Supporting multiple devices and multiple platforms used to mean concomitant support for several different digital rights management (DRM) technologies, making DRM implementation both costly and complicated from operational and licensing perspectives. It's not a big stretch to say that the people most thwarted by DRM in the past were subscribers, not content pirates. Subscription mobile TV provider MobiTV and content management software company Pilat Media recently released next-generation centralized DRM solutions that release subscribers' content from the chains that locked it to specific devices.
Working with content partners, MobiTV has developed a single DRM solution that spans multiple devices, enabling subscribers to store content on mobile devices and watch it offline wherever they want. The multiscreen, crossplatform solution allows for a number of business models including subscriptions, rental, content metering and sharing across multiple devices and platforms. Having MobiTV DRM on all platforms also allows easy authentication with minimal involvement by viewers.
Pilat Media has developed IBMS Rights, an extension of its Integrated Broadcast Management Suite (IBMS). The new IBMS Rights configuration lets broadcasters maximize revenue while staying in contractual and regulatory compliance.
IBMS Rights enables central DRM for any broadcast content, spanning the entire broadcast operation across multiple platforms and third-party systems, IBMS Rights lets broadcasters centrally log and manage consumption and distribution rights for all acquired or produced content, both long and short form, across both linear conventional TV and nonlinear online and new media services. A deal with its defined rights is entered only once and then used by all linear and on-demand scheduling activities, with distribution licenses using that same set of deal rights, facilitating content planning.
The system also provides a central point for querying rights availability against any acquired or produced content, so broadcasters can fully exploit licensed or owned rights on any platform either by broadcasting content or licensing it to third parties. IBMS Rights can operate in stand-alone mode or be added to existing IBMS-managed broadcasting environments. To see IBMS Rights, visit Pilat Media at NAB Show Booth N5812.
