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How do you do any sort of security on this? I doubt any copyright holder is going to be happy when anyone with a list of hashes can download their movie. Using most types of encryption is out, so there goes most DRM solutions. Using IP or host based access lists defeats the purpose of the caching system, so that's out as well.

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The content producers could encrypt their data so the hashes would only give access to encrypted blocks. They would still have the issue of distributing keys securely.

Check out CCNx (Content Centric Networking) project from PARC/Xerox leaded by Van Jacobson - the security seems to be baked in the design. Here is an intro: http://www.slideshare.net/PARCInc/contentbased-security

Why implement something complex, when something simple will do? This cache should be (in my mind), DRM-agnostic. Just put your DRM around your hash lists, just as you would around your original content. DRM can be a layer above the caching layer.

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