Adobe’s Quest for Web Domination
March 12, 2008 – 9:29 pmWith the announcement of the first official release of AIR, all eyes have been on Adobe’s ambitions in the Rich Internet Application (RIA) space. But Adobe also has far-reaching plans to add new features to its Flash runtime with big implications for the web, both inside the browser and out.
Content stream encryption
The EFF had a field day over Adobe’s addition of DRM to its Flash Player 9 and Flash Media Server 3. But their article makes a number of questionable assumptions. As Just Browsing reader Joerg explains:
The biggest confusion of the article is the usage of the term DRM itself. The addition to the player is actually not really DRM, its a form of wire encryption for video streaming, hey SSL provides transfer encryption. So it is a very basic copy protection mechanism that can be used to prevent modification to the content (like cutting out ads). Rights are not really managed by this mechanism except that you lack the right to make copies of the video stream. However you can watch it over and over again by going back to the web site.
The article paints a bleak dystopia where web video is transformed overnight from a creative love fest of ripping, mixing and burning to a prison state where media conglomerates gleefully trample on the rights to creative expression of amateur videographers. Far too extreme a view, as Joerg points out:
The article you quote is quite interesting at least it did not only make statements to stir up the “all must be free” community. It mentioned that any number of FLV files can be hosted by a simple web server. What it failed to mention clearly is that “DRM” is an option the content publisher decides to use. It is not Adobe’s decision what gets encrypted.
Free, unrestricted Flash video isn’t going to go away just because publishers have the option of encrypting their streams.
The EFF article rejects the notion that stream encryption would be used to protect content (”We imagine that Adobe has no illusions that this will stop copyright infringement”) and hypothesizes that the real purpose is to deter infringing software via the anti-circumvention clause of the Digitial Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Much more likely is that Adobe is jockeying for its software to be used more widely for content distribution. It seems pretty obvious that Adobe sees the potential for Flash video to solidify its position as the standard for video on the web. It is adding encryption to increase the appeal to mainstream media companies, many of whom are still hung up on locking down their wares with DRM.
Peer-to-peer networking and VOIP
Early last year, Adobe acquired a tiny company called Amicima, which had developed a complete peer-to-peer stack for use by other software developers. In addition to development libraries, they also had an application called amiciPhone, a VOIP client built on top of their P2P network. At the time, Om Malik speculated that Amicima’s hotshot P2P developers had been brought on board to help Adobe bring voice streaming capabilities to Flash. And sure enough, last week at O’Reilly’s ETech conference Adobe showed off its Pacifica project: “The service Adobe is developing to put VoIP right inside browser or where ever Flash goes, based on standard technologies.”
Shortly before the Amicima acquisition, Adobe announced a collaboration with Verisign to integrate the latter’s peer-assisted content distribution network into the Flash player. P2P has huge efficiency advantages when distributing large files like videos, but with the considerable downside that a special client must be used to download files. The addition of P2P capabilities to Flash promises to give users the best of both worlds: P2P directly in the web browser. The original press released stated that “Adobe and VeriSign plan to make specific product and service introductions later in 2007.” As far as I know, mum’s been the word since then. Have they dropped these plans? Or is P2P content distribution secretly slated to be included in Pacifica?
Open source, open standards
In November 2006, Adobe donated its ActionScript engine to Mozilla, and the resulting open source project was rebranded Tamarin. Both Adobe and Mozilla plan to integrate the engine into future versions of their flagship products (Flash Player and Firefox, respectively). Clearly Adobe recognizes that one of the main things holding it back from increasing web dominance is the general reticence to adopt proprietary software. It remains to be seen if they will open source the other half of the Flash Player code base: the rendering engine. It’s not surprising that they would hesitate to take risks with one of their crown jewels. But considering the potential benefits and lack of obvious downside, the complete open sourcing of Flash is probably inevitable.
Update: The source code that made up the initial version of Tamarin was taken from the version of ActionScript (3.0) included in Flash Player 9. Instead of saying that Adobe plans to integrate Tamarin into a future version of Flash Player, I should have made it clear that this was the case from the very start.
10 Responses to “Adobe’s Quest for Web Domination”
Extending your product and thus providing more value to your customers is perfectly legitimate. This also holds for Adobe in this case.
From a consumer’s perspective, it looks different. Copy protection will work with everyday users, but talented hacker will break it easily, because if you can see it on your screen, you can copy it. Tools will soon become available to crack it.
The Flash copy protection will reinforce the fundamental misunderstanding of media companies that digital goods can be protected by technical means. Instead of stepping back and implementing new and open strategies of content distribution and monetarization, they will be encouraged to continue their aggressive and in the long term hopeless fight that we have seen to create so much damage in the music industry. Why should we repeat this drama with video?
My guess is that the media industry will pressure video hosters with all means to put copy protection on all videos, as soon as it is technically available. They are unlikely to succeed, but it any case, the Flash copy protection won’t be a step forward for the web itself and the consumers.
By FFD on Mar 12, 2008
I’m not sure what your commenter meant by “Rights are not really managed by this mechanism except that you lack the right to make copies of the video stream.” — that’s at the absolute core of what DRM prevents. It’s a clumsy attempt to prevent what it is at the heart of almost every operation on a PC.
To bring the discussion back on topic, how do you envisage Adobe completely open-sourcing their Flash products if that requires giving people the full source of how to decode the DRMed content they’re sending? In a world where it is “just like SSL” that would’t be a problem. In a world where its purpose is to control what you do *after* you receive the stream, that’s going to be much harder - I’d say impossible.
By Danny on Mar 12, 2008
I think you meant Firefox, not Firebox in the end, right?
By Shawn Wilsher on Mar 13, 2008
Shawn - oops, fixed.
By Matt on Mar 13, 2008
Danny,
Hopefully Joerg will show up to clarify, but I assume what he means is there are no built-in restrictions to how often you can view a stream. Also, the encryption can be used for other things besides DRM, if I understand correctly, such as secure streaming.
I don’t think that open source is antithetical to strong encryption. As you say, that isn’t a problem for open source SSL implementations. My understanding is exactly that Adobe isn’t trying to control what you do once you have the stream. They are just preventing other players from reading the encrypted data.
By Matt on Mar 13, 2008
@Danny,
what I meant with my statement is that there is no _management_ in the sense of iTunes or Windows Media DRM on top of the stream encryption mechanism. For example FairPlay manages on how many iPods (5) you can play the content.
I can see why this is a difficult discussion, but I draw a (albeit technical) line between the two terms. You are right when you think that without encryption there is no rights management since it typically sits on top of the other.
As Matt hinted, secure peer-to-peer video conferencing is another application that requires some form of stream encryption.
@FFD, there is an arms race going on about siphoning the bits that come from your beloved or hated broadcaster onto your monitor. That arms race now takes the matter to an extreme and I agree that it cannot be won by the currently existing broadcasting and monetization schemes. The EFF post had some comments about monitor manufacturers that want to comply to the Windows DRM/encryption must decrypt the pixels/frames in hardware so that there is not really a place in the image pipeline where you can drain the stream. Given these (extreme) efforts I don’t think that anyone at Adobe thinks that the stream encryption with a standard cipher will change the game in any way, it will give content producers (smaller, but mostly the bigger ones) another option.
There, of course, is an advantage for Adobe. If you want to encrypt your stream you need to shell out a thousand bucks for an Adobe FMS server. If you don’t want to pay that money you have to keep serving that FLV file from your free HTTP server, or serve to content to an open source H.264 player from your open source RTSP server.
Do you think that Adobe should not allow stream encryption and take the side of people that advocate as little protection as possible for content rights? Given the dominance in web video do you think Adobe has some form of “moral” obligation? And why do you think that obligation exists? I would be interested in your thoughts/speculations on how an eco-system that is free of content rights (or protection of those rights) will play out better in the long run over an eco-system where people pay a good chunk of money to create premium content and then want to monetize the content, either with advertising or by selling the content or subscriptions. And can both eco-systems exist side by side?
Where does the money flow? Is it only tools? Ads? Subscriptions? Pay-per-view? Purchase of the video? What keeps the eco-system humming and pays the electricity bills of the server farms?
By Joerg on Mar 13, 2008
Here is the EFF link I was alking about
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2005/07/protected-media-path-component-revocation-windows-driver-lockdown
By Joerg on Mar 13, 2008
@Joerg I agree with your defence of Adobe. I did not intend to critize Adobe for what they do now. Maybe I’d do the same in their position.
I’m simply taking the stance of the consumer. I don’t think it’s in their interest, as pointed out in my response. When I was a kid, I taped music from the radio as all my fellows did. Now that I’m adult, I’m paying for it. Although I paid for it, I cannot move it between the devices I own. The people that did not pay for it are probably laughing at me. The DVDs I buy today do not play on my DVD player that I bought two years ago, because of copy protection. For non-technical people, all this non-interoperability is a big hurdle to actually adopt digital media. That’s why I think copy protection leads nowhere. And what doesn’t help the consumers, won’t help the producers in the end.
By FFD on Mar 13, 2008
@FFD, I could not agree more with you. I don’t like the proliferation of “protection” methods. There is a larger cultural effect that is well researched by Lawrence Lessig. I’m struggling with the question what stance a technology provider like Adobe should take in that matter. Is there a moral obligation to withhold technology that even gives the choice of encryption? Is that comparable to the question of “should we not engage in DNA research because of the negative consequences on the society”? Should we chastise gun makers because of that reason? What about knife makers? Where does it stop?
By Joerg on Mar 13, 2008