Copy Protect a Digital Version Vs. DVD or Bluray

[hvproductions]

We produce a lot of DVDs and Blu-rays for our customers.  More and more are starting to ask for digital downloads, however, we need to be able to protect them from passing around the digital copy as our sales come from people purchasing the copy.  So if we sell an unprotected digital file and it is passed around we will loose sales.  Has anyone come up with an option or are aware of an option to sale digital downloads that are protected from being able to be passed around?

Thanks!

[John T Smith]

As far as I know, Adobe has no way to protect a file

And any other way is easily broken by any number of tools

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management

[hvproductions]

Is there a software or service that can be used just like your prime, netflix, itunes and such?  Something that keeps people from pirating programs we have created.  Thanks!

[John Waller]

Which Adobe app are you using to create your content?

[hvproductions]

We edit in Premiere.  Currently create our DVDs and Blurays in Encore

[Abambo]

I do not think that you can protect your DVDs and Blue Ray discs from within Encore. So whatever you use to protect your work, it's outside of the Adobe universe. I don't think that there is a real good protection on the market for your data. 

[Nancy OShea]

File sharing is a big problem.  About the best you can do is restrict file access with some form of user authentication.  For example, a unique serial number or log-in ID and password.

[hvproductions]

But that could be easily shared with people so it doesn't really solve it, just maybe minimizes it

[Nancy OShea]

Welcome to the digital age.  Once video downloads reach the customer's hard drive, you cannot prevent file sharing if that's what they want to do.  Maybe you need to look at delivering streaming services instead of straight downloads.

[hvproductions]

I would probably be open to a streaming service.  But the big names ones charge a large commission.  Anyone aware of a service you can pay a monthly fee for that allows for streaming?  Mainly people are telling me they don't have a DVD or Bluray player.  So i know the digital only option is coming and trying to plan ahead.  Thanks!

[Nancy OShea]

We've been delivering digital downloads since 2014 and never looked back.  File sharing is not a problem for us.  Our media is on non-public AWS S3 buckets which can be accessed only from links containing encrypted keys and originating from our servers.  DRM encoding is another option. 

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elastictranscoder/latest/developerguide/drm.html

[hvproductions]

We share digital downloads with our commercial clients all the time, but there is no concern with file sharing there.  But our live events side of our business is where the issue is.  And there is certainly people not purchasing because they don't use DVD or Blu-ray anymore and only want digital download options.

[Abambo]

The scrap solution to this is encrypted content that only plays on your own player. 

[Nancy OShea]

"The scrap solution to this is encrypted content that only plays on your own player."

That's exactly what DRM encoding does.