Flash video downloads get DRM

The two big pieces of news coming from Adobe this week are potential Flash support on the iPhone and a new Digital Rights Management capability for Flash videos downloaded to Adobe's Media Player or applications built on the AIR platform. Most are hyping (or decrying, depending on the point of view) the latter because DRM will help draw big name content providers (read: movie studios) to the platform. Microsoft has had a lead on this for a while and now Adobe is getting into the game. But, there's also an enterprise angle.

Adobe's Flash Media Rights Management Server, a J2EE-based application server, is built on the same platform as the Rights Management Server for PDF files, which corporations use to protect documents sent out. While the two are not combined at this time, customers familiar with the PDF Rights Management system should be able to easily pickup on the Flash Media version. It is particularly useful for companies that want to distribute company meeting videos without fear of them falling into the wrong hands, for instance. Of course, you'll also need to standardize on the Adobe Media Player as well, as the two work in conjunction (much like Microsoft's Windows Media Player and Windows Media Server).

At $40,000 per CPU, Flash Media Rights manager is mainly targeted at large content owners and content delivery networks. None of the latter have been named yet, but one can assume the major Flash distributors will be ordering a few of these servers as well.