Media public access restrictions

[konius]

I’d like to suggest adding Public Access restrictions for Media as a core Umbraco feature.

Currently, Public Access can be used to restrict Content based on members/member groups. It would be great to have the same concept available for Media.

While there are packages that address protected media, this feels like functionality that belongs in core. If Media is treated as content within Umbraco, access control should ideally be consistent across both.

Suggested behaviour:

• Configure Public Access on Media items/folders.
• Restrict access by member or member group.
• Inherit restrictions from parent Media folders.
• Prevent direct access to protected media URLs for unauthorised visitors.
• Provide behaviour consistent with Content Public Access.

Interested to hear whether others see a need for this and whether there are architectural reasons it hasn’t been included in core.