December 17, 2019
By Tim Siglin Contributing Editor, Steve Nathans-Kelly
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SMW '19: EZDRM Founder Olga Kornienko Talks Global DRM

Read the complete transcript of this interview:

Tim Siglin: Welcome back to Streaming Media West 2019. I'm Tim Siglin, contributing editor with Streaming Media magazine and the founding executive director of the not for profit HelpMe! Stream. And today I've got with me Olga Kornienko. Olga, your company is EZDRM. What is DRM, first of all?

Olga Kornienko: Well, DRM, it stands for digital rights management, is a technology that helps people within the streaming industry prevent piracy.

Tim: Okay. And who is this?

Olga: This is Izzy. She has been our mascot for about a year now since we introduced her. And she seems to be traveling a lot. Here you can see that she's in LA. She's been to Amsterdam, and she's planning on going to Moscow in January and Vegas

Tim: Oh, nice. Nice.

Olga: and so on and so forth. And the scenery will keep changing, so.

Tim: And, as I told you, when you gave me one of these, I'm like, "Give me two" because I know the girls are gonna want them.

Olga: Oh, absolutely.

Tim: So Izzy actually is part of your other life, where you do dog shows, is that right?

Olga: Yes. I do play within the world of confirmation dog shows and doing things like Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Tim: Oh, very nice.

Olga: The national dog show--

Tim: Nice.

Olga: that will be airing on NBC shortly.

Tim: Oh, nice. So back to DRM, what do consumers need to know about DRM? I mean, the assumption is that it's there to prevent piracy, but are there other reasons for using DRM besides just piracy?

Olga: Well, obviously it's there to prevent piracy. I've also heard an interesting theory about the fact that DRM is gonna become more and more prevalent as security and personal privacy issues come to play and a lot more of the situations where we're all on video. And who owns the rights to all of this, and how do I control information and video that goes around about me?

Tim: Oh, that's an interesting thought.

Olga: It is. That was an interesting thought that somebody brought up is do you think that the GDPR rules in Europe would actually have some sort of a connection with DRM, and I think they might because it all comes back to privacy at the end of the day.

Tim: And then speaking of Europe, you've got people in the States who have, there's digital rights management that sort of ties content to a particular country, and we call that, what?

Olga: Geo-blocking.

Tim: Geo-blocking. Where essentially, you're blocking any place outside. But as more and more OTT platforms go to exclusive content, is there a demand from consumers if I'm watching Amazon content in the U.S. and I wanna go somewhere else and watch it? If I'm on a trip, to be able to see that? And how does DRM handle those sort of fringe-case models?

Olga: Well, I don't think it's a fringe-case model. I, as an avid world traveler myself, I do get angry when I take my own Netflix account to, pick a country, any country. And I can't watch the content I should be able to watch in the U.S. solely because I've left the country, but it's still my own. This is from my own personal experience.

Tim: Your own account. Right. exactly.

Olga: This is my own account. So, I think, but I don't know if it's necessarily a DRM issue or more of a owner's rights holder's issue because I think if the Netflix and other companies of the world decide that yes, Olga owns this content. Olga has the right to see this content while she's in Europe because her Netflix account is actually tied to the U.S., then DRM would automatically allow that because DRM is basically "Yes, play it" or "No, don't." and here are the other limitations.

Tim: So it's not a technology issue from a DRM standpoint. Let's just say it's either a rights holder issue or something like that.

Olga: It is a rights holder issue. It is a contracts issue. It is a "releasing this episode here in this country this year, and then the season goes live in the other country next year"-type of a situation.

Tim: And then finally, the name of the company is EZDRM. The thought in the industry over years past was implementing DRM was not so easy. What is it about your particular solution that makes you be able to say in the name that it's easy to do.

Olga: Well, we started the company under the premise that DRM should be an easy thing for people to do. That's the name, obviously. And, in our case, we boil it down to two APIs. A rights API that will allow you to issue out DRM rules and issue out licenses and a keys API that allows you to pool keys. We are SDK-less, and we think of it as the simplest way to do DRM is to make it as seamless as possible for the, on one hand, the end users, because without who we wouldn't have a business as well as our clients or partners.

Tim: Okay. Very good. Well, Olga, thank you very much for your time, and we'll be right back with the next interview.