preventing media leeching (with orbit on the blacklist)

how to prevent my files from being downloaded(specifically media)

[jacklancer]

i have come across many solutions such as DRM, expiry dates etc. one thing though, there is a site called 1club.fm, plays dance radio, can download stream with orbit, but since it is being broadcast in a way similar to a real radio, that is, say you have file1.mp3, it's being broadcast to a stream using stream.mp3, realtime, which means that, like a radio, you can't fast forward, and the sound is there only for the time you hear it, after that, stream.mp3 contains the new data. it constantly changes, so if you download stream.mp3, you'll just get the data that was embedded in it at the time of the download, i.e. about 1 second of playback, and it will come out corrupt. i'd like to find out how to do this, although from the way i explain it, it sounds remarkably simple.

[edited by: eelixduppy at 12:50 am (utc) on Oct. 14, 2009]
[edit reason] no emails, please [/edit]

[caribguy]

That's because there's no "file" - their media server generates a live audio stream. It only exists at the time of broadcast... I notice they use windows media server and shoutcast. There are various ways to do this, two more are (from memory, I might have them mixed up): helix (realmedia) and icecast (ogg).

Still, if you wanted to save the audio you could. A plugin for winamp that does this (including metadata and split files) is called streamripper.

Oh, and boo to their electro house stream - rehashed trance, yack!

[jacklancer]

can someone tell me how to go about doing that? (streaming a media file) do you need a special server?

[caribguy]

Any of the four I listed in my previous post will do the job. Your choice will depend on specific needs, and those of your visitors. There are also hosted solutions, some will even handle your rights licensing paperwork for you.

However, none of these methods can completely prevent users from "ripping" or downloading your stream to disk.

[jacklancer]

i found out something interesting. i don't know if it has any useful application, but if you have a folder, say - myfolder, and you put inside it a folder called index.php, navigating to myfolder will automatically open the folder index.php. please let me know if you can come up with something useful for this. by the way, if i block a file/folder with .htaccess <filename>(myfolder¦index.php¦fileinsideindex.php)
order deny,block</filename> or whatever, what is the basic php for getting the blocked file inside index.php? i mean to embed it.

[jacklancer]

i know you can detect if the flash plugin is installed. maybe you can write a script that only delivers the media file if you don't have orbit installed on your computer?

[caribguy]

I wasn't aware of that application you mentioned, and had to search for it.

From their feature list I understand that it is not a browser plug-in, but a full fledged desktop application - and that it can handle many different protocols. Apparently, this includes mms and rtsp - respectively used by windows media player and helix/real that I mentioned earlier. Being that it's a standalone app, I doubt that you'll be able to reliably detect it...

A stream will generally be not be delivered by your web server using the http protocol, but by a media server that uses a different way of communicating with the user's client application. I'm not confident that any php trickery or web server directives (deny,allow) will have any useful effect.

I didn't check, but expect a tool like orbit (I've used NetXfer and similar ones in the past) to be able to start the http session with a web server, determine the filename, media type, and protocol - manage the handover, and continue the download process by pretending to be a media client.

Remember that everything that can be streamed can be eventually be saved to a user's disk as long as they are dedicated and resourceful enough to work around any hurdles you may set up.

Maybe other WebmasterWorld members have more/better ideas?