Is Provenance & C2PA the New Face of Content Security?

What is this new initiative called C2PA? It's the increasingly well supported way to manage provenance in the digital media realm - authenticating the original source to the editorial history of a piece of digital media (image, video, audio recording, document). Content provenance seem to be the critical thread that can help to maintain the media and entertainment industry in a time of eroding trust.

It may seem that deep fakes of media are a recent thing, but in reality false and misleading images and text have been problematic for hundreds of years - some might say millennia! Just consider examples of forgeries of old master paintings and biblical texts. Some of these items are so accurately reconstructed with consistent materials and techniques that experts are still confounded many years after their appearance in the marketplace.

In evaluation of historical works, a convincing documentation trail for the artifacts over the course of time - the provenance of the item, in technical terms - can often be a more effective roadmap to the truth of the matter than any level of detailed forensic evaluation.

Provenance in the digital media realm refers to the history of a piece of digital media (image, video, audio recording, document). C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) offers specifications for new media standards that can tackle the extraordinary challenge of trusting media in a context of rapidly evolving technology and the democratization of powerful creation and editing techniques. C2PA enables authors of provenance data (at original creation, or any subsequent stage of processing or editing) to securely bind assertions of such provenance to instances of content using their unique credentials.

Provenance is the key to authentication of modern digital media. With C2PA, we now have the tools and techniques to cryptographically validate the journey of a document, image or video from original source to the consumer. By offering consumers easy-to-use verification tools, C2PA helps confirm the source and credibility of media, thereby re-establishing trust in its content. Tracking of the media journey, and the mechanics of verification are the focus of the C2PA specifications.

To illustrate this, let’s use the example of the movie “Lion King.” Doing a quick Internet search, there are a number of source links to items that claim to be the full movie. But, to be sure that we are seeing the real thing, we would need to look at the provenance data to make sure the original source is identified as Disney - and that any processing steps between that source and the viewing session are only those that can be trusted. Many of these links might lack provenance data, which should be a signal to consumers about potential issues with trustworthiness. Other links may have some provenance data, but data that cannot be traced back to Disney or other trusted source. If provenance data is readily available, and easy to view in a browser or video player, there would be very little reason to waste time on the untrusted versions - enjoy the show!

A more general case might be, for example, a video on a social media platform claiming to show evidence of a crime or other controversial content. If the video includes provenance data that traces back to a trusted source, time, and place - and that any editing steps along the way are also associated with trusted organizations -  then that content may well be legitimate. Without the provenance information, it might be easy to regard the content as “fake” and discount it.

It is important to emphasize that the C2PA data in itself does not provide value judgments about whether any item of media comes from a ‘good’ source, or whether a given set of provenance data establishes that the media is free of problematic manipulation. Instead it seeks to establish that a consumer can unambiguously verify the provenance of that item of media as associated with a known underlying source, is correctly formed, and that the historical record is free from tampering.

C2PA is a Joint Development Foundation project, formed through an alliance between Adobe, Arm, Intel, Microsoft and Truepic. The project has grown in momentum over recent years to include many associated supporters and contributors. The trusted media icon – a minimalist pin containing the letters “CR” – can be etched into media, such as images and video, in a way that seamlessly fits into creator and consumer workflows. In keeping with the guiding principles of the C2PA, it is also open source so it can be easily adopted by companies or developers into any platform, product, tool or solution. EZDRM is proud to be among those supporters and is working to help apply C2PA tools and techniques to the more general challenge of content security. 

“EZDRM has shown itself to be a very effective standard bearer in the application of Content Credential tools and techniques to the challenge of secure video distribution, “ commented Leonard Rosenthol, Chair of the C2PA Technical Working Group and Senior Principal Scientist, Adobe. “As the C2PA pursues practical applications of digital provenance standards, illustrating the broader use of these techniques can be critical to establish a system of verifiable integrity on the internet.”

The EZDRM viewpoint is that trusted media - media that proudly includes C2PA provenance - will emerge as more valuable in the consumer marketplace. And that use of C2PA tools in conjunction with other security techniques that preserve and enhance revenue streams will become increasingly critical to the overall health of the media ecosystem.

Watch for more news on our practical solutions for provenance and security!