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Adobe releases media player…with DRM?!

Posted on April 16th, 2007 by admin.
Categories: Adobe.

There’s tons of Adobe news today, most of it revolving around the release of Creative Suite 3. But in addition to that eagerly awaited release Adobe also announced that they’ll be releasing Adobe Media Player, a standalone desktop version of the Flash player with brand new features.

From Wired:

The Adobe Media Player has two elements that will appeal to content producers, but might leave consumers with some doubts. The first is a mechanism that will allow advertising to be embedded in downloaded clips in such a way that it can’t be separated from the content.

The second element is a “security” model (DRM) that will tie downloaded content to specific machines or users.

While both options are solely at the discretion of the content producer, a lack of DRM features in the Flash browser plugin is arguably one of the reasons for its success and by adding DRM to the desktop client Adobe may well be shooting itself in the foot.

Hmm, this is both good and bad. It’s good because one of the factors that kept major content producers from using Flash was the lack of DRM to help monetize the content, now that barrier is gone. But it’s bad because there is a huge potential for end-users to get annoyed by intrusive and limiting DRM rules, not to mention the potential for annoying ads which have already blemished Flash’s reputation on the web. We’ll have to see how this pans out.

Read more on the Flash Media Player at Wired Blog

Technorati Tags: Adobe, DRM, Creative Suite 3, Flash

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