end of the project.
The high bitrate trial used the EBU network for exchanging TV material between broadcasters. The network uses a Transmission Planning Procedure which labels all EBU transmissions (i.e. time slots, originator and destination(s) and other complementary data). The TPP can be accessed over a TCP/IP connection. The network has a limited number of users, any of which can be receivers or transmitters.
Copyright protection has to be applied as soon as possible at the creator level. This is the role of the first watermark, which identifies the work and is applied before the material enters the EBU network. When the material leaves the EBU network, a second watermark is applied to prove the exchange over the network and identify the recipient.
Conditional Access EMMs, for transmission and reception, are distributed through the TPP. Watermark content and key are attached to this data. To avoid disturbing the actual TPP, a second one, responsible for distribution of these parameters has been set-up, the OPP (OCTALIS Procedure Planning).
OPP secures the link between the sender and receiver. The OPP is between the TPP and the members. It is responsible for the conditional access system and the copyright protection system management. It generates all the keys of the system, the secondary watermark parameters and embeds them.
The Low Bit Rate trial was available for an extended period. The High Bit Rate trial was an EBU public demonstration during the football World Cup. OCTALIS has brought together the work of the ACTS projects TALISMAN (development of copyrighting tools) and OKAPI (development of conditional access techniques) and tested them in a real environment.
The test users are enthusiastic about the technology. They see it offering them a way of trading audio visual material electronically with a clear audit trail. Unauthorised resale of the copyrighted material can be traced back to the player responsible. Copyright laws may have to be updated to give formal legal protection to electronically traded material but the OCTALIS trials show how copyright law could be enforced in an electronic marketplace.
Another project ATMAN has also tested how professional users could use broadband networks to trade audio-visual materials. Its trial linked CSELT, an Italian telecoms reserach institute, with the BBC in the UK and KDD in Japan, using satellite ATM links, to test the browsing, accessing and downloading of audio-visual materials The principal aim of the trial was to define ways in which audio-visual material can be traded and develop and integrate hardware and software to support this. Although a wide range of content is crucial to the trial, the actual material is largely irrelevant as long as it fully tests the browsing and transfer mechanisms. The BBC provided most of the content but CSELT and KDD also contributed some.
Content was loaded on to one of the servers either locally (BBC and CSELT) or via a satellite link (KDD). The content provider could access the database via the Internet to input information on the content. This information contains all the parameters that may be needed to allow a client to search the database, as well as technical information such as the coding technique employed. Material may be held on the server in a number of formats eg, low quality for browsing and broadcast quality for purchase.
Users (i.e. potential purchasers) could search the database using a variety of criteria. Once they found something interesting, they were connected to the server to browse it. The browsing copy was streamed using MPEG over IP over ATM. If they decided to purchase, they could download the material from the server. The security mechanisms were based on those developed by the ACTS project OKAPI
The main purpose of the trial was to assess the efficiency of this trading model, particularly the ability to effectively browse, access and transfer AV content in a co-ordinated way. The 'users' were members of the participants' research laboratories.
The trial integrated the complete supply chain for audio-visual material and tested the hardware, software and processes involved. It showed that electronic trading of audio visual materials was viable. Potential buyers could browse the material on offer, but could only download it in a usable form after agreeing to buy it.
ATMAN has shown how to manage copyright issues for audio-visual libraries or content providers. An index can be consulted, low quality samples of the material can be browsed and professional quality versions can be downloaded at an agreed price.
Commercial services based on this technology depend on the cost of national or international broadband links. TV companies will pay a lot of money for live news or sports. How much will they pay for instant delivery of relevant archive material?
The ACTS trials show how a genuine market for valuable audio visual material could be implemented using broadband links and appropriate brokerage technology.