Today at CES, LG Electronics has demonstrated how the wonders of digital media could work. The idea — moving content off a server or laptop in your home to a living room device — is sound. Many companies, starting with Netgear as an early innovator and including Apple and D-Link, have tried to make the concept work. Yet, consumer electronics has struggled to embrace the digital realm when it comes to computer files. The LG BD300 player, for example, can stream Netflix movies over the Internet and play local Blu-Ray movies, access content from your TV and play CinemaNow flicks.
Tag Archive: stream
Flash Flaw Exposes Amazon Video to Piracy
This is exactly the reason record labels and movie studios tried to avoid offering their material online for years: a security issue in Adobe’s Flash media servers potentially enables users of Flash-based video services like Amazon’s Video on Demand service to download and copy as much video as they like.
The issue impacts sites that use Adobe’s media encryption technology and video player verification: cases exist where Adobe’s Flash video stream is not truly encrypted on the way from the video server to a user’s Flash-based player, potentially enabling users to capture video streams. The vulnerability in Amazon’s Video on Demand service comes from the free two-minute previews of material that it offers users before they buy: the two minute previews stop playback in a user’s Web browser, but the entire video stream is still accessible to stream-catching software.
13 Million People are Steam-ing
If you want proof that the digital distribution of games has become big business, here it is: Steam, one of the leading game distribution platforms, has announced that it’s signed up a staggering 13 million users.
Owned by the game developer Valve, Steam was originally intendedas a method for updating Valve’s multiplayer games. But it’s taken on a life of its own, and these days Steam not only carries over 150 PC games, including Half Life 2, it also has updates to some 2,500 more.
According to Valve co-founder, Gabe Newell, all this is a sign of how important digital distribution of games has become.
Firm Issues Threats for Ignoring Their DRM
The California company Media Rights Technologies announced today that it has sent cease-and-desist letters to Microsoft, Adobe, Real Networks, and Apple, alleging the company’s media player products—like Windows Media Player, QuickTime, iTunes, Real Player, and Flash—violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by (get this) failing to incorporate Media Rights’ Technologies X1 SeCure Recording Control proprietary rights management technology into their products.
“Together these four companies are responsible for 98 percent of the media players in the marketplace; CNN, NPR, Clear Channel, MySpace, Yahoo, and YouTube all use these infringing devices to distribute copyrighted works,” wrote MRT CEO Hank Risan in a statement. “We will hold the responsible parties accountable. The time of suing John Doe is over.”


