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The past few years have seen a significant increase in the
number of Internet users accessing the web via higher speed
broadband connections. In order to tap into this market
web sites are increasingly supplying video content to their
users as well as traditional static material. In addition,
the growth of reality-based sites such as bangbus.com has
contributed to the growth in use of videos on the web.
In this article I will try to address one
of the primary issues facing web sites offering video content:
how to protect it. Any site distributing videos faces the
problem of dealing with users stealing the content without
paying for it. Let’s take a look at some of the common
problems.
The 3 Day Pass
Almost every site that offers some form of video content
will offer a 3-day trial for a low payment of $2.99. Users
pay the fee, join the site, and are then able to use on
off-line web reading software to download all of the site’s
videos. This software was originally designed to give users
a copy of the site on their PCs, which they could then access
even if they were not online. Nowadays, however, the software
is so advanced that users are given more options. They can,
for example, specify to only download specific files such
as Windows Media, the preferred format for most videos on
the web. This allows a user to download all of a site’s
video content and then simply cancel membership after the
3-day pass. The user is happy…..after all, he got
the whole site for just $2.99. The implications for the
web site are not so good. They’ll lose money on affiliate
payments, their bandwidth costs will rise as the user downloads
everything on the site and they lose out on membership fees.
P2P
Peer to peer file sharing systems allow users to share files
from one PC to the next. In this instance, a user who has
downloaded videos from a site can place them on a P2P system
for others to download at no cost. They can watch the videos
without having to pay a dime to the original content owners.
P2P usage is growing at an incredible rate and causes significant
problems to the industry, especially for small video-based
web sites that may not have the financial muscle of the
big studios to chase these users down.
Credit Card Charge Backs
One of the industry’s biggest and most common problems
is that of users who obtain charge backs on credit card
transactions. In this case, a user subscribes to a site
and then spends time downloading whatever he wants. If he
then needs an easy way to avoid paying he calls his credit
card company and reports the truncation as fraud. The web
site owner is liable for a large penalty payment, and, worst
of all, knows that the user has got all of the videos on
his hard drive to watch whenever he likes.
User Distribution
How many times have you received an email from a friend
with a 10 Meg video file attached? Transferring large files
via email is becoming more and more common every day with
users able to use corporate email servers to exchange the
joke or porn video of the day. Obviously, the original content
provider receives no payment.
Pirates
Nowadays, pirating is simple with any user able to build
a web site and put your videos on it. With so many web sites
on the Internet it may take you months to find pirate sites
or you may not even be aware that they exist. Experienced
pirates use private sites that you can’t access because
they are blocked by user id/password. Your only hope here
is to find out about the sites and get the actual id/password
from IRC chat networks etc.
Now we’ve examined the most common
ways that video site owners lose money, let’s talk
about solutions. Your best option for content protection
is Digital Rights Management (DRM). Just how does it work?
In DRM you, as a content producer, encrypt
your video files. This means that whenever a user tries
to play one of your videos the actual player contacts the
DRM service provider to assess if the user has permission
to watch it or not. The DRM service provider checks against
your user database and sends a license to watch the video
if the user is still active. If not, they will be refused
access. DRM can be used to your advantage in various ways
– let’s look at how it can solve the issues
we have already covered.
3 Day Pass
When the user cancels his membership within 3 days, his
license to view the content is simply stopped and he cannot
watch the videos anymore. This method can also be easily
applied to members who cancel subscriptions after weeks
or months of usage. The minute they cancel all of the videos
they have downloaded to their hard drives just stop working.
P2P
DRM issues a license to a specific PC and not to a user.
This means that even if the user uploads a video to a peer
to peer system for other users to copy, they will not be
able to watch it unless a new license is issued. If the
user has already been given a license to watch a video on
his PC, we will not issue any more licenses and those users
who downloaded videos via P2P will not be allowed to watch
them.
Some sites are actually turning P2P systems
into a marketing advantage. Rather than just telling the
user that downloads in this way that they cannot watch the
video, they are offering him the option to access it. For
example, when he tries to watch the download he’ll
be told that he cannot because he hasn’t paid for
it. He will then be offered the chance to sign up to the
site at a special reduced price, at which point he can watch
this video plus all the other site content. This strategy
has proved to be very successful from a marketing perspective.
Credit Card Charge Backs
Every time a user tries to watch a video the DRM system
has the capability of optionally recording details such
as the time the video was watched and the IP address of
the computer that was used. It can also store other information
such as cookie values etc. If a user tries to charge back,
we simply go into the log files, look up everything that
he has watched so that it can then be determined if the
charge back is genuine or a case of outright fraud.
User Distribution
In this instance we can apply the same rules used on P2P
systems to stop content being distributed. Users trying
to access videos via email or similar media will not be
allowed to see the content without a license.
Pirates
A DRM server is capable of knowing exactly who is playing
your video and where it is being played, anywhere in the
world. This applies even it is being played behind a firewall
or on a computer in an ultra-secure location. When videos
are protected by DRM every user needs a license to play
which alerts the server to the viewing. As the content owner,
you can pinpoint any user guilty of copying your videos
and distributing them on internal networks.
By now you may be thinking that a DRM solution incurs the
kind of expense that can only be afforded by industry big
boys. Whilst this was the case up until a year ago, it’s
not true today. Historically DRM solutions were hard to
implement as they involved so many variables, and companies
needed a dedicated IT group to get it right. Nowadays we
can use software companies that purely specialize in DRM
systems, allowing them to provide solutions and implementations
rapidly. This has also led to a decrease in implementation
costs. At the end of the day implementing DRM to protect
your video content makes sound economic sense for any business.
Content that is protected will result in more sales on your
web site, whether you are blocking P2P traders and pirates,
turning illegal downloaders into customers or stopping the
abusers of the $2.99 trial.
Just remember – as a content owner
you’ve put your creativity and your time into crafting
content with a commercial value. DRM solutions give you
a real chance of protecting both your content and your financial
returns.
Case Study
www.karadavis.com
is a popular adult web site with a growing user base. The
site produces small video clips lasting about 5-10 minutes,
all of which are exclusively produced for the site. They
turned to DRM as a solution when they discovered that their
content was being widely distributed on peer to peer servers.
After installing DRM they quickly saw their revenue rise
as users who were really interested in viewing the videos
started to subscribe to the site once they couldn’t
access them free of charge on P2P.
About the author: Jay
Janarthanan is the co-founder and CTO of objectcube.com
where he leads current development efforts on objectCube’s
video on demand technology offerings. His past work includes
research on cryptography and the digital distribution of
media assets. objectCube is currently one the largest DRM
service providers with many well-known clients in the adult
industry. You may contact the author at jay@objectcube.com
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