Google is buying Widevine, a Seattle vendor of digital-rights management software that's widely used by broadcasters to safely transmit video content online.
The move comes as Google is pledging to do a better job protecting copyrighted material and fending off a renewed lawsuit by Viacom over copyright violations.
By acquiring Widevine, Google will instantly become a dominant player in the market for protecting video content broadcast over the Web. The company is already the largest distributor of online video by far but it currently doesn't have its own streaming-video DRM technology other than a "content ID" fingerprinting system developed for YouTube.
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