WooCommerce

Piracy is a growing concern for content creators, who develop copyrighted intellectual property such as media consisting of audio, visual, and or the combination of such, (e.g., music files (.mp3), images (.jpg, .png, etc.), and video (.mp4).

Though WooCommerce offers some DRM protection, while the content remains on the WordPress platform, once the content is downloaded, there is no DRM protection. Further, within the WordPress site pages—video media is not protected from unauthorized downloads, which means that said content may be freely redistributed without compensation to the content creator(s).

Encouraged by the direct response of the WooCommerce support team who suggested that we write a feature request and stated that: “You’re right; WooCommerce doesn’t offer true DRM, and there are no current plans to build that into core. What you’ve described would need tech far beyond what WooCommerce can do in-browser today.”

We wrote to WooCommerce the following paraphrased excerpts that prompted the above quoted response:

Piracy is an awful problem, because even with (third-party) plugins for DRM protection, any pirate can simply play the media aloud, while copying it on another recording device; therefore, ultimately, the best resolution would be some sort of open source sound embedded coding that distorts the sound on a recording device as it relates to a DRM license, (similar) to those used for photo copying a vital records, such as a DMV or birth record … should be developed by you wonderful coders—only please don’t break the bank of we working class who will boost your profit margin for having purchased your resolution. LOL 🙂

We ourselves have been looking for about two-years for a financially feasible resolution to the piracy, and other than sending our employees to technical institutions to learn and subsequently write our own code (algorithms) that will do what we have described above, it seems that making such a feature request is logical, even preferred to a third-party plugin that provides DRM support once the product(s) have been downloaded from the WooCommerce store.

Some issues with plugin via third-parties are they are often start-ups and may not have the resources to continue developing; they may in effect go out of business, be bought out, or simply close shop for any number of reasons. They are also froth with compatibility issues such as the one that caused this ticket.

Further, we do not desire to upload what may well become thousands of content—equaling hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in sales, to a third-party plugin, only to later be extorted by the same (that third-party entity being the sole) protector of our digital content, which is why we are looking at those like yourselves, the backbone of our platform(s) to ask if you are “willing” … because we are confident that you are “able” to create a DRM algorithm that will give your users the added confidence of rights protection once the content leaves your platform, and or in the interim simply offering content creators the option to “block” downloads of digital content respectively.

Currently, we trust only Apple Podcast to protect our content via their DRM and clout to actively pursue those who would violate their DRM, because it represents not only loss in revenue to the content creators, but also to Apple itself.

Our dismay is that Apple Podcast does not allow for video subscription. It is our belief that it may have to do with their investment into their own Apple TV; however, despite their reasoning, it is their right, subsequently, we are forced to seek DRM specifically for our video content, because we simply refuse to be extorted by YouTube and others alike, who sit back and profit on the creative works of others…until the creative works reach a level that warrants a bit of profit sharing in their minds.

Our resolution to the entire matter, pre-Covid was simply: person-to-person, content sharing via our schools, etc.

Due to covid we found that we needed a long-term durable and trusted resolution that is timeless, as humans are not timeless—teachers and all. LOL 🙂

We love what we do! Educating and creating—and no false modesty, we are excellent at what we do! We are not coders, but to continue educating and creating…we will adapt as warranted. 🙂

The scope of what we are proposing by this true DRM feature request(s) from WooCommerce is larger than just ourselves as a singular intellectual content creator. Anyone can and should benefit from true DRM protection, without being forced to either use a third-party for reasons stated herein, or having to forfeit perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars before a platform provider decides they will compensate the creator by allowing the creator to have a “subscription” channel, which in and of itself (does not) provide DRM protection.

Thank you for your consideration—