Digital rights management (DRM) is a method of preventing the leakage of copyrighted digital content and proprietary softwares. DRM often involves the usage of codes which are meant to either prohibit copying or to limit the number of devices which can access a certain product.
Microsoft PlayReady, Apple FairPlay, Google Widevine, Adobe PrimeTime, Verimatrix ViewRight, Marlin, etc. are some of the leading players in providing DRM services. However, these services are specific to certain browsers, operating systems and casting devices they can work in. For example, PlayReady would only work in IE and Microsoft Edge, whereas FairPlay doesn’t work on any browser except for Safari. This inconsistency across different players in the content protection space makes it difficult for creators to securely deliver content to all their clients. One way to overcome this is to integrate multiple DRMs on a service. This can be achieved by using the service console to apply sophisticated logic gates which switch between different DRM protocols based on what the client has called for.
Traditionally, single DRM solutions were used to protect audio and video content on web-browsers. These solutions relied on separate browser plug-ins such as ‘Flash’, or third party apps for users to download before the protected content could be accessed. Modern DRM solutions used today do not rely on these measures and are available as cloud based solutions which can easily be integrated with the existing systems that businesses use. A multi DRM solution typically offers license management features for various DRMs such as Widevine, FairPlay, PlayReady, etc. in order to support all browsers and major operating systems.
Multi-DRM (DRM as a Service) providers assist with the coding and have an automated workflow right from the input file to the user-device. The MPEG-CENC (Common Encryption) allows the same content to associate with different DRMs, i.e., the video can be encoded and encrypted using the same key. The packaging step adds the metadata for the different DRMs and the license acquisition and mapping details are left to the individual DRM system. These services have significantly reduced the encryption costs, asset management costs and client licensing costs.
