Giving members ONLY FLV movies. How about that?
 

I've been thinking of offering my girls' members just FLV videos at full rez to avoid content theft, and to get rid of the MPEGs, WMVs, etc., effectively only giving them this:

- full rez FLVs
- MP4s 320
- 3GPs 320

Has anyone tried it? will this cause members to cancel their memberships? how big of an impact will this have on rebills?

...i could just rip it with screencapture software, so what is the point really...

But most people won't.

I've been streaming-only for a couple years now, have gotten a handful of complaints, can't find my stuff on tubes, no siterips on torrents.

Still downloadable so I don't see how it will combat theft at all?

test it, spill it to 100 next members and see paterns

not downloadable. Unless you'll take the time to use a script, which most people won't.

Members will always be able to rip content from a member's area. But 98% of them won't bother if it's too much work. The more you prevent it from happening, the less your content will get ripped.

I think the people who usually rip full member areas and share them know what are they doing, so if the content is good then it will be shared on torrents.. however it still can cut back the everyday tube users.

as others have said it won't stop theft but it will help. alot of people couldn't be bothered if its a multi-step process with software etc.

Ana Tranny woohoo!!

Serious cash tried this with their sites but went back to the original formula after some months. A lot of people like to download and collect the videos, not to log on to a site and load the videos everytime they want to jerk off.

There are firefox plugins that grab flv videos.

going FLV is better than nothing, but you should use some sort of encrypted streaming.

Borked made a very good thread about how to secure your videos.

How many people know about it besides yourself?

have a good read of this thread czarina...
https://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=990150

it does work

Around 81 million

hxxps://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/
Downloads 81,054,847

not at all if done properly....

Have a look at qtube. A recent hardened-down implementation I made for a client from the ground up. Custom tube script to handle his content, custom hardening to prevent ripping (see this thread to DIY, and I'd very very much like to hear from you (email in sig) if you can rip any stream, mp4 or flv.

if the FLV url isn't encoded then it is downloadable without a script, just look at the page source.

pffft karbon is more powerful, but it can't download a properly secured stream. Only a screen capture programme can copy that and even then when well-implemented only would be capable by paying members...

Wait til the hate mail floods your inbox from your members.

that is not true at all - if you implement SecureToken then only your embedded flash client can make a valid call to get the stream. Combine that with forced rtmpe streaming and referrer checking by the streaming server and you're 90% home to locking down your streams to direct ripping. :2 cents: :thumbsup

The people ripping members area content, are mostly on forums. Either through password leaks, members download/upload to the forum and some advanced private forums have memberships on your sites, and scripts that scrape your shit as it updates. From here the piracy sites, torrents, illegal tubes, etc pickup a majority of the content - which is why so much of it is shared. - It's not like users are actually doing this, not at this level.

They don't screen capture anything, it would take them HOURS to get full length movies, and you don't get 1000's of movies daily by waiting on a screen capture.

Having steams only, GREATLY slows down your piracy. Now if your site is truly hot, the best basically - they WILL get it either way. For the other 99.9% of us, streams alone do the job.

I want to gain access to Ana Tranny...

Correct.

It's a lot like people who ask for speed test links, or other odd ball questions on the hosting side of the equation. They are typically testing the waters for doing some scrapper, xrummer or alike.

I have been offering streaming and download for some time. However, 90% of the members now historically ONLY watch the stream. But they watch the SAME one's over and over.

I think Flash streams have become acceptable due to the tubes. I like using hi-res Flash because they stream fast and for the quality, the size of the file is much smaller. Another added benefit of the tubes conditioning surfers to Flash videos is that my third party video feeds are pretty much very similar to the rest of my content and much more likely to be perceived as part of my site now.

streaming is the best way to protect your content...we dont allow any downloads, because we want your members coming back to your website to watch porn

Considering those types of plugins are the most popular for many browsers, the answer is many.

Or 81 million has someone else pointed out.

Another option is highly protected streaming of all new content ... with downloading and saving allowed for older videos (ie. more than a few months old) for an extra fee.

For example, new video is release in Jan and then it becomes available in April for download / saving for an extra cost. Some small niche sites do this. It's not ideal, but is a compromise to keep piracy down while giving those who want to save videos a simple, legal way to do so.

As for whether to go FLV or WMV, MP4, etc ... that depends ... if a big selling point of the site is allowing members to download and save videos, then give them multiple options. FLV-only is fine, but some old timers and die-hard "collectors" expect more...

Do some analysis of your membership / ask them ... and do testing - release some new videos as FLV only and see whether there's much negative feedback or not and/or adverse (or perhaps positive due to less casual copying) change in signups and/or member retention.

Ron

Also, one of the biggest tubes out there links to a tube downloading program. Seems to me though that providing FLVs would be a good idea from a program owners perspective.

601,000 people a week, according to Firefox's "popular" plugin list. (It's #2)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

Sounds like a neat option.. or offer wmv downloads only for surfers who were members for 3+, 6+ months. ;)

i'm sorry, not necessarily @ czarina but... why does this question/option get asked every year? as if it is new? holy fuck, you guys. DO IT! move away from the download model. not only is it raping you in the ass financially, the download model is OLD AS SHIT!!

fuck!

</rant>

czarina,
Don't use FLV, use mp4 with wowza or adobe media server and have someone like Borked lock your stream down. Short of someone sitting there with a screen capture software, minute by minute, they won't get your video. And most people will not do that.

You won't STOP piracy, but you can cut it waaaaaay down.

You will upset some members, but you'll need to break a few eggs to make an omelet.

Anyone here who says it won't make a difference is talking out of their ass. I've been doing several things to reduce piracy and IT WORKS.

Excellent post and idea. :2 cents:

We still allow downloads (WMV) for older scenes but the quality is reduced and they have a fairly heavy watermark on it that moves around randomly. They are also under the stream with just 1 text link. It's not in your face screaming "DOWNLOAD VIDEO." I want them to stream it over download, but if they are a collector, they can still download. However, NEW and unique videos (like a models first hardcore scene) is currently streaming only. We may offer a download later, or for another small fee if they don't want to wait for it, but it starts out streaming mp4 only.

Lots of things can be done, and then wrap it all up by having someone like TakeDownPiracy.com or RemoveYourContent.com looking for your content and assisting at getting it off abusive sites.

I agree, you can never defend against that one or two percent people that can get arround anything and everything. If you deliver the content without hassel to your members and yet do your best to protect yourself. Complaints should be minimal.

fyi, with a locked down stream, you can use flv or mp4. Hell, you can even use .mov with wowza :winkwink: :thumbsup

It's better to deal with mail from members, than not having members at all. :2 cents:

I spent many hours reverse engineering peoples setups so that I could download the files. all you have to do is make it confusing and time consuming as fuck and most people will give up half way through

The problem with this reasoning is that the 2% who bothers, is more than enough to get your content in the wild.

You know, it's the same 2% who bothers uploading to tubes and the like.
Once it's there, your content it's available to 100% of the people, even the ones who have no clue what an FLV is.

There is no problem with his 2% reasoning.

You guys just keep talking about why it won't work and I'll keep watching it work every day. Don't worry about that 2%, you can manage that. And with a little creativity, you can really cut your piracy down to small amounts.

Of course you'll never totally beat piracy. But you have to focus on the sources that are actually doing the damage. Defeat them, or reduce your content there, and you'll start to see an an increase in sales.

use flash. overlay the date and the user name on the bottom of the video. that solves most if not all.

yeah give me a link to some of this un-downloadble content and I'll test that theory.

Is there any way to encode/watermark the user id and date onto the stream when viewed? That would be something.

Robbie's tube already does something like that with their IP.
:2 cents:

You can overlay whatever you want to do onto the stream, but embedding it requires re-encoding on the fly, which I very very much doubt is a practical solution in terms of CPU usage.

Overlaying is simply a deterrent since if they can rip the stream, they will get the video without the IP etc. The IP would be there though if the video was ripped with screen capture software.

Isn't that basically the same thing they can already get for free on the tubes?