how to stop leechers ?

[jjk2]

i am wondering how i can defend myself against leechers downloading entire video content.

 

they will do http://www.asdf.com/video/0001.flv to 1232.flv

 

effectively downloading all 1232 video files.

 

how can i stop this? such as passing a special key generated by session?

 

http://www.asdf.com/video/0001.flv?key=3w4au7yo80324

 

or rename all files to e4rot2w3890qp3uywrow.flv ?

 

i would prefer not renaming all files.....because i dont know how to do it in unix env.

 

thank you.

[ag3nt42]

simple answer:

 

it does not matter what you do.. you will not be able to stop people from download your content...

 

you can select the option "Protect from import" I believe depending on which program your using to create the video. but even that can not stop it.. if its on the internet and your showing it to ppl..

 

i'm guessing by streaming.. You will never be able to keep ppl from making copies.

[DeanWhitehouse]

a way to make it harder may be to encrypt your code, and maybe add something to the front of each file.

 

e.g.

 

randomword240.flv

 

then use php to remove this word??

 

just throwin some random ideas out.

[lemmin]

If you are using an Apache server then you can simply disallow file access to the folder through an .htaccess file. You should be able to do the same thing through the main server configuration file. Here is a website that talks about doing that:

http://corz.org/serv/tricks/htaccess.php

[grimmier]

I would store your files outside your web Root. this will prevent direct downloads.

 

have your links to the files point to a download script.

<?php

echo "<a href='downloader.php?ID=FILENAME' onmouseover=\"window.status='FAKE URL TO DISPLAY IN STATUS BAR ON MOUSEOVER';return true\" onMouseOut=\"window.status='';return true\">Download</a>";

 

Then setup a download script.

 

downloader.php

 

<?php

$filename = $_GET['ID'];
$fileloc = "/PATH/OUTSIDE/WEBROOT/" . $filename; // example path would be something like "/home/USERNAME/"

header("Content-type: application/force-download");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=" . $filename);
@readfile ($fileloc);

?>

 

you can then add other features to this like using Salt to encrypt the file name and then decrypt it on the downloader php. this would further guarantee that people went through the first page to get to the file.

 

 

edited typo. there was an extra single quote

[discomatt]

Read post here regarding above snippet

 

http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/topic,205030.msg929653.html#msg929653

[Wolphie]

You won't be able to prevent users from directly downloading videos unless you use a password protected directory or store it outside the web root as the previous posts have stated. Though generally, when you stream videos they're stored in the cache anyway.

[jjk2]

i know taht a determined individual can rip contents.

 

if majority of people do not know how rip , then its a success for me. i mean not many people know about cache and stuff.

 

i think theres no way easy way to do it.