Watermarking content with unique member ID?
 

Does anyone know of software/script that installs a watermark unique to each premium content member?

So if a member downloads a pdf, movie, image, etc?, it is trackable back to that specific member.

I'm not aware of anything like that but I'd be interested in learning about it too.

Failing there being an existing product to do this, if you'd like to have something custom coded using your existing CMS and members management system, shoot us an email :)

I think Borked mentioned something like this a while ago.

visible or invisible (water)marking of photos?

it could be possible but it would create high loads on server if watermarking is on the fly... or lots of diskspace to keep all different watermarks... You could also add IP and date and time when the picture was displayed/previewed...

for JPEG - it could be stored as watermark or in EXIF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchang...ge_file_format)

I'm talking to our programming team about this now, server load is an issue but there are workarounds... The biggest issue will be once content is on the torrents, how to identify / find the embedded ID to track it back to the original user of the website, especially if it has been resized or re-encoded.

If we could develop this and license it out, what would content owners be willing to pay for the program, which would be server based, one-time fee?

Borked has already made this, and not many were interested.

You have a link?

Not surprising though, for all the talk in the industry about pirating content and copyright theft webmasters do on the boards, very few seem to actually want to take a pro-active approach to it.

Pics as mentioned, probably best with exif data, dynamic watermarking per video during a download... probably a lot more difficult.

more load on server unless you add a standalone server just for encoding.

Fingerprinting
ref: http://www.videomaker.com/article/15431

Was his the one that required us to upload our content to his server for encoding?

Someone was offering that and could not figure out why people did not want to do it.

Hit up Borked.

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it creates a lot of server load, as each image is created as its loaded. but its very possible and quite easy to do, best path would be to setup an "image server" and just do it to every image coming from the server. its really easy to add something trackable to the image, because of the way image files are structured.

i posted and explained this in big post in 2007, nobody even replied lol. have luck :thumbsup

There's a company working on this feature and they said it will be ready in a few months. I'll look for the info.

It basically embeds a unique code when the member downloads the video.

also in 2008 something was posted

https://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=857350

:)

It's possible using GD and some PHP code.

Indeed it is and it actually isn't that server intensive either.

I don't think the word "watermark" is the correct term for this. I would think in order to watermark each video with a unique "username", you would have to re-encode it each time.

From what I'm told, the fingerprint works differently and can somehow be attached/embedded as the member is downloading the video. This won't be a 100% indicator that the person that downloaded the video uploaded it but it's pretty damn close and can at least allow you to get rid of undesirable customers.

What is the point?
Going to be huge server load to encode every video for EVERY member

It will help those companies who utilize the software 100% identify an infringer for copyright lawsuits... Potentially millions in payouts.

so no more zip files :p ?

It would probably work well for file locker and "site rip" sites, but I would be surprised if the metadata would last through encoding on tube sites.

don't most pirates use stolen passwords or frauded accounts in the first place to do their siterips?

or if they really wanted to pay, they could just use a prepaid credit card, rip the site from a public wifi, and then torrent the heck out of the files anyways

there is nothing challenging about doing it for images, any skilled programmer can set it up in a couple of hours... videos on the other hand require a bit of sophistication... :2 cents:

Fuck member ID... watermark their credit card info on the video :pimp

I keed.

I think that quantumx had something going along these along time ago.

This wouldn't be too hard to do if you found the right programmer.

without actually thinking about it too much, I'd say that using a modified version of qt-faststart or equivalent that could add a metadata bit, which would be processed via a download script.. wouldn't use any server resources at all really - aside from disk space.. but you could dedicate a large tmpfs for that and have the d/l script delete the file after x amount of time (or when the download is complete... if you know how)...

Or something along those lines. Encoding full length videos, or even individual clips, on the fly would require much more than a single server for processing heh...

I'll go on a limb here that - quietly, a lot of programs would rather prefer "some" of their content on torrents, file lockers and such - you have the public doing your advertising for you! Advertising is still advertising and everyone knows that the casual porn surfer doesn't have a full siterip of the site (you think they have the patience to actually download thousands of files and movies?) and their not going to put any effort into removing site watermarks from content - so it all works to your advantage. By locking down content, there is no compelling reason for a member to stay loyal since there's a dozen or more other sites who have similar content out there and they are more than willing to take the surfers money.

Not to mention - whats to stop the actual pirates from buying a prepaid credit card with fake personal information on signup and still download and post content - watermarking account information on content just will not work - for that reason alone - and I believe that kind of person is the one you actually want to stop.

Good luck with it. :2 cents:

True, but by tracking some of them, we found some pirates and took them out or at least crippled them.

Next to that we also had some real members that uploaded just for the fun of it. One email brought them back on the right path.

Ckeck the aciuf

IIRC Borked has a system for videos for this. RTMPE Streaming for the vids so the stream coulnd't be ripped and player watermarking for screen recording.

We setup something with php-gd to generate on the fly watermarks in random spots on images that had the users username, time and ip before for someone - i don't remember who though.

Nothing will stop piracy, but you can drastically reduce it.

:2 cents:

That was us, you did that for the first CMS.

yep, that can be easily done.

How were you tracking them?

What happens when a password/ hacker steals a user/ pass, then steals the videos? (like in most cases)

Sort of like a criminal committing a crime using a stolen car, the license plates aren't going to help much.