If people can't download it, they can't post it. That's an absolute truth - you can't
steal or post what you can't download. Now does that have anything at all to
do with Flash video or other embedded video? No. The other day a friend wanted
a Youtube video converted to to .mpg file. It took me all of two minutes to check
Google to see how to save a Flash video, download the software, and have it done.
People don't seem to understand that in order to play a Flash or other embedded video,
the browser has to download it. In order to allow the user to rewind and to re-play
the video, Flash saves the video to the hard drive. There are then freely available
programs which find that video that Flash saved and move it wherever the punter
wants it.
So we know two things - they can't post something you don't let them download,
and "streaming" IS downloading, so streaming doesn't change a thing.
There are several things you can do to reduce content theft and having your content
all over the tubes. One of those is based on the fact that they can't post what they
don't download. The tube site owners especially, and also the other 10% of rippers
who steal 90% of the content don't hassle with logging in to your site to get one
fucking video. They come to get EVERYTHING, if you have a small to medium sized
site, or two get HUNDREDS of videos from a mega site. Go spend an hour on the
forums where these guys hang out and you'll find they download IN BULK. In a six
hour period they might download videos totalling 30-50 hours of video. That makes it
real fucking easy to tell the difference between these guys and the legit surfers.
Take a look at this graph is the top twelve users for a typical site:
The top 12 users downloaded between .7GB and 4.7 GB, except for one guy who did
20GB. He downloaded more than the next top ten users COMBINED. Who do you
think is grabbing all your shit to post on the tubes?
Looking at the graph, you can see that on that site setting a limit of about 6GB
wouldn't have any effect at all on any legitimate user, but would stop the the
bad guys from doing what they want to do. Of course you can actually do a little
better than that simplistic approach, so we do something a little more sophisticated:
http://www.bettercgi.com/throttlebox...s/ruleEdit.png