IBM's Digital Shrinkwrapper

Hunting elusive Internet commerce with the wild Cryptolope.

Pete Loshin

As with other cool things you can do over the Internet, executing commercial transactions on-line sometimes means installing an applet, plug-in, or control. IBM's Cryptolope commerce technology for Internet content sellers is no exception. Cryptolope containers work with two kinds of clients: the Opener for the consumer and the Packer for the merchant; IBM controls the transaction service technology.

Cryptolope technologies won't be released as products until later this year. Combining encryption and digital signatures to package a digital product so it can be transmitted and copied freely, the Cryptolope can be viewed or used only after a payment is made. The idea is to prevent pirates from instantly and exactly copying digital products--news stories, books, music, pictures, or video--yet not mean a hassle for paying customers.

The Opener browser plug-in, which has been available from IBM's Web site since last year, is the only way to open Cryptolope containers. According to the download page, Opener works with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator on Windows platforms; IBM has plans for a Java version. Content sellers use the Packer application to load Cryptolope content: data, preview, description, and licensing information. IBM claimed as many as 70 Cryptolope merchants as of this April, but the Packer isn't yet publicly available. The server technology, called Rights Management and Payment, handles Cryptolope payment transactions; IBM might at some point license it to third parties.

I got a chance to play with what I was told would be the public beta version of Cryptolope Packer; frankly, it was disappointing. Though it does pack encrypted, compressed, and digitally signed files into a Cryptolope container, that's it. There's no facility for opening or even previewing files. You can drag and drop a file into any part of the Cryptolope (encrypted or unencrypted contents, abstract, or terms and conditions), and you can save a template of your Cryptolope, but you can't edit an existing Cryptolope, nor can you directly edit an existing container: You must create a template for a container and modify it--you can't even resize the Packer window.

IBM has high hopes that Cryptolope containers will enable individual Internet content sellers, but success or failure depends on consumer acceptance of Opener, yet another plug-in--and on merchant acceptance of Packer in whatever form and at whatever price it eventually comes to market.

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Where to Find

Cryptolope Opener.........................Free


Packer....................................Price to be determined

(Runs under either Navigator or Internet 
 Explorer in Win 3.1/95; Navigator only 
 in OS/2)
IBM Internet Division
Falls Church, VA
Phone:    703-205-6000
Internet: 
http://www.cryptolope.ibm.com


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Ratings

Technology	*	*	*
Implementation	*	*
Key: ***** O utstanding, **** Very Good, *** Good, ** Fair, * Poor

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How Cryptolope Works

illustration_link (25 Kbytes)

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Put Your Profits in the Safe

screen_link (27 Kbytes)

Cryptolope Packer is a no-nonsense utility for stuffing for-pay data into Internet-safe containers.

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Pete Loshin ( ploshin@mgh.com )is a BYTE technical editor and author of Extranet Design and Implementation (Sybex, 1997).