Delivering Licenses

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Delivering Licenses

Depending on your business model and the consumer experience you want to achieve, you can issue licenses to consumers by using the following methods:

  • Predelivery. This method delivers a license before the packaged file is played, so consumers are not required to follow additional steps to acquire a license after acquiring a Windows Media file. For example, a consumer selects a song and purchases it, and then a license is issued. Then the consumer downloads the song and can play it immediately. You can also use this method for streaming; you issue a license when a consumer selects a Windows Media file to listen to, and then you stream the content.

    Note   The consumer must have a version 7 or later-enabled player for predelivery. Version 1 licenses cannot be predelivered using the RMGetLicense object, but there is a workaround that involves using an embedded player in a Web page. For more information, see the Windows Media Developer Center at the Microsoft Web site.

    For information about using Netscape to predeliver licenses, see Predelivering Licenses for Netscape 7.1.

  • License request delivery. This method delivers a license in response to a license request, which is made by the consumer's player (the consumer is trying to play a Windows Media file for which there is no license). This method was used in Windows Media Rights Manager version 1. Licenses can be delivered either nonsilently or silently:

    • Nonsilent license delivery. When a license is requested, Windows Media License Service prompts the consumer for some information. For example, a Web site might require the consumer to provide an e-mail address or make payment in exchange for a license.

Note It is strongly recommended that you implement nonsilent license delivery. If silent license delivery fails, the player attempts nonsilent license delivery, and the consumer will see potentially confusing error messages if nonsilent delivery is not supported.

    When a player requests nonsilent license delivery, the string "nonsilent=1" appears in the http post request. You can search the request string for "nonsilent=1" to determine whether to deliver the license nonsilently. For example:
    
    <pre class="syntax" IsFakePre="true" xmlns="https://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">nonsilentvalue = request.Form("nonsilent")

if (nonsilentvalue = 1) then ' Nonsilent request else ' Silent request end if 

  - **Silent license delivery**. Windows Media License Service has the information it needs and can issue the license without prompting the consumer. For example, previously the consumer might have registered or paid a subscription fee, or Windows Media License Service might not require anything in exchange for the license.

Note Because consumers are not aware of the license acquisition process, it is strongly recommended that you do not silently charge payment in exchange for a license. If you require payment, you should use the non-silent delivery method and inform consumers when you charge them.

  • Version 1 and version 7 and later license delivery. This method accommodates those consumers who have players that support only Windows Media Rights Manager version 1.

    • If a consumer is using a version 7 or later-enabled player, both version 1 and version 7 and later licenses are issued. So, the consumer can then play the Windows Media file on a version 7 or later-enabled player and a version 1-enabled player.
    • If a consumer is using a version 1-enabled player, which requests a license from the version 1 license acquisition URL stored in the Windows Media file, only a version 1 license is issued.

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