How LinqTV’s Multi-DRM Architecture Works to Prevent Content Piracy

As a video streaming entrepreneur, one thing that you should dread is Piracy. Content piracy directly translates to lost revenue for your streaming platform. When users access content illegally instead of subscribing, streaming entrepreneurs like you miss out on subscription fees, which are crucial for funding content acquisition, production, and platform operation.

Studies estimate that billions of dollars of revenue are lost annually due to piracy. And a massive matter of concern is that video content piracy is rising globally. IMB reported a 10% rise in piracy incidents in the first nine months of 2023 compared to 2022. And then there are hundreds of incidents that are not even reported!

So, as a video streaming entrepreneur, you MUST protect your content from piracy. And at LinqTV, we understand your concern. That is why, content security has been our top priority since day one. We are very proud to say that we are amongst the safest video streaming SaaS providers in the world.

In this blog, we will take you on a tour of our state-of-the-art security architecture powered by Multi-DRM, Audio DRM, Biometric Verification, and more… So, let’s get started!

DRM encryption is often considered the foundation of video content protection. This is because it makes unauthorized copying, distribution, or modification of video content significantly challenging.

In case you want to know about how DRM works in detail, read our blog on Video DRM here.

But strangely, built-in DRM is offered by only the top-tier streaming SaaS platforms. At LinqTV, we have been offering robust built-in Multi-DRM security to our customers since day one.

The technical workflow of our multi-DRM security architecture is depicted in the diagram below.

Multi-DRM technically means that instead of supporting only one DRM provider, we support all the major DRM providers, to ensure that your content remains secured and protected across devices and platforms.

We took the initiative to support multiple DRMs because we noticed that specific devices and browsers support specific DRM encryptions. Some of the popular DRM systems and their supported devices and browsers are tabulated below.

All Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Apple TV)

Safari (Mac & iOS)

That is why, to provide comprehensive DRM encryption to our customers, we support all three DRM providers, that is:

So we will look at the working of LinqTV’s Multi-DRM security architecture from two perspectives, one during the uploading and encoding of videos into the LinqTV CMS, and the second during the video playback by your end user.

So, when you first upload your raw videos, the video goes through encoding. During this stage, after encoding of videos, they are encrypted using algorithms and keys specific to each supported DRM system. This creates multiple versions of the encrypted content, each protected by a different DRM system.

The encrypted content along with licensing information for each DRM system are packaged together int