Which businesses need DRM? DRM service in Thudo Multimedia

Which businesses need DRM? DRM service in Thudo Multimedia

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management (rough translation: digital content copyright management) is a series of access control technologies intended to limit infringement of the owner of copyrighted digital content.

In which cases is DRM applicable?

DRM has been applied in many aspects of life, from documents, videos, music and e-books, to proprietary business information, database subscriptions and software. Their creators use DRM not only to prevent unauthorized copying but also to prevent people from changing/editing them.

Here are a few examples.

The Apple iTunes Music Store uses DRM to limit the number of devices that can play music. Music files also contain purchase and activity history data. Or Apple’s IBook is protected by Apple’s FairPlay technology, which requires the iBook reader to be read by Apple devices.

drm 2

Microsoft users must agree to the terms of use and enter the “key” distributed by the company to install Windows or Office software. Furthermore, their DRM technology called PlayReady is used to make the distribution of audio/video content over the network more secure, helping to prevent unauthorized use.

A wide range of businesses uses DRM to protect documents from partners or employees. They help documents be distributed only to certain people and limit usability. This helps prevent files from being changed, stored, copied, or printed.

Which businesses need DRM

Any company needs to protect digital copyright: the most basic is the content posted on the website, blog…

However, depending on the problem’s level, it affects your company’s business.

For example, for content companies (Netflix, Spotify…) without DRM, how many users will spend money to buy a monthly subscription?

Some of the areas that are in dire need of DRM are companies dealing in online education, entertainment (music, movies…), books… because it directly affects revenue.

DRM technology at Thudo Multimedia

SigmaDRM was born to provide digital content providers with a copyright protection solution that fully complies with the security requirements of the world’s leading content producers and film studios; as well as reduces the risk of online content piracy.
In addition to applications in the field of copyright protection in the field of television and cinema. The copyright protection solution is also identified as the foundation for the development of the electronic publishing industry (e-book), transmission security for Security Cameras (IP Camera), as well as content protection in sending. and receive electronic mail (e-mail).

SigmaDRM is the first product of Vietnam to be tested by Cartesian (Cartesian is an organization specializing in the verification of security products in the world). This is also the first digital content copyright protection solution in Southeast Asia, the 6th solution in Asia to be successfully tested, and also puts Vietnam on the list of 20 countries with DRM solutions worldwide. bridge. With the certification by Cartesian, SigmaDRM is confident to be a Vietnamese product that can compete with DRM solutions of other organizations around the world, and bring the need for copyright protection closer to content providers. both in terms of quality and cost.
Sigma DRM is currently being used to protect TV content belonging to the K+, Box, VTVcab channel groups as well as Hollywood movie content on the VTVcab ON TV application.

Product features:

  • The system will issue licenses based on each content and each individual user. Multiple users viewing the same content will be assigned different licenses.
  • The system is suitable for 2 current types of digital content, LIVE and VOD.
  • The server system is deployed on the Cloud and the system’s availability is high.
  • Support HDCP, Rotation Key.
  • Supports most of these popular platforms: Android, iOS, Web, WebOS, Tizen.
  • Simple integration with pre-built Sdk system for platforms.
  • Integrated support for today’s popular transcode systems: Wowza, ffmpeg…
  • Security for each user.
  • CMS system:
    • Simple system configuration.
    • Easy-to-use statistics.
Pros and cons of using DRM. Reasons to use DRM

Pros and cons of using DRM. Reasons to use DRM

DRM (Digital rights management) – Digital content copyright management is a series of access control technologies to limit infringement of copyrighted digital content ownership rights. In a word, DRM was born to control what users can do with digital content.

Reasons to use DRM

It is a fact that no one wants to have their intellectual property stolen, but currently, the awareness of digital copyright is not really popular and the fastest way to protect your own intellectual property is to do so. is to use DRM.

So specifically how DRM can help you protect your intellectual property:

– DRM helps protect your own valuable or confidential documents, content, videos, images, or audio files.

– Control who can access your content for a certain period of time or the device used to access it.

– Get detailed information and analytics about users’ use of your content

– Give users access to content without apps or plugins on a continuous basis

Which businesses should use DRM?

Currently, the easy access to the internet makes it easy for data to be stolen and an important thing that any company needs to pay attention to is digital copyright protection. The most basic that can be mentioned is the content that the company created and then posted on blogs, websites, …

A specific example to make it easier for you to imagine is that if content companies like Netflix do not have DRM, then no one will spend money to buy monthly subscriptions anymore, so the company will suffer revenue effects.

Finally, it can be said that businesses that should use DRM can name a few specific names such as:

– Online education business companies

– Entertainment/music company

– Film production company

– Bookmaker,…

Advantages and disadvantages of DRM

Exercising control over digital content with the DRM digital content rights management tool offers the following benefits and minor limitations:

Advantage

  • Owners of digital content can easily control how users use their data files (gray matter).
  • Users can read file content or DRM-controlled content without any separate application. The reason is that DRM can help you read content through third-party applications. (For example, you will not have to experience the situation like on Spotify, you can only listen to music on this application even if you buy the Premium version).
  • When accessing, users will not need to perform cumbersome confirmation requests. This helps to improve the user experience.
  • Since DRM-encrypted media can be used on any device, consumers will partially benefit from adopting DRM standards.
  • DRM methods will ensure the safety of data along every step from content creation, and content loading until the content is in the hands of the user.

Disadvantages

  • Some users, when they do not have full control over the digital content files they have paid for, will find it inconvenient or even annoying.
  • Although specialized file-reading applications are not limited, users still have to go through specific applications to be able to read files with DRM. Without DRM, users can use applications that allow reading the desired file format.
  • When the license provider stops working, DRM files will no longer be worth using while other normal files can be used forever.
What is DRM? Structure and Operation of DRM

What is DRM? Structure and Operation of DRM

Copyright is always an important issue that any individual or business is interested in when exchanging or purchasing. Especially when the digital revolution gives users the right to use content in their own way, the control over copyright ownership or the author’s intellectual property is gradually becoming severely distributed.

DRM is the most effective solution that can prevent these problems. Read the article below to help you better understand what DRM is as well as useful information related to this digital content rights management technology.

What is DRM?

DRM (Digital rights management) or digital content rights management is a series of technologies capable of controlling all access to copyrighted material based on encryption to limit actions with signs of copyright infringement on digital content rights. To put it more simply, DRM was born with the purpose of controlling user actions in accessing and using digital content.

  • In essence, DRM is an alternative to the inherently inefficient and passive copyright control of digital content owners and uses computer programs to exercise complete control. content set.
  • By using DRM, copyright owners can easily control how product buyers (users) use their own products.

A DRM system is considered ideal when it ensures transparency, flexibility for users, and the ability to create complex barriers to prevent unauthorized users from using copyright.

DRM was born with the purpose of controlling user actions in accessing

DRM’s Structure

DRM provides users with a standard means of describing, classifying, and sharing data. These are all reflected in the structure of the DRM as follows:

  • Data Description: This will provide a means for you to conduct a uniform description of data so that data discovery and sharing are supported.
  • Data context: Through an approach to classifying data by taxon, this department will facilitate users in data exploration.
  • Data sharing: Supports access rights (including special requests) and data exchange (including fixed and recurrent transactions between parties), data sharing is enabled by both standardization areas for data description and data context.

A DRM program will operate on three levels including:

  • Build a copyright for a piece of content.
  • Manage the distribution of copyrighted content.
  • Control all consumer behavior and activities for distributed copyrighted content.

To achieve all these three levels of control, a DRM digital content rights management program needs to identify and describe three entities including users, content, usage rights, and relationships. relationship between these three entities in the most efficient way.

DRM uses a standard means of describing, classifying, and sharing data

DRM’s Operation

DRM will basically work by encrypting the file content through a secret key. Users who need to use a file or separate applications to read that file will need to decrypt the file to be able to use it. Specifically, DRM will work according to the following process:

– Encoding (red):

  • The user will proceed to pack the file and send a request to the DRM system to receive the key.
  • Next, using ekey, the user can proceed to encrypt the file.
  • Encrypted will be shared when users have a need to use it.
  • In many cases, the Encrypted key is generated by the person who packaged the file and then the key is stored on the DRM.

– Decoding (blue):

  • Users will use specialized applications to open files and download encrypted content as soon as they need to use it.
  • After having the Encrypted key, the application will continue to request to receive from the DRM Decryption key system.
  • As soon as the authentication information is accepted by DRM, this system will send back the dKey so that the application can decrypt the file quickly and meet the user’s needs.
CDN and popular types of CDN services

CDN and popular types of CDN services

1. What is CDN Service?

CDN (Content Delivery Network) also known as a high-performance content delivery network built for high-traffic systems, set up with multiple server clusters located in data centers with different geographical locations together, have a common task of distributing content, transmitting images, CSS, Javascript, Video Clip, Media Streaming, and File Download to end users as quickly as possible.
The CDN’s working mechanism helps users quickly access the server data closest to their location instead of having to access to get the original data in a farther area, which is an effective solution to reduce the load and limit the impact on the main server system’s performance.

2. Popular CDN services in the world

CDN AWS – CloudFront

Amazon CloudFront is the world’s most popular content delivery network (CDN) that makes it easy to securely deliver Web sites, Videos, apps, and APIs with high speed and low latency. Built for developers, CloudFront makes it easy for businesses to customize their delivery to find the right balance of speed, security, and cost for their needs. All in all, the AWS CDN provides a good service. Although the basic CDN configuration can be very easy to deploy for most administrators, the more advanced CDN configuration is quite difficult to manage, requires quite a lot of time, and the features are not. too strong.

Advantages of AWS CDN:

  • Fast service team
  • Easy setup for basic plans
  • Fast-loading CDN speed
  • An easy change in CDN server location selection
  • Enables extensive server and resource settings with highly configurable packages
  • Reasonable management
  • Fast and reliable
  • CDN network is distributed in many regions around the globe

Disadvantages of AWS CDN:

  • Built primarily for IT/server admins
  • The cost of using CloudFront’s CDN is not the best choice
  • Expenses and payments are not clearly separated
  • The CDN customization and configuration interface needs to be designed to be more user-friendly for the administrator
  • Need more instructions on how to use the features

The above pros and cons are objectively summed up by us through quality assessments at Gartner and TrustRad. Thereby, we can see that users are quite satisfied with the outstanding advantages of AWS CDN.

However, besides that, AWS CDN still has some disadvantages that have not met the needs of users. In it, most of the reviews are not satisfied with the price and the management interface can cause some difficulties. Therefore, before you choose an AWS CDN, consider and consider a few other options.

Smart CDN

Akamai is a provider of CDN (Content Delivery Network) and Security services suitable for large enterprises. Akamai was established in 1998 at MIT Technology Park – USA, currently transmitting 30% of worldwide data traffic with network systems in most regions of the world.

Advantages of CDN Akamai

  • Powerful CDN technology can handle the needs of transmitting a variety of content (images, videos, live streaming…)
  • Very good customer service
  • Akamai is strong in the content delivery process with its method of mirroring the CSS and HTML elements of the Web page
  • Akamai’s CDN platform provides a network of cloud-connected servers in over 100 countries

Disadvantages of CDN Akamai

  • Higher cost compared to other CDN providers in the region
  • The CDN management interface is quite complicated
  • No intuitive user interface for configuration and setup instructions yet
  • Quite expensive for small businesses and organizations
  • Takes a long time to activate CDN (due to testing with many scenarios)

The above advantages and disadvantages of CDN Akamai are compiled by us through quality assessments at Gartner and TrustRadius. Similar to AWS CDN, Akamai CDN also has distinct advantages. However, the downside is still the high cost and the not-so-intuitive management interface.

CDN Cloudflare

Cloudflare offers CDN with more functionality than other CDN services. Cloudflare’s CDN helps fight DDoS attacks and stores static content on your website, making it faster to load and effectively reducing the load on your web server.

Advantages of Cloudflare CDN

  • Cloudflare’s free early-stage CDN and SSL are great perks for new sites
  • Cloudflare’s cost structure is suitable for many applications
  • Help your Website speed up quite effectively
  • Static data such as images, CSS, files, etc. are also gzip compressed by Cloudflare, so the download speed is faster.

Disadvantages of Cloudflare CDN

  • The way it works is not very user-friendly
  • The user interface is quite complicated
  • Instructions for using functions are still difficult to understand
  • If your Website is located on hosting with a server located in Vietnam, and the visitors are mainly from Vietnam, the use of Cloudflare slows down the page load speed because of the quality of the international and Vietnamese transmission lines. The reason is that this time the query will go around from Vietnam to CloudFlare DNS Server and then return the results to Vietnam.
  • Website uptime time depends on Cloudflare Server uptime.

The advantages and disadvantages of CDN Cloudflare are compiled by us through quality assessments at Gartner and TrustRadius. Cloudflare would be a good fit if you need an affordable CDN solution for a new website. But it may not be appropriate when your website is actually under targeted attack. At this time, to protect the safety of the website, the business may have to pay a large cost.

What is SSAI and how does it work?

What is SSAI and how does it work?

What is Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI)?

SSAI (Server-side ad insertion) is a combination of manifest manipulation, ad server communication, and ad bitrate and resolution normalization, all of which happen on the server side before presenting a manifest to clients. Server-side ad insertion may also be referred to as dynamic ad insertion, or ad stitching.

By whatever name it is known, server-side ad insertion is difficult to get right for numerous reasons:

  • Server-side ad insertion requires a highly scalable origination service
  • Personalized manifests are not cacheable
  • Reporting and custom player behavior require clients to know an ad has been played
  • Different ad standards (VAST, MAP), ad servers, origin servers, and player environments complicate server-side ad insertion workflows

To cope with fluctuations in demand for just-in-time server-side ad insertion, a highly scalable architecture is required – particularly for broadcasters that must deal with the sharp peaks in demand that breaking news, sports events, and popular TV series bring. Cloud-based video processing with a server-side ad insertion integration is one-way broadcasters can scale to meet audience demand.

When events are underway, the number of concurrent viewers can vary greatly and unpredictably. For example, viewership for a closely played game may remain steady for much of the contest, then surge by hundreds of thousands of new viewers during the last few minutes.

The key to managing viewer variances is in encoding and packaging that can be virtualized for rapid deployment and hosted in a cloud infrastructure for quick auto-scaling.

Because dedicated single-path hardware encoders and packagers lack flexibility, the practical solution is to spin up instances of cloud-based video processing as they are needed. The cloud is uniquely well-suited to creating millions of individually tailored manifests of content and advertising for live-streamed events.

Technology Behind SSAI

Dynamic ad insertion technology is a combination of several elements:

  • Manifest manipulator — responsible for creating a streaming playlist, which is a continuous combination of content and advertisements
  • Content delivery network (CDN) — a system of server nodes that automatically determines the optimal source to stream ads to the viewer
  • Ad decision server (ADS) —  it chooses what ads to stitch into the video content based on the user’s location and other factors.

How Does Server-Side Dynamic Ad Insertion Work?

So, you decide to watch a movie, a TV show, or a news broadcast. Here’s what happens after you click “play”:

  • The video player sends a request to the SSAI vendor with user-specified data (geolocation, internet service provider, search engine queries, current trends, and other info).
  • The ad decision server creates a manifest that instructs the player. The manifest includes the advertisements for streaming, their duration, and beacons (markers that activate ads).
  • The content delivery network (CDN) sends the content with a specific manifest to the video player. The ads are sent to the CDN in multiple quality versions to adapt to the viewer’s internet connection.
  • The player automatically sends requests to the ADS when playback hits beacons, and the CDN server forwards the ads into the stream.
  • ADS creates reports about user behavior. It can include what part of the ad was seen and if the viewer interacted with it.

Server-Side Ad Insertion in Streaming Video

For broadcasters and video content providers, an inherent tension exists between the need to deliver a premium viewing experience – complete with start-over and time-shifted TV functionality – and to monetize streaming video offerings and services. The challenge of monetizing over-the-top (OTT) video content will only continue to grow as viewership on connected devices increases.

To optimize streaming video revenue opportunities, advertisers are increasingly seeking ways to match the interests of individual consumers with ads and deliver them in a non-disruptive way.

Ad personalization reduces the consumer desire to employ ad blockers and creates a mutually beneficial streaming experience for video providers and audiences. Beyond the relevance of topical interests, ad personalization can also connect with individual viewers in ways that are emotionally relevant to them, sparking changes in thinking as well as in purchasing.

While the opportunities to capitalize on ad personalization and ad insertion grow, the question for broadcasters, pay TV operators, content programmers, and all video providers is, what is the best way to meet the needs of the video business and the viewing audience?

The solution needs to balance monetization requirements with the ability to provide a high-quality viewing experience for subscribers – a balance that server-side ad insertion can consistently maintain.