Media is intellectual property of the owner. Owners would like to protect the content to monetize the content. Signed cookies and signed URL are mechanisms to protect content. Signed cookies offer away to restrict viewer access to streaming media content. If media content is in HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) format, Amazon Elastic Transcoder can be used to generate the playlist and media segments and web application can use cookies to authenticate each user and to send a Set-Cookie header that sets a cookie on the user’s device. When a user requests a restricted object, the browser forwards the signed cookie in the request, and CloudFront checks the cookie attributes to determine whether to allow or restrict access to the HLS stream.

Signed cookies allow content owner to protect the content and prevent unathorized downloads. By preventing unautorized downloads, signed cookies help to reduce download cost and reduce revenue leakage.