Prevent Video downloading [duplicate]

Question

i want to know how can we prevent others to download the videos in my site. My site has the option of video uploading (in flv or mp4 format. Admin will upload them) and users can view the course videos online (using flowplayer) once they pay some amount.

But what i observed is that the users can download those videos using tools like Freecorder. I dont want this to happen, because videos have restrictive access and only for a particular period of time (till the user's membership expires).

So how can i prevent the user from being able to download the videos in my site ?

Answer 1

The fundamental law of video distribution is very similar to the fundamental law of software licensing. It goes something like this: Once you put your video on a screen you don't control, you don't have control over distribution of your video any more.

Even if you could stop them from downloading the file, you can't stop them from hooking a VCR to their video card and re-recording it. Even if you use some protected-path technology to stop that, you can't stop them from pointing a camcorder at the screen.

If you want to keep your videos under wraps, you need to show them in a theater under your control on screens you control, and have someone watching the audience for video recording equipment. Nothing else is going to have more than a very slight slowing effect on re-distribution.

Answer 2

This post is old but what I have done to prevent some types of copying is store the movies in a database and add an expiration and a username and password to the page that send them to the screen.

This will not prevent direct recording of the screen, but it is one more step to help.