We are about to launch an educational video subscription site. All videos are in the FLV Flash Video format and we have purchased aMember to manage the subscription membership where customers can subscribe on a monthly or annual basis. We are looking for a DRM solution that will prevent: 1: Subscribers giving Login/Password details to friends to use - so video's can only be viewed from the subscribers own PC. 2: Minimise copying of the video's. 3: Hijacking the video links from the sourcecode on the page so they can continue to use them after their subscription has terminated. I would really appreciate any advice any advice or recommendations in regards to potential solutions to provide us with this DRM security issue. We have looked at a couple of potential solutions provided by the streaming providers, but most are ridiculously expensive or are hosted solutions. It is my understanding that aMember is not intended to address this need? Thanks in advance for any assistance offered.
aMember can provide this functionality today with its protected folders and account sharing prevention capabilities. Short of applying DRM to your content (which EVERY major DRM has been cracked or circumvented at this point), you can provide the content via streaming service which will at least make it more difficult to copy the content. Storing it on a streaming server will certainly make it more difficult, but if they can view the video on their PC there are tools/techniques that will let them copy it. We store our content on cache servers and embed the videos in the page with a flash player that relies on a playlist that is not viewable via source code. The cache server (http://pantherexpress.com) checks to ensure the user has active permission to the video (using standard aMember) as well as ensuring the referrer is our domain. This can certainly be circumvented given the right motivation, but it is the equivalency of locking the doors on your house or car. While it keeps the honest people honest, if someone wants in they will find a way. The majority of the major retailers (iTunes, Amazon, Microsoft, etc) have moved away from DRM after seeing their attempts circumvented. Existing folks such as NetFlix, have already seen their DRM stripped as well (http://www.macworld.com/article/59410/2007/08/netflix.html)..
skippybosco, Once again many thanks for your comments and feedback. Really appreciated. Hope you are keeping well. If anyone else is using any other DRM solutions or have any comments about securing video online it would be welcomed. Thanks Nick
Hey Nick, If I remember correctly from the last time we chatted, your content was in swf files? If so, and you insist on DRM -p) then I would suggest checking out Flash Media Server: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/digital_media_protection.html