FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, January 22, 2001

U.S. Department of Commerce Approves Widevine Cypher™ for Export; Widevine Technologies Expands Global Marketing Efforts

"Green Light" for Export of Powerful New Encryption on the Fly™ Streaming Media Security Technology Allows Widevine Technologies To Build on Already-Successful International Business Development Efforts

Seattle, WA, January 22, 2001 – The U.S. Department of Commerce has approved Widevine Cypher for world-wide export, Widevine Technologies announced today. Widevine Cypher, the company's first product launched last year, provides Encryption on the Fly™ for streaming media.

"Demand for encrypted streaming media is growing at an incredible rate, particularly in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia," said John Beyer, CEO. "Given our already-successful business development initiatives in Europe and Japan, we are pleased that the U.S. Department of Commerce and the other agencies involved in the export approval process have moved quickly to approve Widevine Cypher. As we continue our product launch in Europe and on other continents, this approval is an important milestone."

Widevine Cypher, based on algorithms previously examined by the Department of Commerce, is a powerful new encryption technology requiring export approval. The license exception ENC under Sections 740.17 (A) and (B) (2) of the Bureau of Export Administration approves the product to be sold in the EU+8, which includes Austria, Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Like all companies exporting strong encryption, Widevine Technologies is prohibited from exporting the product to countries, companies and individuals not covered by the exception.

Key features of Widevine Cypher:

• Compatibility with all major streaming technologies, including Real, Windows Media, QuickTime and others.
• Support for industry standards, including TCP/IP, UDP, HTTP and RTP/RTSP, virtually guaranteeing compatibility with future streaming technologies.
• Seamless deployment and integration, with minimal changes to the server cluster and a small but scalable footprint‹no extra hardware or software needed on the server.
• Automatic "thin client" installation on Windows provides total end-user transparency and invisible upgrades (other platforms may require one-time manual installation).
• End-users see only their familiar media player application or browser plug-in.
• Secure return channel for quality-of-service monitoring, micro-billing, and other application-specific uses beyond media control.

Demand for Encrypted Streaming Media™
"Around the world, a wide variety of companies from all sectors of the economy are using streaming media, from financial institutions to health care companies, from drug development companies to the entertainment industry, from on-line education companies to the aerospace industry. It is the most important new communications technology and knowledge distribution tool available today," said Brian Baker, President. "Of course, confidential and proprietary information streamed over the Internet must be secured, and that's where Widevine Cypher comes in."

Growth in the Use of Streaming Media
"... We believe that total hours of streaming will increase from 30.4 million in 1999 to 219.0 million in 2000. ... We believe the number of streaming hours will reach almost 3.9 billion by 2005."

"We believe that content owners have an overwhelming supply of content that is currently underutilized. Streaming media would enable these content owners to re-purpose this content into a form that could be streamed over the Internet in order to generate incremental revenue from that content ... As a result, we believe that there is significant support and demand from content owners to develop high-quality, full-screen streaming media ...

"We believe that there are significant growth drivers to support the development of streaming media as a viable content distribution channel. There has been an increase in interest and demand for streaming media within the last three to four months as the technology has gained more visibility and has experienced rapid improvement in quality and performance."

About Widevine Technologies, Inc.
Widevine Technologies, a communications security and network technologies company, is an emerging leader in the development of Internet infrastructure and communication technologies. The company's products are platform- and format-independent and provide value-added services and technologies for Internet streaming media and copyright protection. Founded in 1999, Widevine Technologies is based in Seattle, Washington. The core of the company is a world-class team of streaming media and encryption technology developers. For more information about Widevine Technologies, please visit www.widevine.com.

Media Contact:
Eric Moser
Ruder Finn Chicago (for Widevine Technologies)
Tel: +1 312 329 3908
mosere@ruderfinn.com

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