Since Flash is losing ground I would like to know if there are ways to protect html5 videos with DRM (H264, .ogg and WebM).
Update
Found out that safari supports HTML5 drm hinting with .mov files. Which stops users from directly saving the files. Still leaves all other browsers.
http://www.apple.com/html5/showcase/video/
This question was actually asked recently at Google's I/O conference a couple weeks ago, after a talk called Developing with HTML5 (link is to the specific question being asked).
The answer, from Chrome engineer Arne Roomann-Kurrik, was
As far as I know I don't have an answer for your regarding that. So, sorry.
So, yeah, nobody really knows. HTML5 is a pretty nascent set of tools anyway, and I think most people are focusing on getting the <video> element to work properly across all browsers in the standard case before focusing on how to deliver DRMed content.
Sorry this answer isn't more helpful.
You could implement some kind of encryption scheme with public/private key - I recently heard about http://www.widevine.com/ who seem to be doing something like that for html5 and h.264 . But I am not aware of anyone having applied to web video in general.
No.
In theory there could be a plug-in that provides custom protocol used via <video>:
<video src="drm:…">
In practice there is none, and it would be dumb to replace Flash with another plugin that has same downsides and none of the benefits.
Consider abandoning idea of DRM, as it's more likely to backfire than protect the content.
If you really, really have to do something, you could generate video element and URL with hard-to-debug JS, serve file with specifically-crafted server that refuses to send same URL twice (will kill seeking though), and overlay <div> or transparent image on top of video to make "Save As" harder to reach,.
This is of course pointless cat-and-mouse game, and you'll be in losing position, alienating your users.
Sure you can stop someone from downloading the file simply by not giving them permission to download anything from certain folders on your server. Maybe there is something I am missing here. Seems like that would be a relatively easy solution.