how do you protect video's

How can you protect video's from my members area from people trying to steal them and putting them on free sites please tell me how i can protect all my video's thank you

We use DRM. It's far from perfect but has stopped the stealing.

Bill

why do you say far from perfect and were do you get this

Pierre,

We get our films DRM'd at www.drmnetworks.com It is a subsidiary of the CCBill.CaveCreek conglomerate.

We don't like dealing with them because their customer service leaves much to be desired. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. It's a security code imbedded in the stream itself. You send to them the streams you want encoded with DRM. If you are lucky they get them all done and not lose them. Once encoded they are protected from being able to be stolen.

Customers dont' like it because in order to view each stream they must enter their username and password each time to view them and their is a slight delay so it's more work for the customer.

MAC users hate it because DRM is not compatible with MAC's so if you have MAC users you will lose them.

Their are other companies provding the same service, you might want to check around with them to see what their customer service and prices are.

Bill

I highly recommend http://natnetdrm.com/. They set up a control panel and you just browse to your video file and the system will drm your content on demand. It works seemlessly and there is no back and forth. They also have a great customer service. Any issue we have had has been responded to in less than 5 minutes for sure. They will even help you figure out how to help your customers. For example, some customer writes you saying they are getting WMP error COOD11B5. Well, I had no idea what they were talking about. I put in a support ticket and in a few minutes Nat Net had told me what to tell the customer to get them fixed up.

That all having been said. We don't use DRM on our vids anymore. As a percentage, Mac users make up a small portion of folks online. But when you have hundreds of millions of folks online.. that small percentage is a hell of a lot of people. It's working out well for us. Mac users are increasingly hungry for places to go as they are getting shut out from so many other sites.

a lot of paysite members don't like drm-protected videos. it requires extra steps to watch each video and also some sites use drm to restrict members so they can only watch a video once a day. also on several sites i reviewed the drm place was down while the site was up, which meant even though the site was up, i couldn't watch the videos for several minutes - or one time, over an entire 12 hour period.

and thieving webmasters may have or find a way around the drm.

some larger companies pay people to surf all day looking for their stolen content. but honestly it's the price of doing business - your content will get out there to some degree. make sure you watermark it so your site url will get out there with it - it's surprising but some people leave it on the videos or pics they steal.

whenever you find your content out there, contact the webmaster or the host or the sponsor and a lot of the time you can get the content taken down.

I have a client who used DRM protection for over a year and has recently removed all DRM for several reasons:
1) it pisses surfers off when their membership expires and they can no longer play their downloaded videos
2) it doesn't work on Macs
3) users require an active internet connection to validate their license and play the video
4) it results in less signups and more chargebacks due to above reasons

He estimated he lost about 1/3 of his income over that year.

cheers,
Luke

We have sites that have DRM and sites that do not have DRM.
We have even sites that had DRM and removed it.

But the sites that I "own" (VOD sites) we protect them and we loose about 5% to MAC users and about 5% to "other" users. But think about it this way.

When you leave your house/apt/condo do you lock the door?
Most of us do except for those that have "come in and rape me" on their AOL profile.

Videos/audio can and always will be hacked.
But we have noticed a few things with DRM.

1. It cuts down on people downloading the file and sharing it with the world.
2. It cuts down and bandwidth cost (see #1)
3. It allows you to offer a larger bit rate because you have less abuse and less overall cost.

There are great ways to tweak the system.

1. Give a "lifetime" DRM. As long at they have the file on their one (or two) computers they can play it. BUt as soon as they delete it or remove it and they are not a current member...they have to sign back up and get the DRM again.

2. Make the connection between the membership and the DRM so they only need to enter their user/pass once during a session. They can play one, five, or ten videos and they don't need to re-enter their user/pass.

3. Work with a good DRM provider

4. If you are selling downloads (VOD) you MUST user drm. We offer 1500kbps and soon 2500kbps files. That is very close to perfect even in fulls screen. The files are also very large. You bet I will add DRM to them. Even the streaming that we do in "large format" have DRM.

It's a balance of protection and customer retention.
In the long run, I firmly believe, we need to use protection. It costs a lot of money to produce and distribute video. Yes, we may loose some people along the way. But we also loose people by charging for content. That doesn't mean that we should offer membership site for free.

I feel strongly about DRM but I have clients that also feel strongly against DRM. It's a business choice and it comes down to what you are comfortable with.

It does reduce some sharing...though you will have some that will not join because they expect for $15 a month they should have all your content forever.

I'll be leading the talk about Encoding and DRM for the Webmaster's Basic on Thursday morning in Phoenix. Come and join in the fun if you are there!

Steven

steven619 - some of what you said was pretty interesting, but comparing using drm to locking the door of your home doesn't work for me. your website is your business. when you own a video store, you don't lock your door as long as you are open for business.

there are other ways to protect yourself from bandwidth useage. for paysites, programs like strongbox and pennywize help a great deal or you can always have a program written for you.

i think people need to really decide what their priorities are before deciding on drm. it doesn't protect all formats, for one thing. pierre's videos are some weird sort wmv's but my programs don't recognize them as wmv's. they may not be drm protectable without changing them all - which might be worth it for him if he really wants to keep from seeing his content on other people's free and paysites.

i think the most frustrating thing for surfers is that they need to be connected to the internet to watch DRM videos. that means i can't watch videos on my laptop at the beach or if i'm using dialup and someone else is using the only phone line in the house, then i can't watch my videos!

As I mentioned...

There will be people that are very agaisted DRM.
But you are currect, every site owner has to make up their own mind.

As far as locking the door?
It is to suggest that even though you lock your door...someone can still break in and steal from you. But locking the door keeps most people out.

DRM does the same.
You can still capture the video (vid grab) and then save, copy, post.
But most people will not go through that effort.

DRM will NOT allow people with MAC or older machines to play them. You are right. And the files must be linear or non-linear .wmv or .wma files. You can convert just about any files to .wmv/.wma any more.

I don't sell DRM (I suggest people go to DRM NETWORKS) and I don't earn any money selling DRM. I do own a few dozen membership sites and also a VOD company and I will do everything I can to lock my door. Even it I loose some customers (that will steal my content).

On the selling side...any studio that I work with I want to commit to the fact that I will protect their content as well. The only way I can do that is with some form of protection. (Helix Server, MS DRM, Streaming FLASH, Streaming JAVA). There are a few ways to do this and still be able to server the masses. If you are worried about MAC use FLASH/JAVA or Helix..or do with ITunes or Rhapsody does...create a protection scheme for your site along using some standard scripts and standard codecs.

Again, on the budget side you have to weight the added cost of servers, protection methods, bandwidth, and other items...against the loss of some customers that may be upset that you do not allow them to archive your content forever on their system.

I know there are those that are 100% on the other side of my thoughts. But I enjoy these types of conversations.

Basschick has always had good ideas and suggestions. They too are valid and she is right. That is why this issues is always talked about.

My thoughts...DRM is both a very good choice and a very bad choice. It all depends on what you want to achieve on your site.

Steven

hagan,

You can adjust your DRM rules to allow a user to have up to X amount of machines. Say you want to have the video on your desktop, laptop, and your work machine...you can have a rule to allow three or more machines.

Or in a streaming rule you can adjust that only one person at one time...can view a streaming video (lower bit rate perhaps for dial up or PDA users). Or you can allow X IPs per x hours.

The system can be very flexable.

And you need only login once on any one machine to watch all the content.
No need to enter user/pass over and over again.

Steven