Digital Media Protection & Access Control White Paper

You know the saying - Content is King. So, how can you safely delivery content via Flash while maintaining the utmost control and protection over that content? Flash has very strong digital media protection capabilities built in when you stream your content with Flash Communication Server. This white paper describes how you can take advantage of those capabilities:

Inherent Capabilities Built into Flash

Flash has a number of digital media protection capabilities that are included simply by being delivered via the Flash Player. Delivery of content via the Flash Communication Server can be used to provide even more advanced capabilities. Below are the the protection features built into all content delivered via the Flash player.

No exposed URLs and media file locations

The location of media on the internet can often be compromised by URLs pointing back to the content source. Most media player on the market enable users to see the location of the media clip that is playing rather easily. With Flash, external media file locations are compressed into binary format in the SWF file and unavailable for website visitors, all but eliminating the ability for visitors to obtain the file and server location for media delivered via Flash Player.

Contol over information that is exposed

The traditional media players often provide more information about the media than you may be willing to share. For example, filenames, filetypes, encoding options, delivery methods, and more can easily be obtained from the major media players. Flash enables you to completely customize your media player to display only the information you want your customers to see. File information is not readily available unless the publisher chooses to make it available.

Extra Protection via Flash Communication Server

Using Flash Communication Server to deliver your content can provide even more protection to your content above and beyond that documented above. That extra protection includes:

No client cache

When you need to protect access to content, using streaming. Content - Flash Video content and mp3s - delivered to the Flash Player via a normal web server is delivered via progressive download. This content is cached on the end-users hard disk and can be easily accessed, and possibly stolen by the user. Audio, video and data streamed to Flash clients via Flash Communication Server are NOT cached on local client machines. Deliver mp3 files and other media safely and securely knowing that your website visitor will not be able to go to their Temporary Internet Files folder and obtain your media file assets.

Unique transfer protocol limits stream ripping

By default, content delivered via FCS is wrapped in Macromedia proprietary protocol (RTMP). Because this is a non-published proprietary format, stream ripping programs do not have the capability to ripp media delivered via FCS. This minimizes the ability for unauthorized programs to capture a digital media stream from FCS to the Flash Player.

SSL and Encrypted Stream Support

Support of secure socket layer (SSL) encryption gateways are supported by the Flash Communication Server and Flash Player 6 or higher to provide the tightest layer of security for delivering digital media.

Protection against Deep Linking

FCS provides you with methods to verify and authenticate users before a stream is delivered. Using this access control, publishers can prevent unauthorized sites from deep linking to their media streams. Some of the Flash Video Streaming Service providers have taken avantage of this feature to provide Secure Streaming services.

Pay-per view or User authentication

The FCS access control feature, described above to prevent deep linking, can also be used in conjunction with a backend system to offer pay per view content or authenticated use content viewing.

This site created and maintained by chris hock. Please send any submissions or comments to chock at macromedia dot com.

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