• March 20, 2008

Adobe on Wednesday launched digital rights management for the Flash Web plug-in that powers most online video. Competing products such as Apple's QuickTime and Microsoft's Windows Media Player both include digital rights protection.

Because Flash has been used mainly for streaming rather than downloading video, that limitation hasn't been a big issue. But the new Adobe media player set to launch next month will let users download Flash files to the desktop, according to the Beet.TV blog.

Separately, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said Tuesday that the company will develop a new version of Flash specifically tailored to the iPhone. Last month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was reported as saying Adobe's mobile version of Flash hadn't been adopted for the iPhone because of performance and technical issues.

--Mark Walsh