Adobe Pushes DRM for Flash

[abdulhakeem]

Sun 24th Feb 2008

"The immense popularity of sites like YouTube has unexpectedly turned Flash Video into one of the de facto standards for Internet video. The proliferation of sites using FLV has been a boon for remix culture, as creators made their own versions of posted videos. And thus far there has been no widespread DRM standard for Flash or Flash Video formats; indeed, most sites that use these formats simply serve standalone, unencrypted files via ordinary web servers. Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash Video, is trying to change that with the introduction of DRM restrictions (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/02/adobe-pushes-drm-flash) in version 9 of its Flash Player and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software."

http://www.osnews.com/thread?302215

[abdulhakeem]

Flash DRM could put Dramatic Prairie Dog on endangered list

By Ryan Paul (http://arstechnica.com/authors.ars/segphault)
February 24, 2008

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has expressed concerns that Adobe's efforts to develop a DRM system for Flash video content will be bad news for users looking to remix and repurpose digital media content. Adobe's DRM will principally be used in its new streaming desktop media player application, but will also be supported in the Flash browser plug-in.

The primary function of DRM is, theoretically, to block copyright infringement. But DRM also restricts many noninfringing activities that have traditionally been protected under the banner of fair use. The draconian Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) broadly prohibits circumvention of copy-protection mechanisms, and thus criminalizes the exercise of fair use rights on DRM-encumbered content. The failure of the DMCA to provide adequate exceptions and safeguards for fair use, critics say, undermines the underlying principle of the copyright system, which is to promote creativity by establishing a fair balance between the rights of content producers and content consumers. All too often, lawmakers focus on protecting the content industry and forget that the permissive elements of copyright law—like fair use and the public domain—are just as essential to fulfilling the purpose of the system.

The EFF notes that an increasing number of Internet users are downloading and modifying short video clips to create expressive "remixes" that have independent value. These remixes often fall well within the bounds of fair use, because they do not contain substantive portions or decrease the profitability of the original works from which they are derived. The EFF contends that broad adoption of DRM on Flash video would criminalize production of such remixes despite the fact that they are not in themselves infringing. In addition to stifling creativity and freedom of expression, the EFF argues that DRM in this context also deprives society of a valuable learning tool.

"[T]he prospect of widespread adoption of DRM restrictions on Flash threatens to squash a growing tradition of expressive fair use of online video—a practice effectively in its infancy that, left unfettered, would be a dynamic solution to our failing effort to teach media literacy," the EFF's Seth Schoen wrote in a statement. "Before we understand how to read media messages, we must first learn how to speak their language—and we learn that language by playing with and remixing the efforts of others. DRM, by restricting the remixing of Flash videos, stands to bankrupt a rich store of educational value by foreclosing the ability of students and teachers to 'echo others' by remixing videos posted online."

Prairie dog says: "Don't tase me bro!"

Schoen cites the Dramatic Prairie Dog as an example of an instance in which the ability to freely manipulate video content led to the emergence of an influential Internet cultural meme that exploded into the mainstream. The EFF links to a number of Dramatic Prarie Dog video remixes posted on YouTube, one of which (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Uaw2CdjU3c) has been viewed literally millions of times. These remixes often parody other elements of popular culture by incorporating elements of movies. Creating these short remixes is fully permissible now, but might not be for very long if DRM continues to become more pervasive—a calamity that would certainly justify Dramatic Prairie Dog's poignant expression of existential horror.

DRM technologies generally have a poor track record when it comes to protecting multimedia content. Virtually every new and advanced copy-protection system that has ever been touted as unbreakable has been circumvented (even Blu-ray's BD+ (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071120-broken-drm-scheme-45-million-trampling-fair-use-priceless.html)), which has led many to wonder why these technologies are so widely used. The reason is simple: DRM can be used to lock out competitors and force law-abiding customers to fork over cash for every conceivable usage of encumbered content, including activities that were once protected as fair use.

The EFF also notes that DRM will likely lock out alternate implementations of the Flash player, such as the the one created by the open-source Gnash project (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/). Alternate implementations are important because they diminish the risks of vendor lock-in and bring access to relevant technologies to unsupported platforms. For instance, the Gnash player can make Flash content accessible to users of alternative operating systems for which Adobe does not supply a version of its own proprietary Flash player.

Although the EFF specifically targets Adobe with its criticism, it is important to remember that there are other companies already developing their own DRM technologies for Flash and Microsoft's competing Silverlight framework has DRM support as well. Adobe likely sees adoption of DRM as a competitive necessity and potential source of additional revenue (the EFF notes that the ability to add DRM to content will only be available in Adobe's high-end Flash video streaming products). It seems like media software makers are intent on serving the content industry's desire to prevent the next Dramatic Prairie Dog from popping out of its hole.

Further reading


EFF: Adobe Pushes DRM for Flash (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/02/adobe-pushes-drm-flash)
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080224-flash-drm-could-put-dramatic-prairie-dog-on-endangered-list.html

[abdulhakeem]

Adobe Offers DRM for Flash Video with Flash Media Rights Management Server

by Tim Siglin (http://www.streamingmedia.com/bio.asp?id=33981)
March 19, 2008

Adobe today announced the availability of its Flash Media Rights Management Server, a product that runs on Windows Server 2003 and Red Hat Linux and offers content protection and business rules for playback and repurposing of offline content.

The Rights Management Server is designed to sit alongside the Flash Media Streaming Server or Flash Media Interactive Server and protect streaming content. The company is positioning Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server as a way to “protect and controls media content downloaded in FLV (Spark or VP6 codec) or MPEG4 (H.264 codec) format and played back on local desktop.

Industry interest seems to be positive.

“Safeguarding digital media assets from unauthorized usage is a key component of our online strategy,” said Richard Berger, SVP of new media & technology for Sony Pictures Entertainment in a press release. “We are pleased to see Adobe launch the Flash Media Rights Management Server and look forward to exploring its ability to enable new and secure distribution models with our partners.”

Perhaps the most interesting facet of the Rights Management Server is its protection of offline content on Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) applications on Windows and Macintosh client machines, including the soon-to-be-released Adobe Media Player (AMP).

“Content owners can use Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server to encrypt FLV and F4V audio and video files that are downloaded and played locally,” Adobe said in today’s press release, noting that business rules can be used to sets policies for this offline content’s access.

When asked about this feature during a pre-briefing in February, Adobe representatives said that content could be set to require confirmation of playback each time—meaning that a device would require an internet connection each time “offline” content was accessed—or could be set to require a connection every so many days, weeks, or months.

“We don’t want to limit what the market is able to do with our rights management tools,” said Laurel Reitman, senior product manager for Flash Media Server Services.

On AMP, content can also be blocked from being repurposed or mixed with other content without content owner consent. In addition, content in the entire downloaded video package, including pre-roll and post-roll advertisements, skins, and graphics are also protected for content that is to be played back in AMP, where content being played back in other AIR-based applications will only protect the core content, not the interstitials or graphics.

As for pricing, while the $40,000 price tag per CPU might cause momentary panic for those who are now used to Adobe’s Flash servers running in the range of $1,000 to $5,000, Reitman explains that the target market for this product isn’t the average Flash server user.

“We think that the streaming content from our Flash servers provides an initial level of copy protection that most content owners will find adequate,” said Reitman, adding that the Rights Management Server is also available as a service. “Flash Media Server distributes media streamed via RTMP, an Adobe-patented protocol that runs over TCP. Flash Media Server 3.0 protects streamed media by encrypting it and tunneling it over HTTP. This new protocol is called RTMPE. Users view the streamed content via Flash Player.

Adobe says the Rights Management Server’s target market is content delivery networks (CDNs) and upper-end content owners. The company launches this server at a key time, as upper-end content owners comprise a market niche where a battle is brewing, given Microsoft’s push of Silverlight 2.0 and its announcements at Mix 08 of several major sporting groups adopting the Windows Media rights management ecosystem.

When questioned about the limitation of only 2 cores per CPU for the $40,000 per CPU license, which differs from CPU licensing on Flash Media Interactive Server (8 cores, or 2 quad-core processors) and Flash Media Streaming Server (4 cores, or 1 quad-core processor), Reitman defended the Rights Management Server model as consistent with other Adobe products.

“The Flash Media Rights Management Server uses a licensing model more akin to Adobe’s LiveCycle PDF workflow servers,” said Reitman. “We'll continue to evaluate as the market changes, but today our policy is to treat up to 2 cores as one CPU."

Flash Media Rights Management Server is immediately available in a 32-bit version, but no information is available regarding a 64-bit server version. In addition to the required Windows Server 2003 Standard or Enterprise edition or Red Hat Linux AS or ES 4.0 server, two additional tools are required to properly implement Flash Media Rights Management Server: A BEA WebLogic 8.1 application server and an Oracle database are required for storing encryption keys and access control lists.

http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=9970