Recently DISH Network has won a new patent for a way to make content on streaming and over traditional cable TV DVRs more secure. The hope is this system will make it harder for IPTV services to use DISH and other cable companies’ technology to illegally stream their content online.
In short, DISH has built a new DRM system that it believes will put a stop to IPTV services ability to get around current DRM.
Here is how DISH Network describes this new DRM patent:
“Systems, devices and automated processes provide robust, computationally-efficient and secure protection of media content or other electronic data stored on a user-supplied storage device through the use of efficient file system encryption. Only certain portions of the content are encrypted by the host device, thereby reducing the computational demand in comparison to encrypting all of the content. By selecting the particular portions to encrypt, the formatting and structure of the stored data can be concealed, thereby making the use of the unencrypted content very difficult, if not impossible. In implementations based upon the XFS file system, for example, the superblocks that store header information about the files stored on the drive can be encrypted, thereby rendering the unencrypted content.”
Is all of that a bit confusing? You are not alone in not understanding all of that but the short end here is that most DRM on cable boxes was broken a long time again. Now DISH has a new DRM system it believes will be far harder to break, making it harder for IPTV services to stream content online from DISH and other companies.
Now DISH has won a U.S. Patent that will allow it to sell this technology and protect both traditional broadcast TV via cable and satellite but also streaming services.
Recently DISH has been leading the charge to stop pirate streams through IPTV services. DISH has recently won multiple court rulings to stop IPTV services and, in some cases send the owners to jail.
Now it seems DISH is hoping to cut off many IPTV services from the source of their content by blocking their ability to pull it off of their set-top boxes to stream online.
As cord cutting grows, DISH and other media companies are looking for ways to make piracy harder. The hope is that this will drive some pirate customers to legal streaming services like Sling TV.