Anyone use DRM on their sites?
 

Howdy all,

I was wondering if anyone here's using DRM on their websites to protect content?

Ok and to answer the obvious question what the hell is DRM,
basically it's a Microsoft technology to protect audio and video files from being copied or played without authorization.

The ParisHilton video uses it to restrict people from copying the file, or playing it more than 5 times.

I'm working on a DRM product for websites (www.vidlock.com) that allows them to real easily add DRM to their videos. The 2 benefits I can think of are 1) prevent stuff from being copied all over the damn place, 2) for things like 3 day trials, or monthly subscriptions, the content quits playing at the end of it.

Potentially this stops people from downloading a ton of crap during a trial, then calling up the CC company and giving you a chargeback.

So the moral of the story is, do any of you use this currently, and if not do you think small to medium websites might be able to use it, or would it really not add any value for them?

DJScrib

Hmm,
Great site demo, but why when i enter any old crap as a password and then i get a message saying
i've unlocked the file for '0 plays'
do i just have to press the play button on the media player to see it anyway...

Might be worth you checking it's working properly before
posting it here :winkwink:

Contact me on ICQ at 5956902 please :)

Who is this company? They're not listed on Microsoft's site and I thought I knew everyone in the DRM sector. Where did they come from? How long have they been around and what kind of resources do they have to sustain this business?

I don't mean to be disrespectful but, why is there no phone numbers or addresses on this site?

If they used it on the Paris Hilton sex tape then I don't think it works too well. The original was cracked in record time and anyone with half a brain can find and download the full working copy. :2 cents:

We just launched our newest site using DRM about an hour ago
OneManBanned.tv

Hi all,

Sorry for the late reply.

To answer your questions.

Acuk: Looks like I need to add some code to display an error whe you enter a bad password. If you enter the correct password the Play button becomes active and you can press that to play the content.

NotJoe: I'll contact you shortly

MountainMeister: I'm a freelance developer who designed and built a large portion of the Napster service (DRM protected audio). I've worked with Microsoft engineers on the Window Media Player 9 release as well as Windows Media Center. I also designed the DRM systems for EZDRM (www.ezdrm.com) and MediaKey (www.mediakey.com). If you're familiar with the DRM sector you're probably aware that there aren't any real easy to use DRM solutions currently, especially when it comes to packaging. Most have complex rules, or a pretty bad packaging system (I.E. using Windows Media Encoder).

As for the phone number, I'm in a pre-release mode and the product is free. We have e-mail support only at present. If you'd be interested in speaking feel free to contact me at [email protected] to set up a call.


As far as resources to sustain this business, as long as I can pay to keep my servers running the business will stay alive. (1 windows server and 1 linux server doesn't cost too much)

HighOnAcid: The DRM isn't crackable per se, however if you have a real good system with the right tools you can directly capture the audio feed from the sound card and video feed from the video card and make a copy of the content. You could also just film your screen with a video camera. I admit these are ways around DRM but for 99% of users they are not going to do this. Regardless it's a lot more secure than just giving them unencrypted content.

mattyboy: Check out vidlock.com and see how are encoder works, I'd appreciate any input from someone already using a DRM system. Additionally feel free to contact me with any questions.

Thanks All

DJScrib

thanks for the catch Acuk, I had commented out code that checked for passwords while doing some testing. Should be working now.

MattyBoy

Just looked at your website.

In your setup instructions you mention 2 screens that pop up during license acquisition.

The first is the Invididualization Screen.

The second is a warning box saying that WMP is trying to contact a certain website.

When you DRM protect your content you have to "Sign" the file with a public key. There are 2 different keys you can use, the public key, or the signed public key. If you sign it with the signed public key you won't see that second warning box.

It should be in your DRM documentation with the toolkit.

Also if you don't actually care about Individualiztion you can remove that attribute and people won't see that security upgrade screen either. Individualization fails on a certain percentage of computers (especially on Win9x systems) and sometimes is much more trouble than it's really wroth.

djscrib,

you familiar with www.cyberkeycorp.com and if so Id like to hear your thoughts.

Ah Cyberkey, the secure dongle company.

The techology for this stuff is solid but I would have to imagine they will be a niche player at best (more suited for corporate security than anything else).

If everyone with a computer owned one of their USB keys than they'd be a great company. Unfortunately that isn't the case and never will be. So for adult sites you're basically marketing to the .001% of the population that owns a donlge already, most people hearing they have to obtain one would say screw it.

For corporations it could work because a company would have to clout to issue every employee one of these dongles which can be used to secure documents.


Conceptually DRM and these Dongles are the same thing. DRM issues a piece of code that only works on a certain computer. The Cyberkey stuff issues a piece of code that only works if a certain dongle is plugged in. So one works against software, the other against hardware.

Really though I think they're scewed, Corporate IT security is the next big DRM target and Microsoft just released Windows Rights Management Services (DRM for email, photos, documents etc) in late 2003 which is the most likely system to become a major standard. Those of you interested in selling photos, or selling secure eBooks may want to keep this technology in mind as pretty much all future Microsoft products (Office, IE, etc) will support it.

DJScrib

Oh and last thing about their website, if you're a serious security company you shouldn't have 6 flashy banner ads for some other products on your front page. If your company is trying to squeeze pennies by getting 3 cents a click on ads, then it probably is either vaporware or on the verge of sinking.

nice

thanks:)

apparently they have a contract right now with the DOD for a new version of the dog tag.

but back to your question, danni.com uses drm rather effectively... If you like the videos you download, you can keep them forever by purchasing an unlimited license and at a higher resolution. Seems like a good upsell opportunity if anything.

The real way to use DRM is to let members download videos then once they cancel lock all the files on there pc and make them join again.
If they dont join pop them to sponsor/dialer/spyware hell and collect. Anyone doing this?

How much is this gonna cost?

Julian, and Herbal

The way for most subscription sites to use DRM (This is what a lot of them do) is the way it works is the user Downloads the video.

Separately they download what's called a license. the license basically says

"This file or group of files can be played X times and for X many days"

So a user signs up for a 3 day trial. As I understand it most of these people download everything on your site, and then cancel their membership or call the CC company and cuase a chargeback (I'm actually curious what you guys feel the percentages for this are).

So what a DRM site does is they issue a license that allows unlimited plays for 3 days. At the end of the 3 days, when the user tries playing the file, Windows Media Player pops up a web page (you specify what page). The web page is a login form on your website. If the user successfully logs in, a new license is issued for 30 days. At the end of 30 days the process repeats itself. That keeps users from playing content once their subscription expires.

For upsells, instead of issuing a 30 day license, if the user buys a video you could issue a license that lasts forever. For audio you can also allow it to be burned to CD or transferred to a PD (rio jukebox). Unfortunately there's no DVD burning equivalent yet but give it time. Eventually you'll be able to try the video for 24 hours for 5 bucks, and if you like it pay $50 and you can burn it on a DVD.

As for the cost of the service, I'll probably wind up doing 3 tiers (still working on details).

Free Basic service for people that don't need any tech support and only issue say 25 licenses per month. (Basically people testing the thing out).

Standard service for $20 a month that should handle 500 licenses per month (probably means you have 500 users).

And some kind of premium service for more than that for people that need over the phone tech support or have so many users that they're absolutely hammering my server.

These are preliminary numbers, any people that sign up early and provide some decent feedback I'll probably just give a year's service free or something.


The 2 interesting things in DRM ( and I think they've been mentioned before) is that a bunch of set-top devices, and even tvs/dvd player are tentatively planning on supporting DRM. That means pay-per-view internet porn on a tv screen instead of a computer. There should be some interesting news releases in the future.

The 2nd is that Windows Media Center (if you're familiar with it) actually has an interface where if you have a website you can load it into MCE. That means if you build it correctly you could have a Pay Per View Porn site controllable via a remote control. I'm a little surprised no one has done this yet, but it's a relatively new system.

DJScrib

ICQ - 199821145 (I'm on sporadically)

Interesting, is there a easy way to put this on my website though so my users don't have to remember 2 sets of passwords?

DJScrib - all my content is DRM'd now, if i were to use yourself, i take it i need to re-package all 20 gigs again yeah??

Mattyboy:

If you already have a DRM solution there's not much sense for using VidLock. Although read my response above regarding keys, you may want to update your packaging procedure.

Blumpkin:

I'll be publishing a new integration method shortly. The basics
are you need to add a small Perl, PHP, or ASP script to your site. I'll have canned examples of each. When the user gets the pop-up screen they'll be taken to that page. On that page you can either do a login, or if it's protected by the .htaccess file IE will display a login screen. But the end experience is the user simply needs to login on your website and then they can play the file.

There is no doubt DRM is going to be huge. Not only for copyright protection, but there's a nice marketing angle in there as well. :thumbsup

If you guys are at the Phonix Forum, their is a talk on DRM (I belive its at 11 AM on Friday) and some demos so if you are intersted then you should attend to learn more on how drm is being used not just for protecting content, but for marketing also.

Jay

If any of you have DRM questions in general feel free to ask. As far as the Microsoft DRM goes there aren't too many people out side of Seattle that know more than I do. Not being cocky, I've just been working on large scale DRM systems for the last 5 years and it's a pretty small niche market at the moment.

The one thing about DRM most people don't seem to realize is it already is pretty huge. Consider every windows computer out there has Microsoft's DRM already installed on it, as well as a Player application that can play the content.

The online Music services have over 1 million unique users in the US already using DRM content (that number keeps growing).

Online movie services are just starting to catch up (expect offerings from Netflix soon for instance).

So there's a good chance users out there have already used DRM content, they just may not know they have.

On I'm also starting an "Explanation of DRM" on my website (www.vidlock.com) which is a pretty long talk on what exactly DRM is, basic concepts, implementations, and etc. It's a work in progress but there's a couple pages of reading up there right now.

DJScrib

Hi,

djscrib: do you have ICQ or something similar to contact you at? or contact me: 1889711

To everyone:

I have one main concern about DRM for Membership sites. I am wondering if more and more members will just get pissed about the stuff they downloaded nolonger working which will result in credits and chargebacks.

Anyone else fearing the same thing?

Make sure you state this on site and offer a lower price after the initial join fee for recurring membership :thumbsup

Nathan,

I don't know if anyone has the numbers to really decide for sure as yet, but for a member site you can allow as much time as you want for the license. If the person is a member and receives a license to watch a video, they can have an unlimited number of plays and still not be able to trade the clip with their friends...

One nice thing about DRM is that youu can customize a lot of variables.

Hope that helps...

Ok just added my ICQ to my sig line.

As for chargebacks, the answer is I don't know.

Most of you have monthly memberships which allows users to watch all the video they want during that membership. However when users cancel they can still watch everything they downloaded.

Think of HBO as a true subscription model, once the subscription is up you can't watch anymore (yes I know, VCR's, Tivo's etc.).

So the model of content expiring at the end of a membership isn't completely alien to users.

I think some users may get pissed, on the flip side this may give them more incentive not to cancel their membership. On a site when I've downloaded every piece of content out there, unless there's lots of new fresh content what's my motivation to keep my subscription?

On the good side is this hopefully will allow you to stop the people who sign up for 3 day trials from hitting you site, downloading it all, and then doing a CC chargeback.

Enough people have troubles playing Xvids & WMV's as it is I sure wouldn't throw a DRM nightmare install over WMV to ruin there surfing experience even more. Porn is a use once move on type of thing. Maybe once DRM works smoothly without all the bullshit installs then it will be used widely and have a real good use maybe but for general sites I feel it just ruins the experience for the surfer and they'll go join a site that doesn't give them that shit

Just my :2 cents:

personally i'd never join a site that used drm exclusively for video or pic content. if i pay for software or porn i expect it to work on any of my computers at any time now or in the future.

There are two areas where DRM is beings used a lot and in a very successful way

1) VOD : In this model the user clearly knows he is getting a movie with a limited time to watch (like the Paris Hilton video) or movie downloads from major VOD sites.

2) Marketing : P2P based marketing, Super Distribution etc etc, basically generating traffic to your site.

DRM gets automatically installed if you are using Windows Media 9 (About 120 M people already have Windows Media 9). I agree that DRM is still a pain if you have older operating systems or Mac but that is changing. If you are at the Phoenix Forum, couple of us are speaking at the DRM Panel (Friday at 11 AM) so make sure you attend.

Jay
CTO, www.objectcube.com

Actually DRM is built into any windows system running Windows Media Player 6.4 (this is for Version 1 Microsoft DRM). It also works for Macintosh in this case.

Version 7 of the DRM requires Windows Media Player 7.1 or higher (WinXP, and Win2003 ship with WMP 8 by default)

Where drm is going to get more interesting is when Windows Media Player 9.1 comes out (along with the upgraded version of the DRM) this fall.

We've been tracking this closely since we launced our DRM product over two years ago and the sites that use DRM all have a generally lower charge back ratio than most.

Randall
DRM Networks

Hi!

Anyone out there being able to tell me what is neccessary to have drm used on a site for video content? Please hit me on icq at 210613837

Thx

Okay I just finished a project with DRM
it's naughtynostalgia.com you can buy PPV movies
based on credits and it's hand out a license for 24 hours..

or if you take a monthly membership it will hand out a
compleet license for all the content in the memberarea for 31 days.

This way we protect our content for not beeing copied and people who want's to see more can freq. come back to our
site and optain a new license...

not everyone's a hacker - if you can stop 50% from using it free, that's 50% MORE people that are now getting a sales pitch pushed in their face - some will buy - thus MORE sales.

and the number is more like 99%

I have a project involving using DRM for music files. What would be the best way of doing this, I have had a look at your site and a few others and there is the standard monthly fee for liscences, but many DRM solution providers are charging an arm and a leg for custom packages.
I have been on scriptlancer.com and put a project to bid on, a few have bid and the average is $750-$1000 and rising, which is shit steep IMO.
Anyway, what I need is basically as follows so if anyone has some advice, let me know please


Hello,

We will design an integrated solution with three modules:
- The first one will handle the batch media encoding (in standard wmv or wma files for different multimedia files - for example mpeg or mp3). We will write this module as an Windows service in C#.

- The second will handle content packaging and encrypting using the server private key and will add the dinamicaly the header to the media file. This header will contain user identification and the license server address.

- The third one will handle license issuing and this will actually contain the certificate details (Expiration date, expiration on store date, play count).

All of them will be integrated in an ASP application using SqlServer as the database layer.
Using this approach we can extend the functionality of the project. Setting custom attributes for the encoded media file we can implement a distributed retail system, and you will know exactly from wich vendor the users came. The license server will issue certification that will be automatically integrated by Windows Media Player (or other DRM players) into the certification store, and by setting certification attributes we will define the type of expiration (by running it only a few times, by using an expiration date, or a full certificate for users who will pay the license). Using ExpirationOnStore attribute we will when the server must be checked for a new license (in this way you can offer a monthly subscription).
Tge content packaging and license issue modules will run on the same server or of different ones, we will design a general solution for it.
We will handle the payment integration with several providers (we worked with PayPal and 2CheckOut integration, if you preffer others, please let us know).
You can take a look at our reviews to ensure we are capable of managing this project.
Please tell us if you want all the features described above, so we can place a bid.

If you can find some one to do all that for 700 - 1000$ then go for it.

Jay
CTO, www.objectcube.com

Is it really worth that much??
I had an idea that it would be, as I am requesting to have my own liscence issuing service set up.
The hard part isnt the money, its finding out what liscences I need to have to do exactly what I want, every one tells me different.
Also I was told that i shouldnt pay more than $500 for DRM solution but am slowly realising this may not be the case.
Anyway, we shall see........