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Adobe’s new Flash DRM comes with selective output control

Future Flash content may refuse to play on your monitor or or projector if it …

Chris Foresman – | 72
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Adobe has rejiggered its DRM software for the Flash platform, combining a number of access control features under the rubric of Flash Access 2.0. The new platform can give content providers all sorts of ways to offer media content securely, including controlling what type of output devices can display the content—in effect, Adobe is enabling HDCP and broadcast control flags for Flash content.

Adobe is touting the revised Flash Access platform as a way for content providers to reach the widest possible audience (assuming those content providers don’t want to provide content for the 86 million iPhone OS devices out in the wild) and serving as an easy add-on to its Flash Media Server product. With a new SDK, it can also be integrated with secure downloads and what Adobe is calling HTTP Dynamic Streaming, which is essentially Apple’s proposed HTTP Live Streaming standard with an XML-based manifest file (instead of a plain-text playlist file) and which so far only works with Flash Player or Adobe AIR.

If serving secure content to Flash clients only seems like a good business model, however, then you’ll probably be glad to know that Adobe has also baked selectable output control right in to Flash Access 2.0. This allows content providers to “specify whether output protection technologies are required to output to external devices.” A variety of digital and analog output protection technologies are currently supported, including HDCP, CGMS-A, and Rovi (aka Macrovision) ACP. While Adobe plans to bring support to all platforms, currently the output controls are only available on Windows. However, such controls could limit your ability to connect your connect your computer to a projector or other external display to view secure Flash content.

If there was anything that could possibly make Flash less desirable from a user’s perspective, the addition of the worst of draconian DRM capabilities would have to be it. Output control is purely optional, but we suspect that some content providers won’t be able to resist the temptation to use it now that it’s available. Adobe and/or content providers will likely face some serious blowback if secure Flash content—which probably had to be paid for—suddenly won’t play on the numerous non-HDCP displays currently in use.

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Chris Foresman
Chris is an Associate Writer at Ars Technica, where he has spent the last five years writing about Apple, smartphones, digital photography, and patent litigation, among other topics.
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