Combination of DRM and Mobile Code: A Practice to Protect TV Contents and Applications on Android Smartphone

Abstract

With the internet's influence, an obvious trend can be seen that digital TV industry will embrace multi-screen and IP-based technology. Due to Chinese specific political environment, how to make sure the TV's contents controllable has become a key problem when the contents are accepted by more and more non-TV terminals like Android phones. In this paper, we focus on digital home network environment where Android terminals receive TV contents and display them with authorization. We introduce a new architecture for Android applications where an installed app works as a translator can run mobile code (Code that's loaded from server at runtime) through our defined android xml drama. What's more, we build an Android Digital Right Management (DRM) system referenced by China DRM Technical specification on that architecture. We show that DRM can effectively protect TV contents and mobile code can provide at least 2 benefits: first, it can protect some important code from exposure, second, it can keep the Android app's flexibility.