Software doesn't get any more "in the wild" than it does in media and entertainment. Plug-ins run on musicians' laptops, video players run on set-top boxes, and high-value creative tools run wherever a customer decides to install them. None of it runs behind a data center firewall, and all of it is a target.
This September, PACE Anti-Piracy will be at IBC2026 in Amsterdam (11–14 September, RAI Amsterdam) to talk about exactly that problem — and to show the newest additions to our application protection lineup, Fusion, Fusion Express, and Fusion AI, alongside the licensing platform they're built to work with, iLok Licensing.
Fusion has always been about one thing: making tampering, reverse engineering, and unauthorized modification tedious and time-consuming for attackers. This year we're bringing a rebuilt platform to IBC, along with a faster on-ramp for teams who don't need the deepest level of integration on day one.
Fusion is our full application protection platform. It injects thousands of interwoven check-code instances into a binary at build time, fusing our protection DNA with your code so that every protected build is uniquely hardened. It can run standalone or alongside iLok Licensing for end-to-end protection of your software IP.
iLok Licensing is the platform Fusion is built to work alongside. It's the licensing backbone trusted by more than 600 software publishers, managing how customers access your software through flexible licensing models — perpetual, subscription, trial, and more — plus activation options spanning iLok USB, iLok Cloud, or a customer's own machine. On its own, iLok Licensing controls who can use your software. Paired with Fusion, those licensing checks are hardened inside the application itself, making them far more resistant to bypass and cracking while keeping the activation experience seamless for legitimate customers.
Fusion Express is the fast-track version of that same platform, purpose-built for teams already using iLok Licensing. It hardens the licensing calls inside an application without requiring the deeper source-level integration that full Fusion involves — a straightforward upgrade path for publishers who've outgrown simple compliance-style licensing but don't yet need the full protection stack.
Fusion AI takes the same protection philosophy to models deployed at the edge. It brings together White-Box Works, Fusion, and iLok Licensing into a single toolkit that encrypts model weights, binds model code and runtime into one hardened package, and controls how that model is licensed and monetized — all while keeping your keys and builds in-house.
IBC is where the pro audio, video, and broadcast worlds meet, which makes it the right room to talk about the markets PACE knows well.
Pro Audio — PACE built and runs the iLok Licensing platform trusted by more than 600 audio plug-in and application publishers. At IBC, we'll be showing how Fusion and Fusion Express extend that same trust relationship into stronger code protection, without asking developers to rip out the licensing infrastructure they already depend on.
Broadcast and Media Production Software — Modern film, TV, and video production runs on software: nonlinear editors, VFX and compositing tools, color grading suites, plug-ins, transcode and camera-to-cloud pipelines, dailies and review platforms, and the render engines and AI-assisted features increasingly built into them. As that tooling has moved from proprietary hardware onto ordinary desktops, laptops, and cloud render farms, it has become exposed to the same cracking, key-generator distribution, and reverse engineering that threatens any commercial application — with independent research putting annual losses to the U.S. film and TV industry alone at roughly $29 billion. Beyond the software, unreleased footage, dailies, and cuts moving through review and delivery tools are high-value targets in their own right, which is why PACE also ties content to its executable player so a compromised review or delivery app can't leak a customer's unreleased work.
We'll be at IBC to talk through how publishers of editing, VFX, color, and sound-for-picture tools can secure both the application and the algorithms inside it — color science, motion tracking, noise reduction, and the AI-assisted features now shipping alongside them.
High Value Software — Wherever software carries real IP value — CAD/CAM, EDA, and the broader category of tools where a stolen copy represents a direct loss of revenue — licensing alone isn't enough. We'll be discussing how our protection stack goes beyond license enforcement to defend the software itself.
Algorithm protection — Any algorithm that ships on a desktop, mobile device, or embedded system is exposed to reverse engineering. Fusion protects that code from static analysis and dynamic instrumentation, while White-Box Works adds targeted protection to individual algorithms — keeping the technological moat you've spent years building intact.
White-box cryptography for CAS/DRM — Video content delivery lives or dies on key management. A hacker who can extract a decryption key from a player running on a mobile device or set-top box has effectively broken the DRM, regardless of how strong the encryption itself is. White-Box Works delivers the cryptographic key protection that CAS and DRM implementations need, keeping keys and proprietary algorithms under the developer's control rather than locked inside a vendor's black box.
Four decades of protecting software IP have taught us that the threats facing media and entertainment software — plug-ins, players, tools, and now AI models — don't stand still, and neither do we. If you're attending IBC2026 and want to see Fusion, Fusion Express, or Fusion AI in action, or talk through how to protect an algorithm, a plug-in, or a DRM implementation, get in touch to set up a meeting at the show.
We'll see you in Amsterdam.
