Streaming rights

One of the tricky aspects of delivering content and sharing it over the Internet is property rights.

For a long time, people murmured about the fact that sooner or later companies and individuals would want to prevent people from sharing material without paying for it. I guess the business of music file sharing finally brought that hammer down. But there are still a lot of companies that would like to find ways to distribute content legally - and do it in a way that can help them save some dough if distributing it internally.

Widevine Technologies and Vividon teamed up last week to address both digital property rights management and streaming economics. Vividon makes cache devices that are capable of doling out streaming media, while Widevine has software that addresses digital rights management.

The two companies are going to integrate Widevine's encryption technology into Vividon's appliances for streaming. By combining the products into a single appliance, the companies can offer users a simpler way to install gear without worrying about interoperability issues. One of the advantages to Widevine's products is that they secure content regardless of the format of the content, which relieves network managers from the task of making sure that they constantly track what is being sent to users that needs to be encrypted. Sites managers also can use the technology to deliver content to a range of devices, including handhelds.

There also are companies using peering technology to distribute content that takes advantage of digital rights management technology to stay out of trouble. I recently spoke to a motion picture distributor using peering to distribute videos. The peering technology allows others to serve as hosts for content, but respects the original owner of the property and makes sure that the person receiving it has paid for it. By using multiple hosts in a variety of locations, the distributor reduces the amount of bandwidth he uses and the number of servers he needs to distribute it.

April Jacobs is a Senior Writer with Network World. If you have any comments or questions on this or other Web Acceleration newsletters, e-mail April at aprilj@nww.com.