46 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,

Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2010

Video Streamed Acces and Use Control Using

Digital Rights Management
Morad Rafi1 and Mohsine Eleuldj2
Mohammed V University, Mohammedia School of Engineers (EMI),
Telecom & Computer Departements
Avenue Ibn sina, B.P. 765 Agdal Rabat Maroc
Tel: (212-537) 77.26.47
1
rafimourad@gmail.com, 2eleuldj@emi.ac.ma

signals which it then converts (encodes) into a series of IP

Abstract: Digital Rights Management (DRM) is collection of
technologies which protect the copy right holder’s revenue by
protecting their digital works, based on a secure architecture
against any illegal use. The challenge of DRM is to control, in
real time, the access and use of these digital contents over a
communication channel. In this paper we will use DRM
technologies to control access and use of streamed videos in the
case of a bandwidth-limited network. This contribution makes it
suitable to enable real time DRM in multimedia systems.
Keywords: DRM, Network, Real time, Video Streaming,
Control.
1. Introduction and Motivation
One of the fastest growing and most profiting sectors
of today’s economy is information industry. Its success
has in short time brought new opportunities to do
business with digital information products. New
technologies like telecommunications, Internet, etc… is now
enabling a new business models --- e-Commerce. On the
market of digital content, this results in information
prosperity and provides new distribution channels, lower
costs and fewer barriers.
The development of the broadband network allows the
exchange, the download and the diffusion through the Peer
to Peer networks, and perfect numerical reproduction of a
digital content.
Moreover, the use of technologies which are at the
same time sophisticated and simple to handle as well as
the provision of a powerful reading equipment of digital
contents facilitate the task to circumvent technical
protection measure of digital contents.
Now industry is demanding urgently an efficient mechanism
for e-Content protection. Thus DRM systems [1][2][3] were
designed and implemented to take up the challenge to
protect the copyright holder’s revenue by protecting their
works against illegal use based in secure architecture[4][5].
These systems authorize only controlled rights associated
with digital contents.
Traditional analog video is sent as a continuous stream of
electrical signals over a cable from the source (camera) to
the destination such as a video monitor. Digital technology
and IP has changed that. With this new type of video, a
digital camera translates the viewed image into digital
packets that can be sent out over an IP-based network as a
data stream. The IP network may be a local area network, a
company wide area network, or even the public internet. At
the destination, the receiver re-assembles these packets back
into the original video stream. The reconstructed video can
then be viewed, stored, searched, replayed, or retransmitted.
Unlike other types of data, video requires large amounts of
bandwidth, as well as highly reliable, predictable delivery
mechanisms. Unfortunately, IP was not designed to provide
this guaranteed quality of service (QoS) to the different
types of traffic it carries and frequently one or more packets
may be dropped during transmission. For applications such
as video, packet re-transmission is a poor option since the
missing packets are required to accurately reproduce the
video image. Unmanaged, these factors cause latency, which
result in poor quality or even unusable video at the receiving
end.
In this context, the use of Digital Rights Management
(DRM) [6][7] to control the access and use of streamed
video can degrade the quality of the broadcast (stream) of
any digital contents through internet or telecommunication
network.
In order to study the use impact of DRM technology, we will
use MATLAB/Simulink to simulate real time DRM control
streaming video over a bandwidth-limited communication
channel.
It is necessary to specify rules stating the use conditions of
the digital contents. These rules are often expressed in the
form of a license which is a kind of contract between a
supplier of a digital content and a consumer. A language to
express licenses is needed. The Rights Expression Language
(REL) chosen was the standardized MPEG-21 REL [8][9]
witch is simple and sufficiently expressive in order to meet
the requirements of the streaming videos over networks.
The reminder of this paper is organized as follow: In section
2 we present our main contribution which consists of
introducing DRM technologies to control user rights for a
streamed video in real time. Then Experimental results are
presented. The paper concludes in section III.
 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security, 47
2. Main Contributions and Experimentation
3.6 Studied Model
The Figure1 illustrates the video streaming scenario studied
which consists of 3 parts: A video streaming source server
(Blue block, Fig.2), video end user (Brown block, Fig.2) and
a bandwidth-limited communication network (Green block,
Fig.2). The implementation of DRM access control can be
done either in the server side or in the end user side.
Video End
Video Source User
Server
Bandwith -limited
communication channel
Figure 1. Video streaming over networks scenario studied
The Model (Fig.2) presents the studied scenario to
implement DRM control which is simulated using
MATLAB/Simulink. It illustrates a communication system
that sends frames of video data over a channel. By dropping
frames that wait too long to reach the end user, the model
also illustrates how to use timeouts to implement point-to-
point timing constraints. The video file used for the
simulation is vipmen.avi (120*160, 30fps).
Figure 2. Video streaming Over Bandwidth-limited
Communication Channel
3.7 Introduction of DRM technologies
In order to implement DRM to control the use of the video
in real time we have chosen the standardized MPEG 21
Rights Expression Language to express the licenses [11].
These licenses, XML based, contain the rights that a user
has and will be evaluated during DRM process. The license
can be located in the source server side or in the end user
side.
Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2010
The DRM process is as follow:
1-The User request a play right for the video streamed.
2-The DRM block parse the license XML based with a
parser
3-The DRM block evaluate the license according to the user
request
4-If the play right exist then the user can play the video
5-If the play right doesn’t exit then a message will be played
informing the user that he/she is not authorized to play the
video.
The MPEG-21REL Embedded MATLAB Function Block is
inserted to the studied model to control user rights for the
video streamed.
We have two possibilities to implement the control: a)-In the
video streaming server side or b)-in the end user video
player side.
a)-In the video streaming server side:
In the video source block (Fig.3), the embedded function is
inserted to control the user rights before the video can be
streamed in the case of a video on demand or IPTV [12].
The Red elements illustrate the added DRM controls:
Figure 3. Video Source block with DRM components
inserted to control user rights for the streamed video.
b)-in the end user video player side:
In the end user video block (Fig.4), the MPEG-21 REL
Embedded MATLAB function can be inserted to control the
user rights for the video before to be played. The Red
elements illustrate the added DRM controls:
Figure 4. Video End User block with DRM components
inserted to control user rights for the streamed video.
48
The added DRM controls components are:
1- The Embedded MATLAB function block (Fig.5)
that we call “MPEG-21 REL” which consists of
controlling the video user rights by parsing the
XML license file
Figure 5. MPEG 21 REL Embedded MATLAB Function
After parsing the XML license file and evaluating the user
rights, if the user is not authorized to view the video the
constant K will be equal to “0” (Fig.10b):
Y1= U1
Y2= K*U2 , K =0 in order to transmit the video
Y3= U3 without the green colour to deliver
Y4= 0 a bad quality of video.
Y5= 0
Y6= 0
Yi: The R,G,B output variables
Uj,: The R,G,B input variables
i=1,2,3,4,5,6.
J=1,2,3.
After parsing the XML license file and evaluating the user
rights, if the user is authorized to view the video (Fig.10a):
Y1= 0
Y2= 0
Y3= 0
Y4= U1
Y5= U2
Y6= U3
2- The MATLAB Insert Text block which consists of
watermarking the streamed video by inserting a
text informing the user that he/she is not
authorized to play the video. The video viewed by
the user is a bad quality of the original video.
Figure 6. Insert Text MATLAB block
3- The MATLAB Add element which consists of
adding the outputs signals.
Figure 7. Add MATLAB block
(IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,
Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2010
3.8 Simulation and Experimentation
2.3.1 Without DRM Control
When we run the simulation without DRM components
(Fig.8), we have the Scopes that plot the following
quantities to evaluate performance:
-uThe size of the “input buffer” shows how many frames
are waiting in the channel. Frames accumulate in the input
buffer until they either progress through the channel or time
out.
-vThe size of the “reception buffer” shows how many
frames are waiting in the receiver. Before T=10, frames
accumulate in the reception buffer because the block labelled
Flow Control keeps the path closed between the receiver's
buffer and the video viewer.
-wThe status of “underflow” events in the receiver has a
value of 1 whenever the Release Gate block permits a frame
to advance from the reception buffer to the video viewer, but
no frame is present.
-xThe “communication delay per frame” shows how
long the channel delays each frame that has advanced
beyond the input buffer. In this model, the delay is periodic.
-yThe “number of timed-out entities” shows how many
frames have timed out in the channel. The end user does not
receive these frames and can observe a gap in the video if
many consecutive frames time out.
u v w
x y
Figure 8. Simulation results without introducing DRM
controls
2.3.2 With DRM Control
The simulation using DRM control gives the same video
performance as the original model without using DRM
control for the case of authorized user (Fig.8, Fig.10a) or for
the non-authorized user (Fig.9, Fig.10b). This shows that
our implementation of the DRM control don’t affect the
network performance and the quality of the streamed video.
 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security, 49
Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2010

have find “XMLTree” [13] which is an XML parser toolbox

that can be added to the set path of MATLAB. The XML
Parser is an XML 1.0 parser written in MATLAB. It aims to
be fully conforming. This XML Parser is embedded in a
MATLAB class (@xmltree) including powerful methods to
import, export, access and modify the data. Xpath[14] is
used for addressing parts of the XML document. This
program is free software, distributed under a GPL License.

Figure 9. Simulation results using DRM control.
3. Conclusion
In this paper we have used DRM technologies to control
access and use of real time streamed videos in the case of a
bandwidth-limited network.
The video quality and network performance was not affected
by DRM processing. This makes it suitable to enable real
time DRM e-commerce. Further research is under way to
convert the program into VHDL to be tested on FPGA since
the MATLAB software support the conversion operation to
VHDL if all the components or programs are synthesizable
like the parser used. In order to secure licenses to be
tampered with we can convert them to binary format. Also
more complex licenses will be studied in order to deal with
complex business model and the XML licenses time parsing.

4. References
a) Output video for authorized user b) Output video for non authorized user

Figure 10. Comparison of the output videos

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