The new service will provide transaction reporting and essential back-office functions to securely authenticate and authorize digital entertainment content such as movies, music and games, the companies said in a statement.
The service could be supported by internet-based consumer electronics, such as IP TV set-top boxes or PCs, and would ease the paranoia of the entertainment industry as it attempts to transition its business models to the Internet.
Thomson would provide digital rights management technology and services and VeriSign would provide hosted security and transaction services. That is, Thomson provides the DRM wrapper, VeriSign authenticates the wrapper and authorizes the user.
VeriSign’s role would appear to be somewhat analogous to what it does with browsers, web servers, and secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates today. The endpoints look to a VeriSign service in the cloud to authenticate the security.
A VeriSign spokesperson said a test version of the service is up and running at a Los Angeles data center already. The project is being backed by several big media firms that have not yet been named. A live service is planned for mid-2005.
There is no direct relationship between this and the news that Thomson intends to take a stake in DRM technology pioneer ContentGuard Inc with Microsoft Corp and Time Warner Inc, also announced this week, the VeriSign spokesperson said.
Instead, it’s all part of VeriSign strategy to put more services at what it calls the core of the Internet, moving complexity away from the edge, according to VeriSign.
