What are the best methods for protecting duplication and limiting viewing time of a distributed video?

Question

I am looking to release a video on memory stick (more likely) or DVD (less likely) that has protection against duplication and expires after a certain date. We basically have a video we want to sell the video to clients, but in the industry, it's common for companies to trade and duplicate what they have purchased, even to their competitors--we are trying to prevent this.

A few required/possible features:

• difficult to copy: the video file might be encrypted requiring a specific video player to play it
• expires after 48 hours: the video can no longer be played after 48 hours
• key entry: a key must be entered to start watching and may contain the length of the time the video is available for
• needs to work without an internet connection

In some ways this is similar to the Apple iTunes movie rental, although we don't care about people watching it all the way through. We also don't envision it being downloaded over the Internet because of the size, although this is possibility.

We can get the video into pretty much any format.

What pre-existing solutions are there? I am a web developer, so I don't think I could develop a desktop application. Although, would something like Adobe AIR work for this?

I also understand that there probably isn't a fool proof system that will guarantee the video is never duplicated.

I know this is on the edge of programming related, but it's probably something that programmers get asked a lot, either for online or otherwise.

Answer 1

DRM is largely a waste of time. There's always the analog hole and making it possible to decode the video to watch it without being able decode it to copy it is simply a ridiculous principle. By using DRM, you'll always be participating in a futile cat and mouse game.

Answer 2

This whole "expiration" thing has been tried before, by many different organizations. In my opinion, it's been proven to be largely a failed experiment.

Answer 3

The major hole you're going to have to plug is to try to get the person to not just set the date back on their computer to continue viewing the movie. If there's no internet connection required, you can't have a means of verifying the time. Unless you come up with some sort of custom usb stick that has an internal timer, that expires after a certain amount of time, you aren't going to have much luck controlling this sort of thing from the user's computer.

Also, I wouldn't go and assume that the file is too big to be transferring over the internet. Firstly if they can get control of the decrypted stream, they can re-encode it to a smaller file format. Also, people are already distributing blu-ray rips on the internet. I'm not sure of the specifics of your formats, but I doubt it's bigger than blu-ray.

Answer 4

The best method here is not through programming but through legal protection.

Make everyone that you give this video sign a release saying that they will not re-distribute the video (kind of (exactly) like an Non-Disclosure Agreement).

If you're concerned that they would still do it, put some sort of identifiable watermark within the video.

Remember, your video is a copyrighted work. Protection (and recovering damages) are only a lawyer away.

Answer 5

Decor.

Put everyone in uncool clothing and have tacky ( but not retro) decor, with an awful soundtrack of say, 80's synthesizer music.

People won't distribute it and will stop watching, after some short time ( maybe not the desired 48 hours...)