Digital Rights Management and Documentary Films

One of the significant issues that came up over the history of Folkstreams was the concern by small, independent filmmakers that people could download their films freely once they were "streamed" on our website.

We chose to answer that concern by only allowing high resolution, full length films to be streamed and not downloaded. At the time, it was fairly difficult to save video being streamed over one of the major streaming media systems, Real or Microsoft (which we never supported because of its closed, proprietary nature). Our mandate as a non-profit organization is the widest possible dissemination of our catalog of films and to archive and present content in as open a way as possible. This is why we still offer video only through the antiquated method of a standalone media player and not the fancy embedded Flash player popularized by YouTube.

In the beginning, we did not want to frighten off filmmakers from contributing films to our project. I hope that as filmmakers become aware that digital distribution of their films does not threaten them, they will be more open to allowing downloads. We had considered using DRM to enable downloads, but the cost and complexity was prohibitive. It is good to see DRM falling by the wayside. Both Sony and Apple have begun to shake off the yoke of this abomination to common sense, Western culture and civilization.

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