blocking site downloaders with cookies?
 

I know this has been discussed before, but will using cookies block site downloaders? Its a little vague to me after looking at the "GetRight" website.

What I want to do is, in my membership section, use cookies to link to the 40 different movies pages. No cookie support, no link.

The problem is I am getting about 1 clown a day now who pulls 10 Gig in 2 hours. I wouldn't really care, except it trips my anti password sharing script and disables their account - sometimes pissing off a good recurring customer who did not share his password, just used a fucked up site downloader.

I figure .htaccess is a waste of time - all the good dowloders now have aliasing. Ditto on referal url - I have Windows Media and real Media and allow both downloading and streaming.

Which leaves cookie protection - Is it worth the bother - or is there something else I am not thinking of.

How about having your members log in via a form, and that form sets a cookie.
Would it be possible to set the cookie to expire in a couple of hours, forcing them to log in again?

I think this would only anger a member IF they were using software to download your site. :2 cents:

I am considering using cookies but two reasons caution against it.

1. A few with cookies turned off or broken won't be able to download content. I get enough emails a day now.

2. I *think* many site downloaders now can mimic cookies, but I am not sure.

I was hoping somebody who has tried this would comment.

from a programming standpoint; it is not hard to read and send cookies so using a cookies based protection isn't realy going to protect much... instead you can force only ne download at a time; check the timing inbetween downloads (if it's cueing it up each will start within seconds after another has ended) etc...