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by 0x12 5399 days ago
Screencams.

One good reason to not allow 'dowload' of a video is if it is a live stream of a person. People will say/do stuff on cam that they may later come to regret, if your platform can reliably (see 'screencams') stop others from recording the stream then there will be a market for that.

But you've got a lot of extra issues to contend with in your streaming server, it's hard enough just to pump the data out, if you have to uniquely encrypt a few tens of thousands of outgoing streams that is a real problem.
1 comments
JoachimSchipper 5399 days ago
Just a note: per-stream encryption keys may make sense[1], but there's no need to encrypt the stream to different per-person keys - you can just encrypt the per-stream key with the per-person key and send it to the authorized users.

Your comment was not clear on this, but this obviously reduces the encryption overhead.

[1] It's not much harder for a pirate to build a script to extract the per-stream key from the player than it is to extract the key in the first place, so using a per-stream key instead of one key doesn't really help against piracy. It does help keep streams private against eavesdroppers, though.

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mikeknoop 5399 days ago
Just don't forget -- it's even easier to install desktop-recording software.
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angrisha 5399 days ago
I agree. However use of desktop recording softwares is similar to using an audio recorder to record a song on the radio. We cant do anything about it <nothing as far as I know. >

The main aim was to remove the download capability of the ubiquitous downloading tools/plugins (like FlashGot, DownloadThemAll, VLC etc) which mainly use the video saved in the cache. So far we have been successful in that.

Ideas to avoid recording via a screencam, anyone??

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Random_Person 5398 days ago
I guess that kind of makes the point. If you can't stop it being recorded, what does the encryption serve? If it is content that is worth anything, it will be screen capped and pirated within a few hours.

Are you just hoping to serve adds every time a casual user wants to watch a video because their simple download tools dont' work?

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JoachimSchipper 5399 days ago
Honest question: doesn't that lose a lot of quality? (YouTube has shown that low-quality video can still be popular, but at least it would give pirates some reason to pay you.)
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