Illegal copies of our content

Hi
We are creating a how to website that is offered on a subscription basis. How can I stop people using say real player to illegally download and distribute my content?

If anyone knows please help?!
Thanks
Tim

Tympani Productions

m4v and similar codecs, provide a technical solution to copy-rights management. They use "re-encode degradation."

Inside an m4v any frame can make use of pixel information from any other frame. This means that any change to the file, such as removing a small portion, changing the sound track, any other modification, requires the file to be re-encoded.

The brilliant thing about these new line of codecs is that the first time you encode a file (from hi-res source) the result is very high quality, but any subsequent attempt to re-encode and trans-code the file will be very low quality.

So:
can users download the file to their computer? yes, easily
can they copy the file? yes, as much as they like
can they edit the file? only with significant loss of quality
can they bootleg the file? no

I find this solution to be far superior to FLV or Silverlight, for most uses, because it allows people to redistribute the original media, resulting in a larger audience, while at the same time preventing high-quality piracy.

Watermarking can be an addition precaution that can be legally enforced, should it go to that point. Especially because any attempt to remove or modify the watermark would require re-encoding.


| Jameson Wallace
| Motion Graphics Festival
| New Motion + New Sound + New Code
| http://MGFest.com

no worries, happy to discuss.

m4v is not a codec, on forums like this is it hard to be specifically accurate about every detail without knowing the audience.

m4v files mostly use h264, which is the codec I was specifically talking about. i think m4v also supports mp4 which is part of the same family of codecs (meaning they all use frame-reordering). both mp4 and h264 (as does all the flv codecs) have significant quality degradation on re-encode. And the technique they use (frame-reordering) makes trans-coding requisite for most purposes.

sites like youtube use video scanners which detect the artifacts of a re-encoded file. Any thing transcoded from an original source will be flagged by such a scanner. The per generation degradation is not nearly as bad as VHS, but is still significant enough to prevent much use of the file beyond the original.

The idea of these codecs is: People can make low-quality mashups all day long, and no one will care about the jpegs poping out, but you try to run a second generation file on an HD television and the difference will be apparent.

This creates a line between professionals and amateur media. Effectively maintaining copy-right protection within professional distribution channels, without diminishing the the creativity (and rich brand experiences) that come with amateur art & cultural practices.



| Jameson Wallace
| Motion Graphics Festival
| New Motion + New Sound + New Code
| http://MGFest.com

I'd love to hear you contribute to the conversation Daniel.

Incidentally, by JPEG I was talking about the artifacts left by jpeg image compression, which is also used by all the above listed codecs.

perhaps these would help:

on compression:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_compensation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_compression

on youtube:





http://blog.spout.com/2007/10/16/video-id-youtubes-new-copyright-detector/

| Jameson Wallace
| Motion Graphics Festival
| New Motion + New Sound + New Code
| http://MGFest.com