The 4C Entity is a digital rights management (DRM) consortium formed by IBM,

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

Panasonic formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka. It was founded by Kōnosuke Matsushita in 1918 as a lightbulb ...

and

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, ...

that has established and licensed interoperable cryptographic protection mechanisms for removable media technologies. 4C Entity was founded in 1999 when

Warner Music Warner Music Group Corp. ( d.b.a. Warner Music Group, commonly abbreviated as WMG) is an American multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the " big three" recording companies and th ...

approached the companies to develop stronger DRM technologies for the then-novel

DVD-Audio DVD-Audio (commonly abbreviated as DVD-A) is a digital format for delivering high-fidelity audio content on a DVD. DVD-Audio uses most of the storage on the disc for high-quality audio and is not intended to be a video delivery format. The st ...

format after Intel’s CSS DRM technology was hacked. The group developed and currently lease the Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM) and the

Content Protection for Prerecorded Media Content Protection for Recordable Media and Pre-Recorded Media (CPRM / CPPM) is a mechanism for controlling the copying, moving, and deletion of digital media on a host device, such as a personal computer, or other player. It is a form of digit ...

(CPPM) schemes, which use Media Key Block technology and the Cryptomeria cipher along with audio watermarks. 4C Entity has also written the Content Protection System Architecture (CPSA), which describes how content protection solutions work together and the role of each current technology. CPPM and CPRM are implemented in SD Cards, DVD-Audio, Flash media, and other digital media formats. Like many DRM technologies, 4C Entity and its products have been criticized, with the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...

writing that CPRM “spark dprivacy concerns.”

References

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External links

The 4C Entity
Consortia in the United States Digital rights management