CODEWITHSUNDEEP
desktop-applicationscreen-recording
Hossam Ahmed
Hossam Ahmed

Reputation: 104

Preventing screen recording apps

If I have a website that contains paid videos and I want to prevent authorized / unauthorized users from downloading the video, we can make it as difficult as we can but we still cannot 100% prevent stealing videos.

A user still can record screen using many existing apps, I thought about it too much and looked for anything I can do to prevent it but as I got OS will not allow web browsers to detect screen record apps.

Q1. But can I develop a program (desktop app) that can detect screen recorder apps?

I'm asking because if I could manage to build such a program I can use it to know whether the user records the videos or not while opening the website and hence take a counteraction.

The flow would be like so:

Q2. Is this idea even possible to implement?

Upvotes: 8

Views: 11029

Answers (2)

Amit Mittal
Amit Mittal

Reputation: 1127

If website security is of utmost importance, one possible way to block screen recorders is to package your website inside a desktop app which takes care of security. One such tool that does that is Website Kiosker.

For external camcorders, the tool can show user specific watermark (like username or email) on random locations on screen so the real pirate can be identified!

Disclaimer: I am associated with Bitss Techniques. The only intention here is to provide a genuine option to the question asked.

Upvotes: 0

John Burger
John Burger

Reputation: 3672

You cannot determine what another program is doing, so you cannot detect that a program is recording the screen.

You can, however, determine what programs are currently running. So at best you can tell that “RecordLive!.exe” is running, or “VidCapture.exe” is running, and refuse to play your video if either are running, or stop it if such a program starts.

Unfortunately, if a new capture program comes out you’ll have to update your list. Or if I write my own “MyCapture.exe” you’ll never detect it. Or worse, if I rename an existing program to “MyCapture.exe”, you won’t detect it.

So, in short: nice theory, but not practical.

Upvotes: 3

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