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protect video download in wordpress

by behgez
15 replies
I am about to host a membership video instruction site in wordpress. I'm using Amazon S3 to host the video-tutorials and show them to my subscribers after they have logged onto the membershipsite.
What I'm looking for is a plugin or solution that protects users from downloading the video to their harddrive (e.g. by use of tools or Firefox plugins like DownloadHelper, etc.). Is there a solution for this?
#download #protect #video #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author phpbbxpert
    Rule of thumb, if it's media and on the internet it can be grabbed.

    Look at how much money and time Youtube has stuck into this and it only takes a little time before someone figures it out.

    Besides the fact that if someone wants to take it bad enough they can just record it with a screen recorder and simple setup for the audio.
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    • Profile picture of the author behgez
      I understand. But there must be ways (with maybe a plugin) to make it at least difficult to download (screencapture can never be prevented).
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      • Profile picture of the author IMmoneydeals
        Originally Posted by behgez View Post

        I understand. But there must be ways (with maybe a plugin) to make it at least difficult to download (screencapture can never be prevented).
        Unfortunately, this really isn't the case. There may be plugins that make it more difficult for some people, but there are also many different browser plugins that enable easy downloading of any media content on a webpage.
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  • Profile picture of the author samzaker
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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  • Profile picture of the author kkoechel
    yeah, there is no way to stop it. In fact to watch the video, everyone downloads it to a hidden local temp directory on their computer... so literally all it would take for someone to grab it from you would be to do a search on the type of file while starting it to find it.

    You could encode it with an obscure codec, instead of mp4 or flv, but you might be doing yourself more harm than good.
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  • Profile picture of the author krisfreindsnetwork
    Hi i am coming back with the same question as to how to protect video downloads. The posts explain very clear that no media can be safe and i agree. But i also depends on the audience, the niche i am in is towards a list of people who are not Warriors like us, they do not know everything about downloading.

    I have a wmv loaded on my WP site and embeded into post using a plugin. However i i have seen some of my subscribers say that when they right - click to see the properties they view the file upload path.

    Can somebody please assist on this, like can updating an htaccess file help, if so how can it be done.

    Thanks in advance
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    • Profile picture of the author JRCarson
      You might want to check out the Wishlist Member plugin...
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  • Profile picture of the author Danny Turner
    Many membership site scripts will protect the source file from being shared-
    easymemberpro will encript downloads from amazon s3 - others like s2member for wordpress will protect the file so it can't be downloaded or viewed unless you are logged in
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    • Profile picture of the author newbie365
      I have to agree with Danny Turner on this one! Here is a free wordpress plugin that is great for this.

      wordpress.org/extend/plugins/secure-files/
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  • Profile picture of the author Tim Franklin
    Interesting, thread, technically, if you are viewing a video that video is somewhere on your computer, it may be a temporary directory, located somewhere that "most" users will never find anyway, (even if they are looking for it) but I suspect the only way to truly "limit" the number of people who can access the video" would be to use a container, that shields the user from accessing the URL, You could design such a container to "hold" the video and play it, and it would be reasonably secure, though still if someone were determined they could still locate the video,

    Still it would be possible to seriously deter most people from ever discovering the location of the video, more so if you destroyed the cache of the video in your container. However, if the user wanted to see the video a second time or if they came back again to view the same video you would be consuming the same bandwidth all over again.
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  • Profile picture of the author behgez
    ok, since I started this thread, I would like to give an update :-)

    I am now using Amazon S3 in combination with Amazon Cloufront streaming services. And that works perfectly. Amazon streams the video without buffering it. Speed and performance is good and the user cannot download the video anylonger.

    I can stream it with Easy Video Player or FLV player plugins in Wordpress.

    The only way they still can copy and save the video is by doing a screen capture with Camtasia or other program. I cannot prevent that, but the risk is small.

    Furthermore I protect the video through a Digital Access Pass membership. Alternatively you could use an expiring URL plugin when you are not having a membership site.
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  • Profile picture of the author RobKonrad
    What's more important is to make sure that the video itself can not be hotlinked, or you might end up with several hundred $$ of Amazon S3 bill when the video link gets shared.

    There are free tools to prevent that:

    WordPress › Amazon S3 Expiring URL Generator « WordPress Plugins

    and paid ones:

    WordPress Video Plugin and Video Player For Amazon S3 - Adding the 4th S to S3 - For "Security"

    (the last one is actually from the DAP creators).

    Have a look at that, most people ignore that until they wake up with a 500 overnight amazon bill.

    CHeers,
    Rob
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  • Profile picture of the author dms321
    Hi behgez,

    I am wondering how much does it cost for you to have all those Amazon services?

    Thanks.
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  • Profile picture of the author RobKonrad
    Amazon has a pretty simple pricing structure:

    Amazon S3 Pricing

    basically, it goes like this:

    a) you pay for transfer. Ingoing and outgoing.
    b) you pay for storage.

    b) is the part you can pretty much neglect; what runs up the bill is the transfer fee.

    This totally depends on how much traffic you have etc..

    Cheers,
    Rob
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  • Profile picture of the author smithclarke
    I also recommend to the OP and the edge that you have read this blog to understand the differences between progressive download via HTTP and RTMP.
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    • Profile picture of the author gahirsh
      Just started from scratch a few days ago with a Optimize Press + DAP combo and have been pleasantly surprised.

      For giggles, I threw a file or two up on S3 and Cloudfront'ed it and used S3MediaVault from the folks at DAP and it actually worked.

      The install was brainless and I simply added a simple tag to the content.

      So I protected the link within the membership site and then protected it even further from the link being re-used.

      Of course it could be grabbed but for the audience I'm dealing with, it is a non-issue.

      Glenn
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