DRM for videos bundled with a desktop app?

Question

Hey everybody,

So, I have this desktop app built using WPF and C#. It's basically an offline course system that has videos, quizzes, and other assorted content. My dilemma is that I don't know how to protect the videos once they are downloaded and installed on the users machine? Are there any DRM systems out there that I can look into? I thought about storing them in a local encrypted database but I don't even know where to start with that (or if there is something else out there that I'm totally missing...)

Don't even know where to start looking on this one - any ideas?

Answer 1

I've seen Bink video used in some games. I believe it has some sort of built-in "scrambling system", but I might be wrong.

Answer 2

this question might be helpful, but don't spend too much time on it as any DRM is likely to be broken (they spent millions trying to protect blu-rays and couldn't). At best you can deter the casual user, but you won't prevent the determined hacker, so don't waste time trying.

you could do something trivial to make sure that the files as is can't be copied and played as is (like swap a few bytes round in the header of the file to make it seem as if its garbage so won't be played, then unswap them in memory when you read the file - just an example, I'm no expert)