QUESTION- Downloadble versus Streaming content in member areas

...open secret

Well, there are a few people around that will claim that streaming content does exactly what you're talking about; that it keeps your content safe and that people will have to maintain a membership in order to continue accessing it.

The problem is, that there are programs available that will capture and record streaming content for surfers to view later. So, streaming is like a good lock; it keeps the honest people honest. Also, there are consumers who just hate DRM (digital rights management) in any form and refuse to deal with any inconvenience, and will simply move on to a website that allows them to d/l and keep content for their private use.

Many of the music websites that had DRM are moving to non-encrypted MP3's and the general reception has been favorable.

Generally speaking, 'real' or 'honest' customers don't want to be treated like criminals and the criminals have all the tools they need to steal our stuff whether we like it or not.

(Okay...I'm going to run away and hide now...lol)

Few problems here:


#1: problem is the whole industry will never do it.

That's like asking for all tubes to only post 10 sec clips.

Will never happen. We never do anything together.

# 2: Not everyone has super duper cable modems. A lot of people on shitty dsl connections. Therefore it's hard to stream quality content to them. They need to download then play.

#3: the customers that like to save their favorite movies and have them available locally on their laptop, ipod, ext drive, (like a dvd collection) whatever. They are fucked. They will go somewhere else.

No reason to hide, you're correct.

How much ya think Sony spent on blu-ray DRM? How about the cash MS spent on protecting Vista from being pirated?

If people want it bad enough they'll get it, no matter how tough ya think your DRM is. Then you have to worry about honest customers having trouble with whatever DRM method you're using. Then there's other problems like BV posted. Doesn't seem worth it imo...

i have a client who does exactly this and their retention is probably better than at least 90% of all others out there. but they also charge just $15 a month - i dont know if it would also work at $40 a month


you met them in Phoenix last year btw

with every kind of protecting you are up against 2 sets of people...

1) the average dumb user
2) the techie user

With streaming and other forms of content protection you will mostly be able to keep the average dumb user from copying your content if you use either DRM (shitty) or streaming .. The reason being that they simply dont have the skill set to rip you content and share it with everyone....

The techie user is another kind of beast as they have the knowhow and skills to copy your stuff and share it if they want to.. These users are the guys that will use any ripping tool to make it happen or a stripper to get by the DRM etc... nothing much on the market right now is safe from these guys..

Now the problem is that even if you are willing to ignore the techie users and simply accept that they will be able to rip your content and share it with everyone the options you have to keep it safe from the average dumb user just isnt good enough to make it usable for all of them..

As already mentioned with streaming you lose the users on shitty connections - with DRM you lose mac users and the users with window instalations where it just simply doesnt work... so currently its a lose lose situration as you will either end up with your content up for grabs on tubes, shitshare and other places or you will end up limiting your user base based on the protection option you go for..

I personally feel that streaming is the lesser of the 2 evils and will help your content be safe but as i already said it does come at a cost but one that is easier to deal with allround than DRM ever was...

would love to see the results if some of the bigger sponsors offered both to their users and kept stats on which videos were more popular with the users


I bet it would be streaming

all good points.

most sites offer both

my content will soon only be available in streaming flash

When Rev says "many" that's pretty much ALL isn't it? Amazon, Rhapsody, Wal-Mart,
Napster, all offer DRM standard mp3 files which anyone can play anywhere. They
all TRIED the "protect the content" thing that webmasters, especially those with 1-2
years of experience often post about here. All of them found it to be a failure and
instead opened their systems up to make it as easy as possible for users to use the
content.



Most of the time, saving streamed content is as simple as "view source", copy URL, paste.
So there's no security in that at all. Sometimes it's a little trickier - taking as much as 30
seconds to do rather than 5 seconds. As was mentioned, the people you're worried about,
those who are going to put your content on peer to peer networks and tube sites, know
quite well how to save content which is intended to be only viewed as it's streamed. It's
effectively impossible to stop that when you're dealing with a public internet site, where your
site has to work on most computers. On a private intranet like a university where you control
the hardware, that's another matter. PicFortress, a system we developed many years ago,
can protect the university files because we can install a proprietary player and we can
demand certain features from the video card. (We decrypt the video or image using the GPU
on the video card, so the image never exists in the computer's RAM, making it very difficult
to save).

What leaving out the download link DOES do is force many legitimate users to do the
whole view source, copy URL, paste, save, then watch procedure, or have to cancel
because they can;t see your video at all. This is because they don't
use the same version of Windows Media Player or Flash as you do.
The big example right now is that there is no Flash plugin for 64 bit Vista, so users of
new Windows computers will be canceling if you only offer your videos in Flash.

WMP used to be the most common example of this problem, with a great many sites
accidentally requiring one exact version of Windows Media Player. Those with a
different version couldn't see the video easily and of course people running, Mac,
Linux, or other systems were alienated. Nowadays add mobile platforms to that list
of systems which probably don't support your favorite embedded player, and a
surprising number of Playstation 3s being used to surf porn. Of course now Flash
is the fad. After Flash switched to using MPEG4 as their default video format people
noticed the improved quality ad started serving their videos as Flash packaged mpeg4.
Why not plain unpackaged mpeg4 I have no idea, but you may know what happened next.
Even $500 computers from Wal-Mart starting coming with 64 bit processors, but Flash
wasn't available for 64 bit systems, so many users can't see the (damn) Flash videos.
Although 64 bit processors have been available for many years, until Vista, Windows
users had been stuck running them in 32 bit mode, so Adobe didn't care about 64 bit
support too much - only Mac and Linux people actually USED their 64 bit processors
anyway. So now we have this wonderful state of affairs where a great many web sites
offer only Flash videos, which can't be viewed on 64 bit Vista - pretty much any new
computer isn't going to be able to display your Flash, so you just threw away half your customers for 2009 if you offer only Flash video. I've been warning about Flash compatibility
forever and so many didn't listen. It's _almost_ funny to watch their customers cancel
in droves. What's funnier is that Linux HAS a 64 bit Flash player now and Windows doesn't.
The Linux 64 Flash is a beta version which tends to crash, but for once it's turned
around backwards - a new Linux computer can use youtube, but a new Windows
computer can't.

Pretty much any system capable of surfing the internet has always been
able to save and view standard unpackaged MPEG, either original MPEG or
the current standard MPEG4. So by linking to the MPEG you don't throw
away customers. My phone can play mpeg, a playstation can play mpeg,
a Windows, Mac or Linux computer that's several years old can play
unpackaged mpeg - anyone can join your site if you provide a link
to an unpackaged mpeg file. (Unpackaged meaning not wrapped inside
a .flv, .wmv, .asf or other container file).

I always love this assinine discussions.

On the one hand, you have those so far to one side that think we need to have everything a one time use, locked up, and gideongallery chum in the water.

On the other end, we have those who have never produced any thing original, or with copyright, or intellectual rights to protect. Usually this crowd is the surf's up, or beer money barons of the biz, and their solution is this little gem...

"It doesn't matter what you do, some will still end up stealing it"

They offer no real solutions, and point to old technologies, and the radar gun and radar detectors. The fact that some thieving, broke asshats will come up with a crack, and post it anyways, so apparently we should just start mailing them copies of the stuff because it is inevitable.

These people are little more than the scum of this industry. Assuming they are actually in it in the first place.

In the end, we have to try something to protect our rights. That is, for us actually in this business, and creating content that holds up the rest of the industry. It's a balancing act between pissing off the customers, and stopping the thieves. But once the content providers can no longer stay in business, there is nothing new, and this industry collapses.

great post ,

I do both... why the fuck not... watermark your shit, if people are going to go through the effort to steal from you they will do it streaming or not. Might as well at least get some free advertising from the fuckers who steal before you find and DMCA them then nothing at all... and extra options = extra reasons for people to join your site...

ie. streaming so the wife won't find them... downloadable so the collectors still want access.

that's a waste of drive space IMO, (having both)
because Windows Media Player streams down-loadable wmv videos just fine

IMO the only reason to use streaming flash videos is for advertising, because the user needs to load the web page to view the video, and on that page you load up with advertising

also since they can't save the video, they can only bookmark THE PAGE and will have to revisit that page and send their friends to that page in order for them to see it = more pageviews

flash is way more valuable from an advertising standpoint than a high quality content delivery standpoint

what some people are calling Hi Def flash is not hi def, hi def = 720 pixels tall or 1080 pixels tall, you are not going to stream anything that large unless you have a serious cable modem 15mbs+

most of this so called HD streaming flash shit may have been shot with a HD camera but it's not HD when you re size it down small enough in order to stream it to the average user

I'm not sure if anyone is doing this yet, though I think it might be successful: a mish-mash of streaming-only with a low monthly subscription and a pay-per-download system. Users can join and watch as much streaming content as they'd like for a monthly price that's lower than your standard $29.95/mo (or however much the standard is), and if they see a scene that they really like and want to have a DRM-free copy of, they can pay another however-much for it.

It may not curb piracy as much as some other options, but it could dissuade casual "sharers" and may even coax more out of the average surfer's wallet than a standard per-month fee.

You should spend some quality time with H264 and the come back and revisit the topic... There's absolutely no reason to need a 15mbs+ connection speed for quality content.

Typically I offer WMV in a downloadable and streaming format... and H264 formatted directly for Iphones/Ipods/PSPs as well as high resolution for download or streaming through a flash player.

Oh yeah... I do clips and full length of each to... just to really waste space.

But here's the clincher... everything I make, gets dled or streamed. Every user has their preferences... I try to give everyone what they want/or at least are used to.

If you are seriously worried about wasting a few extra mbs on your server, time to check into a bigger better server setup or raid array...