Protecting copyrighted videos

[Brad]

I'm producing some videos for a local Performance-shop showcasing their race cars and the owner asked me if there is a way to make it so when we host the videos on his website that people must go to that particular page in order to view them.  Basically making it so people can't right click and copy the url and post it somewhere else?

Is there an easy solution to this?

Thanks,

Brad.

[morph]

Hmmm if I understand correctly you may be able to do this by using $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER"]. You could run a simple check seeing if they got there from clicking a link or not so do something like

Code Select Expand


if (!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER"]))
   header("Location: yoursite.com/404.php"); // this basically making it look like it doesnt exist, by sending them to the 404 page
else
   echo 'you can watch the movie because you typed it in your self, congrats'; // do the whole page and such


Hopefully this is something close to what you were looking for. If not let me know, and i'll think of others.

morph

[Parham]

you can always use htaccess to check where the file is being loaded from, and restrict access if it's not from the domain you want it to be from.  that and i also recommend you put the website URL in the video, imbedded in a corner somewhere so if people download it and send it around, they might still visit the site.

[Brad]

Sorry, maybe I didn't explain it very well.  I want it so you can't hotlink the url from anywhere else on the net.  So it forces the user to view the video from the site its being hosted from.

[[Unknown]]

You'll want to do that with .htaccess hotlinking prevention.  Actually, cPanel has an option to do this for you automatically, but the control panel software you're using does not.

-[Unknown]

[NoRad]

You could also store the video in a database?

[mediman]

if you have an own server set up a streaming server, so you have maximal control
if not then use rewrite engine in htaccess to do the job

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?yourdomain\.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule \.(mpg|mov|avi)$ - [F]

if you want to show a picture instead the 403 page, then use

RewriteRule \.(mpg|mov|avi)$ /yourfolder/nohotlinks.gif [L]

instead the RewriteRule above

mediman

p.s. this will not work with some cgi-proxies
p.s.2. there is a php-solution for your problem too  http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/protectimages.shtml