Online education platforms and OTT services provide their users with quality content. Viewers either buy courses or videos they are interested in or become subscribers to access the full content.
With digital content piracy on the rise, copyright protection has become a major challenge for the video on demand industry.
Main Forms of Content Piracy
Hotlinking, decryption, and unauthorized recording are three common forms of piracy.
Piracy
Hotlinking
Decryption
Unauthorized recording
Note
Your content is linked by other websites.
Your encrypted content is decrypted and distributed without your consent.
Your content is recorded by screencapturing software or a camera.
Copyright Protection Capabilities
Thanks to VOD's rich experience in copyright protection, we are able to provide a full range of solutions to help you fight piracy.
Category
Capability
VOD Solution
Content protection
Encrypt your content
HLS private encryption, commercial-grade DRM
Prevent network sniffing and decryption
HLS private encryption, commercial-grade DRM
Prevent decryption by browser extensions
HLS private encryption, commercial-grade DRM
Prevent screencapturing by browser extensions.
When screenshot or screen recording behavior is detected, the player turns black, and the recorded/screenshot content is all black.
Commercial-grade DRM
Prevent screencapturing by system software.
When screenshot or screen recording behavior is detected, the player turns black, and the recorded/screenshot content is all black.
Commercial-grade DRM
Playback protection
Limit the countries or regions allowed to play your content
Key hotlink protection
Limit the domains allowed to play your content
Refer hotlink protection
Limit the validity period of a playback URL
Key hotlink protection
Limit the number of IP addressed allowed to play your content
Key hotlink protection
Limit the preview length
Key hotlink protection
Unauthorized distributor tracking
Identify unauthorized distributors
Floating watermarks, digital watermarks
Protection Levels and Compatibility
VOD offers two encryption schemes: HLS private encryption and commercial-grade DRM.
HLS private encryption
This is VOD's proprietary encryption scheme. The standard mode is used by default. If a device does not support the standard mode, the player will automatically switch to the basic mode.
Commercial-grade DRM
Currently, VOD supports FairPlay DRM (Apple) and Widevine DRM (Google). For Widevine, the L1 and L3 protection levels are supported. L1 requires a hardware-based trusted execution environment (TEE) and is more demanding on the playback device. If a device does not support L1, L3 will be used automatically.
Encryption Method
Protection Level
Compatibility
HLS private encryption (standard)
High
Content is encrypted.
Strong protection against sniffing and decryption.
Strong protection against decryption and screencapturing by browser extensions.
Relatively weak protection against system and third-party screencapturing software
High
Supports playback on mobile devices.
Supports most PC browsers.
Supports most Android browsers; does not support iOS browsers.
HLS private encryption (basic)
Medium
Content is encrypted.
Relatively weak protection against decryption and screencapturing tools.
Very high
Supports almost all platforms and devices.
FairPlay
Very high
Hardware-based decryption is required to play the encrypted content.
Very strong protection against decryption tools and extensions.
Very strong protection against system and third-party screencapturing software and screencapturing browser extensions.
Relatively high
Supports playback on iOS applications.
Supports playback on iOS and macOS Safari.
Widevine (L1)
Very high
Hardware-based decryption is required to play the encrypted content.
Very strong protection against decryption tools and extensions.
Very strong protection against system and third-party screencapturing software and screencapturing browser extensions.
Relatively low
Does not support playback on browsers.
Supports playback on applications on some Android devices.
Widevine (L3)
High
Software-based decryption is required to play the encrypted content.
Strong protection against decryption tools and extensions.
Relatively strong protection against screencapturing tools.
Medium
Supports playback on Chrome and some Chromium-based browsers.
Supports playback on applications on some Android devices.
Basically, the protection level and compatibility of an encryption method are inversely related. That is, the higher the protection level, the lower the compatibility. Therefore, you will need to find a balance between the two.
The guide below shows you how to use VOD's content protection schemes.
Best Practices
In this section, we will talk about the three aspects of copyright protection – content protection, unauthorized distributor tracking, and playback protection – and discuss how you can best use them to protect your content.
Content protection
As mentioned above, the protection level and compatibility of an encryption method are inversely related. In order to find a balance between the two, we recommend you choose your protection schemes according to video resolution.
HLS private encryption only supports playback resolutions lower than 720p.
Widevine and FairPlay DRM supports all playback resolutions.
The VOD Player SDK will try to play Widevine- or FairPlay-encrypted content first. If a device does not support commercial-grade DRM, the Player SDK will automatically switch to the output of HLS private encryption.
This gives your high-value content (720p or above) strong protection (implemented by commercial-grade DRM) against decryption and screencapturing. Meanwhile, the HLS private encryption scheme allows you to improve the compatibility of your service. Even if decryption or unauthorized recording occurs, it would only affect your less valuable content (below 720p).
Unauthorized distributor tracking
Due to the relatively low compatibility of commercial-grade DRM, you may need to use DRM solutions together with HLS private encryption. In such cases, you can use floating watermarks or digital watermarks to complement the protection offered by private encryption. When unauthorized recording occurs, the watermarks help you identify the distributor.
A floating watermark is an overlay added to a video when it is played on the viewer's device. A typical floating watermark displays the ID of the viewer. This offers an extremely low-cost way for you to deter piracy.
A digital watermark is encoded into images and audio. If your content is recorded without authorization, you will be able to extract the ID of the distributor from the cloud. Compared with floating watermarks, digital watermarks have less impact on viewing experience (invisible to viewers) and offer higher protection levels (the watermark is encoded into your content and cannot be removed or covered).
We recommend you add both floating and digital watermarks to your content so as to effectively track unauthorized distributors when piracy occurs.
Playback protection
Hotlink protection offers protection for a playback URL. We recommend the following configurations:
Enable referer hotlink protection and add your domains to the allowlist so that other domains cannot access your content.
Enable key hotlink protection and set the validity period of a playback URL to 30 minutes longer than the video duration.
Enable key hotlink protection and set the maximum number of IP addresses allowed to access your playback URL to three.
Enable key hotlink protection and set the region allowed to access your playback URL to the country or region of your domain.
Best practices
This section provides detailed directions on how to use the above-mentioned content protection schemes.
Obtaining a FairPlay certificate
In order to use the FairPlay encryption scheme, you must first request a FairPlay certificate and submit the certificate information to VOD.
Encrypting content and adding digital watermarks
Upload your content to VOD and generate adaptive bitrate outputs that are encrypted by the HLS private encryption scheme, the FairPlay DRM encryption scheme, and the Widevine DRM encryption scheme.
1. Log in to the VOD console, select Media Assets > Video/Audio Management on the left sidebar, and click Upload to upload your media file.
2. After upload, select your media file, and click Task Flow. In the pop-up window, select the "MultiDRMPreset" task flow, and click Confirm.
The task will generate a file that is encrypted by the HLS private encryption scheme (only 480p and lower resolutions), as well as files encrypted by FairPlay and Widevine DRM. It will also add digital watermarks to all the files.
Note:
Because the "MultiDRMPreset" task flow will add digital watermarks to the outputs of HLS private encryption, please make sure your video is longer than six minutes. Otherwise, the task will fail.
Enabling hotlink protection
Configuring referer and key hotlink protection:
1. Log in to the VOD console and select Distribution and Playback > Domain Name on the left sidebar. Find your domain, and click Set.
2. Select the Access Control tab. Toggle Referer hotlink protection on. In the pop-up window, select Allowlist and enter the domains you want to allow to access your content, and click Confirm.
3. Toggle Key hotlink protection on. In the pop-up window, enter or generate a hotlink protection key, and click Confirm.
Now, you have enabled referer and key hotlink protection for your domain.
Generating a player signature
A player signature is required to play encrypted videos using VOD's player. Specify the fields as follows:
1. For appId and fileId, pass in your account APPID and the file ID of the content to play respectively.
2. Set audioVideoType in contentInfo to ProtectedAdaptive.
3. For drmAdaptiveInfo, set privateEncryptionDefinition, widevineDefinition, and fairPlayDefinition to 14, 21, and 12 respectively.
4. For urlAccessInfo, set t to the expiration time of the playback URL (current time + video length + 30 minutes is recommended); set rlimit to 3; set us to a random string (randomly generated for each signature), and set uv to the viewer ID.
3. The player obtains the signature from your server and starts playing the video.
On devices that support FairPlay and Widevine, the outputs of commercial-grade DRM will be played. On devices that do not support FairPlay and Widevine, the output of HLS private encryption will be played.
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