SITE OWNERS / PRODUCERS - Protecting your content *LOOK*
 

Figured this deserved its own thread to get some good input.
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I am in the middle of creating something that will allow you to:

1. Watermark a video in REAL-TIME with a username, ip & timestamp (or any string - such as a database record #) in multiple locations at different, random intervals in a way that is practically unnoticeable to the naked eye.

* Every "major" codec / format is supported. H.264, WMV 9, etc

* Watermarking can be done on streaming as well as downloaded (right click, save as) video - IN REAL TIME.

* Watermarks are not lost if the video has been re-encoded.

* Watermarks are not lost if the quality is changed (to a certain point - horrible quality makes identifying the watermarks difficult but not always impossible).

* Watermarks are not lost if the video has been cropped or modified or copied with any kind of capture software.

* It is nearly impossible (but mainly, not worth it) for anyone to try to locate & obstruct the watermarks.

* No special video player is required at all, you won't have to change anything.


2. Detect watermarks & provide you with a report of the findings.


3. Allow multiple "layers" of watermarking to support the producer -> website owner / buyer -> member / subscriber model.



The solution is most likely going to end up hardware based, with very minimal integration requirements & NO VIDEO RE-ENCODING NEEDED! The process isn't as resource intensive as you would think.

What you do with violating members is up to you - I will just provide you with a way to find out who is doing what.



Yes, it works. Anyone interested in something like this?

I'm interested in hearing more.

More than interested! Here's a bump for you :)

Although similar solutions have been discussed what I love about your solution is that members can download and no special player is required :) Would love to help in any way I can as well.

Sounds great, :thumbsup

Sounds great, but also too good to be true. Here's another bump, hope this isn't vaporware.

So far all of my "dirty" manual tests have worked the way they should, I'm getting more into the actual (automated) video process now.

In theory, everything should work.

I'm funding this with my own $ so things are moving a little slower than they could, but it will get there! I hope to be able to show you guys something by Feb :thumbsup

I've seen someone working on something like this now. It CAN be done.

KEEP AT IT MAN... build it. We need more stuff like this!!!!

Bump for you.

man thats great look forward to hearing more info

You know I had thought of a similar idea a while back, when I heard video game producers were doing this to stop pirated leaks of beta's given to hardware/software companies.

I forget who it was, but one of the major game producers was adding in hidden ID's to each beta they gave out to help track down whom was pirating their games.

I was thinking some sort of unique id added to each picture and video would let you track down a member id of whom ever stole the content. Programs could then black list these users if they shared data bases with each other.

I'm really surprised no one has ever done this and congrats for actually doing it. If I were you, I'd add a way to do this to pictures as well so you have a complete system. You should be able to make some decent money licensing it to various content producers and programs if it works well.

:thumbsup

It is possible with pictures but it is probably a bit easier to notice & circumvent. In any case, something is better than nothing & the technology would work with pictures easily :)

the idea is to prevent the theft in the first place, im redoing my sites to do flash streaming only and thats it, im not in the business of chasing people, REMEMBER lots of those who steal your shit and upload use bad checks or bad CC

Of course we want to prevent theft but lets be honest, if people want to share your video they will no matter what you do. Streaming flash isn't going to stop anyone from capturing your video with a 3rd party tool but it definitely will help with curbing the "save as" & upload sharing. Now what if you could watermark that streaming video with unique details specific to the downloader?

I doubt carders & traders would really care about this solution at first, but then again how many are going to download video through a proxy?

A lot would give up their IP which may not matter depending on location, but then again it just may.

The goal of this service is to be able to track who is sharing your content & use that information as a deterrent or possibly a route to settle out of court for damages. At the very least, it should help you create a blacklist of data.

At the end of the day, it may just be worth it for thieves to move on to something elsewhere rather than jumping through all sorts of hoops to circumvent your protection.

The technology behind it works with algorithms that can easily be changed on our end, screwing up any recognition tools they would be able to make. Similar to how CAPTCHA algorithms can be tweaked and make a working OCR unusable.

This solution by all means can not stop people from doing anything they want with your video. Crackers could figure it out I'm sure. However, it will be a tedious process & pretty much worthless to spend so much time on Video A when they could just grab & share Video B.

I would be interested

Sounds interesting... here's a bump for you.

im in the same boat and the stuff will still get out there and youll be chasing your tail all day, ist great stuff you are doing but the key is flash streaming and no there is no software to capture it

I'm going to look into that a bit more, but you're saying something like this doesn't work for flash streaming http://applian.com/replay-video-capture/

I dunno man, for as long as I've been on the net if you can see / hear it you can capture it.

tested and yes it captures

fucked up

His is a bit different than mine. With me I DO NOT want anyone to download the vids period. :winkwink: I think its a shit ass business model that we got boxed into due to technology restraints that we all have got stuck with now cause everyone else allows members to keep the content so we have to. A membership should always be a RENTAL not a purchase. They pay to have access and continue access. But we let them keep shit loads of content for a trial or a one month membership. Its stupid.

I love that others are trying to come up with solutions, and so far its only been someone doing it on their own, where I kept pushing for webcam or dating companies to do this. All they had to do was give out the solution in exchange for having upsells in their members areas or whatever. Anyways I am blazed as can be, so if I say anything stupid in this post I henceforth absolve myself of any wrong doing lol :winkwink::pimp

Talk to me monday like I said already doing this watermarking streaming. :winkwink:

I respect you trying but I fear this will not stop anything.

Sounds good man, will hit you up :thumbsup

Extremely interesting :thumbsup

I'm interested.

Would make it pretty easy to take legal action against the person.

:2 cents:


:thumbsup

lets hear what Jon Clark has to say about his.

That is great....Thanks

Sounds interesting. This is for web content correct?

What about the guys just ripping new released DVD's etc...?

Looks interesting, hit me up.

Yeah this is just for the web / streaming media...

Do you mean a person that buys a DVD and then rips it & uploads it? It wouldn't help in that situation since the DVD data has already been pressed onto a disk and we wouldn't be able to manipulate it & add watermarks as they rip it.

If your DVDs were only available as an image/iso online that the user would have to download & burn onto DVDs themselves we could probably make it work.

Will drop you a line tomorrow :thumbsup

Man I've been planning something like this for a while, but I'm still short on funds to develop it. I think the more you look at the small workarounds to effectively solve the problem, the more you'll realize that it'll cost more and more time & money to develop. I at first thought it would be relatively simple, but not so much after putting it on paper.

Don't mean to discourage you, though. If you have the resources, go for it! :)

sounds very interesting

Sounds like http://www.civolution.com/
and http://www.business-sites.philips.co..._spinout.page?
See also http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=853255

yeah, looks like it probably does something very similar but it appears to stop at SDI and MPEG-2

couldn't find anything else that shows how we could use it... i'm sure the technology is there but it doesn't seem like they've bothered to make it usable for us or else it would be in use by now

do you know of any sites with the producer / site owner / subscriber business model that has put this to use by chance?

One of our guys was at the presentation when it launched. But the thing with Philips and other big corps is that they target the hollywood industry first (since there's more money).
I doubt if any adult companies use it (that why I posted it a while back, since they do it for adult too)

We're building pretty much the same thing. We have a list of customers waiting to
buy it, and the ability to reach webmasters who want their stuff protected. We could
probably do a better job working together than either of us working separately.

coolio - we need products like this

Good luck with it, as you can see everyone needs it!

Good stuff. Someone on here was doing this already, or something very similar. That quantumx guy?

+Bump for companies cracking down on pirates, creating more money making opportunities for all of us :).