Adobe Offers DRM with Flash Media Rights Management Server

On AMP, content can also be blocked from being repurposed or mixed with other content without content owner consent. In addition, content in the entire downloaded video package, including pre-roll and post-roll advertisements, skins, and graphics are also protected for content that is to be played back in AMP, where content being played back in other AIR-based applications will only protect the core content, not the interstitials or graphics.

As for pricing, while the $40,000 price tag per CPU might cause momentary panic for those who are now used to Adobe’s Flash servers running in the range of $1,000 to $5,000, Reitman explains that the target market for this product isn’t the average Flash server user.

"We think that the streaming content from our Flash servers provides an initial level of copy protection that most content owners will find adequate," said Reitman, adding that the Rights Management Server is also available as a service. "Flash Media Server distributes media streamed via RTMP, an Adobe-patented protocol that runs over TCP. Flash Media Server 3.0 protects streamed media by encrypting it and tunneling it over HTTP. This new protocol is called RTMPE. Users view the streamed content via Flash Player.

Adobe says the Rights Management Server’s target market is content delivery networks (CDNs) and upper-end content owners. The company launches this server at a key time, as upper-end content owners comprise a market niche where a battle is brewing, given Microsoft’s push of Silverlight 2.0 and its announcements at Mix 08 of several major sporting groups adopting the Windows Media rights management ecosystem.

When questioned about the limitation of only 2 cores per CPU for the $40,000 per CPU license, which differs from CPU licensing on Flash Media Interactive Server (8 cores, or 2 quad-core processors) and Flash Media Streaming Server (4 cores, or 1 quad-core processor), Reitman defended the Rights Management Server model as consistent with other Adobe products.

"The Flash Media Rights Management Server uses a licensing model more akin to Adobe’s LiveCycle PDF workflow servers," said Reitman. "We'll continue to evaluate as the market changes, but today our policy is to treat up to 2 cores as one CPU."

Flash Media Rights Management Server is immediately available in a 32-bit version, but no information is available regarding a 64-bit server version. In addition to the required Windows Server 2003 Standard or Enterprise edition or Red Hat Linux AS or ES 4.0 server, two additional tools are required to properly implement Flash Media Rights Management Server: A BEA WebLogic 8.1 application server and an Oracle database are required for storing encryption keys and access control lists.