Setting up your own DRM server.
First you need a MSFT server running XP, Win2k, or Win2k3.
Then you need to get the SDK from microsoft through their application process. The process is free however to get approved you need to be able to digitally sign a piece of code requiring you to have a verisign/globalsign code signing certificate which runs around $300.
As for how many licenses can a single DRM server issue in a day? the answer is a shitload. A bare bones 512 mb 2.4 GHZ p4 server can do a million per day without breaking a sweat. Each license issued takes about 5 kb in upstream bandwidth, and 10kb in downstream bandwidth to deliver.
So the cost in a DRM solution is generally eaten up by development costs.
Why use DRM?
Well for member sites unless you have some really high value content it's use is debatable. You lose a percentage of your customers who don't have a DRM capable system (mac users, people with Win9x boxes with a corrupt DRM). You do get the benefit of preventing users from downloading your entire site during a $2.99 trial and then canceling.
For marketing purposes DRM has a lot of potential in the P2P space for viral marketing. Anyone on Kazaa has undoubtedly tried downloading a .wmv clip and wound up being directed to some web page.
Anyhow, hope this helps.
FYI, anyone that's interested in trying out P2P "spam" marketing drop me an email at
[email protected]. I'm looking at assembling some deals to provide advertisers a free DRM solution in exchange for roughly 10% of your traffic. I provide a DRM encoding application you download and use to encode your files and you're off to the races. (No need to upload all the files to a server and then download them again)
DJScrib