The success of OTT platforms, like Netflix and Amazon Prime, has materialized because the premium video content industry is complemented by the digital rights management and forensic watermarking technologies. The former lets OTT players manage user securely, while the latter inserts imperceptible data in video frames so that the source of leakage can be tracked if pirates are able to break through the DRM system.
An important aspect of the DRM technology is that the device fragmentation among leading players makes it necessary for each piece of video content to be encrypted using DRM systems endorsed by major corporates. This has led to the rise of multi-DRM SaaS vendors, which let a piece of video content communicate with licensing servers owned by different corporations. The multi-DRM vendor offers both DRM and video watermarking services.
OTT platforms stream content to user devices in an always-on model. Whenever the client device issues a playback request of the DRM protected content, the OTT website first authenticates the user credentials. After that, the client devices requests a DRM license for the particular piece of video conent queries. Depending on the nature of the device – it could be an Android or Apple device or a popular browser – the multi-DRM vendor authenticates the license from the Google Widevine, Windows PlayReady, or Apple FairPlay licensing server. Since the multi-DRM vendor is the end at which the video file is encrypted, it becomes a kind of nodal space to coordinate both encryption and decryption processes in the distribution chain.
Again, at the level of encoding when a video is queried, the multi-DRM vendor inserts imperceptible data in each video frame which carries information about user ID, session ID, time of query, device ID, etc.. This is called a forensic watermark. A robust watermark travels throughout the distribution chain of the OTT cycle and in each device. In the event of piracy, the watermark stays in the pirated video. Whenever the content owner detects an illegal video, it can extract this watermark to identify the source at which the leakage took place.
Both the DRM license and the forensic watermark are restrictive in many ways, which let OTT players get the maximum return on their acquisitions. Even when securing the streaming video appears to be a complex process, the multi-DRM technology handles it in a single, integrated workflow. Also, because it is offered as a SaaS, content owners can use it on the fly from anywhere in the world.
