Widevine

Widevine is a proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology from Google used by the Chromium and Firefox web browsers (including some derivatives), Android MediaDRM, Android TV, and other consumer electronics devices. Widevine technology supports various encryption schemes and hardware security to restrict consumer access to distributed video content according to rules defined by content owners. Widevine mainly provides a Content Decryption Module (CDM) as a client to Google Chrome and other browsers and devices. Widevine is free to use by content providers and as such does not charge any fees for license generation or device integration.

Security levels

The three Widevine security levels are:

* L1― No resolution or HDR restriction; highest level of protection. Both cryptography and media processing operations occur in a trusted execution environment (TEE).
* L2― Only cryptography operations are executed in a TEE, not media processing.
* L3― Software-based DRM only.

Usage

Widevine DRM is used with the Chromium-based web browsers and on Android. It supports MPEG-DASH and HLS. Google Chrome and ChromeOS make use of Encrypted Media Extensions and Media Source Extensions with Widevine, where it is used
to decrypt content. Over thirty chipsets, six major desktop and mobile operating systems, and Google properties such as Chromecast and Android TV have adopted Widevine.

Companies including Amazon Prime Video, BBC, Hulu, Netflix, Spotify and Disney+ use Widevine DRM to manage the distribution of premium content.

It is also used by Firefox since v47, released in 2016, enabled by default on Microsoft Windows and optionally on Linux; it can be disabled and uninstalled in the browser settings. Prior to that, Mozilla used Adobe's ''Primetime DRM'' library for some versions.

Circumvention

Widevine L3 has been circumvented on at least two occasions and researchers have argued that it is inherently insecure. As with all digital video security solutions, Widevine can be circumvented through an analog hole.

Users

Open-source projects

* Shaka Player – Google-developed open-source HTML5 web-based player available on GitHub.
* Shaka Packager – Google-developed open-source content packaging solution available on GitHub. The packager supports MPEG-DASH and HLS for VOD or linear based content.
* Shaka Streamer – Google-developed simple configuration-file-based tool for preparing streaming media content.
* Electron software framework – Widevine partnered with castLabs to integrate the Widevine client into the Electron framework for use with desktop application development. The integration, however, still requires anyone who wants to distribute/use it in their application to sign a license agreement with Google.
* Kodi – starting from version 18, the add-o
InputStream Helper
installs Widevine automatically on supported platforms for DRM playback.

Criticism

In 2019, a developer tried to bundle Widevine in an Electron/Chromium-based application for video playing and did not get any response from Google after asking for a license agreement, effectively blocking DRM usage in the project. He later got the reply:

The same happened to other Electron projects.

History

Widevine Technologies was a vendor of digital rights management software. One of its early technologies included a software system that replaced smart cards that eliminated the cost and logistical complexity of the card's distribution and introduced the abilities to process more sophisticated rights. It was purchased by Google in 2010.

References

External links

* {{Official website

Defunct software companies of the United States
Digital rights management systems
Google software
2010 mergers and acquisitions