Executive Interview: BuyDRM CEO & Founder Christopher Levy
BuyDRM's Christopher Levy is one of the "OGs" of the online video industry, and his company is one of the pre-eminent suppliers of DRM in our industry. We sat down and caught up with him recently to talk about the state of DRM in general, and the latest developments with BuyDRM in particular.
Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen: Let's start from the big picture question. DRM is the only studio-mandated technology, right?
Christopher Levy: That's correct.
Schumacher-Rasmussen: How are OTT operators dealing with that requirement at large?
Levy: Well, it continues to be a well-defined process, because each studio has obviously done thousands of deals over the years. So it begins with identifying which studio content you want, 基本上是通过内容分发渠道进行调查或询问, if you will, to get a license for content. 现在，问题变得棘手的地方是演播室安全调查问卷. So each one of the studios has a very evolved, 非常复杂的工作室调查问卷，涵盖了他们技术发行的方方面面. 书中有一些章节是关于广播技术的，比如CAS(条件接入)、DVB、卫星. 当你从工作室手中接手这些内容时，你会遇到一些问题. And then really everything, how it's encoded, what formats, where it's distributed, who's hosting it, how do users access it.
But when it gets to the DRM section, it gets kind of tricky. And so we've done some blogging about this on the BuyDRM blog, but the studio security questionnaire can be a complex issue. 因此，我们通过帮助客户回答问卷中的所有问题来帮助他们. And there's everything around how are keys created, how are keys managed, how are keys delivered, what versions of DRM are the studio or the DRM platform operating? How we use DRM, what rights will you use, et cetera, et cetera. So the security questionnaire pretty evolved and the DRM section's pretty complex, and so that's where we kind of help clients get through that. 然后，一旦他们成功地完成了调查问卷，并得到了安全团队的签字, 然后他们可以继续协商商业定价和法律条款, et cetera.
Schumacher-Rasmussen: In addition to what's on the BuyDRM blog, you and a great panel, I think it was two years ago at Streaming Media West, gave a whole walkthrough of the studio DRM questionnaire, right? So people can look for the presentation online. [Editor's note: The panel was at Streaming Media West 2019.]
Levy: Yeah. They're confidential docs, but they're pretty readily accessible in the market. We have every studio's security questionnaire, but what we like to do is meet with the client and understand kind of what they're doing. Really the questions around DRM are the same, 因为他们基本上是在要求内容许可，或者去他们的DRM运营商那里得到DRM运营商版本的问卷答案. We're fortunate a lot of the studios are our clients. A lot of them are technically sophisticated studios. 索尼是我们的客户——我想说，索尼可能拥有最先进的工作室安全运营团队, Eric and his team there. But yeah. That's the process.
Schumacher-Rasmussen: One of the biggest developments that we've seen, 过去一两年最大的趋势之一就是AVOD市场的巨大增长, right? And you've got some clients like Sony Crackle and Tubi TV. How is BuyDRM managing that growth with your AVOD clients?
Levy: 如果我们把业务的四条腿放在桌子上现在我们有PVOD(付费视频点播或按次付费), SVOD (subscription VOD), AVOD, and a combination, like if you look at UFC, it's a subscription to Disney Plus, but then it's a PVOD purchase. Those hybrid models have kind of given way to this AVOD in-between model, if you will. And for AVOD to be successful, the amount of views has to be significant, obviously much, much, much more than PVOD or SVOD. I mean, 平均而言，授权方每天需要观看一款AVOD游戏100次才能创造收益。. AVOD is basically a long tail of content and the top third of the tail, just like in premium video, has to be highly viewed.
And so the volume of views is significant. 然而，DRM是必须的，因为他们想要强迫用户观看广告，并继续回到网站上观看内容. So the way we're managing that growth is really we've scaled out our network. 我们在去年年底发布了一份新闻稿，指出我们去年获得了100亿份许可. We're on track to do about 13 and a half billion this year, close to 14, it really depends on how this last quarter goes, which it could be explosive. So the way we're managing as we scaled out our network, we've really built what I think is the best, fastest, low-latency, scalable, responsive, hybrid DRM platform in the business. We have a "Death Star" here in Austin, Texas, and then we have multiple clouds that we use.
We've also renovated the way that we acquire DRM tokens or licenses, so we've streamlined that for our clients. Helped our clients implement proxies, which actually speed it up and create that anonymity and less private information (PI). And lastly, we've completely overhauled our statistical analytics engine inside KeyOS. We announced about three weeks ago KeyQ is now live. 我们有了全新一代的统计分析，这就是我们处理规模的方式. 另一件事是，我们开始看到越来越多的客户希望在本地或云上拥有自己的DRM服务器以进行故障转移. And so we're starting to work with clients on those kinds of strategies too, where they want to even extended into their own network in some cases.
Schumacher-Rasmussen: 你最近几年做的最酷的事情之一就是你和奥斯卡金像奖的合作. The awards use your multi-DRM Platform to protect screeners. How does KeyOS integrate with other solutions involved in that pretty complex process?
Levy: We started talking about this in Streaming Media East three years ago, 关于如何在每个内容上进行法医水印这一重大举措. 所以如果你看看工作室是如何管理预发行和防火墙后的数字日报和筛选内容, it's all managed with forensic and in some cases visual watermarking and DRM. And the reason being is that DRM helps close most of the doors in your home, and watermarking closes all the windows too. Because what it does is it takes people who are casually pirating your content, and it quickly identifies them to you and then enables you to cut those channels down. Like all the recasting and streaming piracy that's being done on OTT and live sports, it's an authenticated user who was in there with the stream and they're recasting it.
So the combination as we talked about several years ago, and as we've worked with Jan Ozer on sushipizza.net, how the studios are handling piracy. The reality is that today every piece of content is pre-released and behind the firewall, digital daily, screener, et cetera, they're all forensically watermark before they're distributed. That model is now crossing the chasm into consumer and public screener access. Like what we've done with the Academy, and we worked with a pretty big cadre of A-list people in the business. 我们与提供OVP平台的客户Brightcove合作，Akamai负责所有交付工作. And of course, they used NAGRA's NexGuard technology, which is the preeminent watermarking technology in the business.
And then when all those companies were done adding all their value with the Academy's content, the different movies, the last thing they do is wrap it with DRM. 因此，DRM将可视化和取证水印封装在内容的有效负载中，并随内容一起传播, no matter where it goes. So what we're seeing is that model is moving into the B2C space now. As I've said over the years, I personally believe—and having been there since the beginning of the CDN business, which I'm pretty long in the tooth about, 如你所知，CDN业务将在未来五到六年内发生巨大变化.
使用FairPlay或Widevine在边缘管理HLS或DASH内容的缓存副本的想法, that's going to go away entirely. 接下来，cdn的边缘计算和网络组件将会爆炸式增长. 因为将会发生的事情是有一个玻璃主文件安全地坐在边缘, at rest encrypted, and every user who requests it, the edge is going to watermark that file uniquely and DRM it, and then hand it off to the user, because that is the only way to eliminate consumer piracy across the board. So that's the direction we're headed.
Schumacher-Rasmussen: Let's look big picture. What are the biggest challenges around DRM to scale right now, when you've got such a fragmented device market, you've got geographically diverse users, you've got constant changes in codecs, containers, protocols, operating systems, on down the line?
Levy: Yeah. It's complex. It is an ever-shifting flow of ice. The only difference is the ice is surrounded by lava, not cold water. And just the heat of the lava keeps you on the ice, which of course is also shrinking. There are even additional complexities—you name the big ones, right? 因此，在操作系统、编解码器和格式上，有不断的变化和发展，没有停滞, and the DRMs and the player platforms and the CDNs, I could go on and on, but there's constant evolution of the streaming consumption side of the table. And so if you look at how DRM is siloed by Microsoft, Google, and Apple across their operating systems and browsers, what you see is that each one of them is doing things differently, right?
Microsoft PlayReady is a very small portion of the market now, 但仍然非常关键，因为它的传统——可能80%的智能电视传统都在运行它. You got Google Widevine, it's a non-revenue product and Google doesn't sell it. And Google gives it away for free and Google even hosts it when they can, when they're not having their network go down. And same thing with Apple—they don't sell DRM, they just license it to content members. But the big three DRM OEMs, 他们并没有真正为你设计和开发他们的操作系统、浏览器、内容解密模块和DRM位, they're doing it for themselves to advance their video business models. You're just along for the ride.
因此，当你加上那种与DRM oem混淆的接口以及所有这些其他的复杂性, it creates sincere amount of challenges on a regular basis to keep up with what's going on. A great example was the new Apple OS and Android OS came out relatively around the same time, all kinds of stuff that are going on there. And when you introduce like CMAF, et cetera, you have to really stay on it. You've got to be constantly testing, constantly evolving, constantly documenting, you make one fix for one client, 你可以预料到，你的许多其他客户也会遇到同样的问题. And so we see that all the time, like recently Google made some updates to Widevine, and now some of the smart TVs, like LG OS, are having some issues. We're working with Google and other companies to resolve that, but it affects everyone. 因此，在这些问题演变成一场巨大的森林火灾之前，及早发现这些问题是非常重要的.
Schumacher-Rasmussen: 当然，你必须关注的一件事是消费者对低延迟观看直播内容的期望——他们想要自己的内容，而且现在就想要, even if it's on demand. DRM can't get in the way of that, so how does BuyDRM address low-latency streaming with low-latency DRM?
Levy: That's a great question. So as we all well know the history of DRM has not been that great. We started out with a very rudimentary Windows Media Rights Manager platform. We had license acquisition windows. We constantly had standalone Windows Media Players and Silverlight players that needed updates. Apple came along and made it a little cleaner. Google Widevine came along and made it a little more cleaner. 今天我们有了一种非常透明的无缝的，对用户来说不可见的DRM体验. It's taken a lot of work, but now that we're moving towards these low latency formats, and with the arrival of CMAF and the arrival of low-latency HLS spec by Apple, 现在很多人都在关注如何让它的DRM组件像流媒体组件一样低延迟.
So last year we did a webinar, we kind of started this whole dialogue in the industry about low-latency DRM. We did a webinar with Bitmovin that's on our DRM Blog, and we did a presentation with them at the last IBC that we had in person. And we'll be doing more around the low-latency DRM, it's become a critical factor to the low-latency experience, because you can't have low-latency streaming if you don't have low-latency DRM. So there's some talk, if you look at some of the stuff with some of our competitors.
Axonom做了一个网络研讨会，他们的一个主要合作伙伴讨论了DRM可接受的毫秒数. These are the types of focus that we're going to have more and more in the industry. And they're kind of exploiting the holes and how players are configured, how proxies are configured, how rights are created, how DRM companies create and deliver your licenses. So that whole discussion is starting to really rise, the rising tides are raising all ships on our business.
Schumacher-Rasmussen: Well, I don't envy you having to stay on top of these things, to stay three, four steps ahead of the game all the time, but I admire the way you've done it. And it's been great catching up here.
Levy: Likewise.
Schumacher-Rasmussen: Too bad we couldn't catch up at Streaming Media West or IBC, but hopefully next year.
Levy: 我感谢你们的时间，并向我们所有的朋友、家人和流媒体社区大声疾呼. Hi, Joel!
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