Some streaming broadcasters use streaming systems that interfere with the ability to record streams for later playback, either inadvertently, through poor choice of streaming protocols, or deliberately. Some of these broadcasters place these interferences on their media because they believe it is to their advantage to control their intellectual property or necessary for compliance to licensing requirements by content providers. A concern for some broadcasters is that these copies of broadcasted material will result in lost sales. Whether users have the ability and the right to record streams has become a significant issue in the application of law to cyberspace.
According to some, there is no way to prevent a user from recording a media stream that has been delivered to their computer. Bruce Schneier once said, "Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet."[3] To date, efforts to prevent copying streaming media has been limited to making it inconvenient, illegal, or both.
One method of interfering in recording streaming media is DRM (Digital Rights Management) technologies. The DRM protection does not prevent a user from recording the streamed bits but the DRM gives some control of the reproductions or plays of the recorded file to a streaming media provider by requiring a key to unlock / decrypt the content.
Using unpublished data formats is another way for streaming media providers to protect their media. This security method can be reverse engineered, and encrypted streams must be decrypted with a key that resides on the consumer's computer, so these measures are security through obscurity, at best.
Efforts to make it illegal to record a stream may rely on copyrights, patents, license agreements, or national legislation that implements the anti-circumvention provisions of the WIPO Copyright Treaty.
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