My goal with this video is to give an overview of what DRM is, how it works, and illustrate the history behind it so that you can understand why it is still around today.

DRM is an systematic approach to copyright protection for digital goods. Its purpose is to prevent unauthorized redistribution of products and restrict the ways consumers can copy content they’ve acquired.

Digital Rights Management is nothing new in the software industry. In fact, you may have even been using it in the 80s when you  were booting up some of those DOS games.

Any time you watch media on services such as Netflix, Hulu or Amazon, you are also utilizing DRM, although this is handled in a very different way. These services often utilize DRM schemes such as AES or PlayReady.

Media DRM

AES is short for Advanced Encryption Standard and is not limited to video content, as it also works for telecommunications, finance, and government communications. This works fine with the various streaming protocols, such as HLS, Smooth Streaming, and MPEG-DASH. Here is a technical overview of the standard from Purdue.

Microsoft PlayReady is an extensive, studio approved encryption technology that protects your content from piracy, and it is supported on a wide range of  the most popular devices today. Now, you can use PlayReady to protect both Video-on-demand and live streams.

 

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@DaveVoyles

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