Capabilities (Symbian Signed)/DRM Capability

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Created: hamishwillee (16 Dec 2010)

Last edited: hamishwillee (20 Jul 2012)

DRM capability (see Digital Rights Management) is required by a process that needs to access the decrypted version of copy protected content. Playback of such content does not require the DRM capability.

This capability is from manufacturer-approved category. To use it in your application you need to obtain a permission from device manufacturer directly. See Device Manufacturer Capabilities (Symbian Signed)

"Why?": it would be easy to save a decrypted copy and distribute it, invalidating the copy protection.

"What?": programs supporting DRM generally use the content access framework to decrypt it. The key storage service checks a process has DRM capability before releasing the decryption key to it.

"Where?": Multimedia codecs need DRM capability so that they can be loaded into a process with DRM. Media players need DRM capability to play protected content when the codec runs in the same process.

Notes:

• Multimedia codecs that don't support DRM still need DRM capability to be loaded by the built-in media player.
• 3rd party media players without DRM capability can load built in codecs that support DRM, but won't be able to play protected content.
• These issues could be addressed by handling playback of protected content in a separate process to the UI, at the cost of extra software complexity.