CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.netasp.netiisvideo
Chief
Chief

Reputation: 914

Stop users from downloading video

I have a site where users buy packages and watch video tutorials. Unfortunately that url is available from the HTML, so the user could easily download from that location. I want to prevent the user from downloading that file and he should only be able to watch from my page.

Is there a way to do this in ASP.NET or probably by configuring IIS?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 4810

Answers (5)

SiN
SiN

Reputation: 3754

The best way to do it, in my opinion, is by implementing basic access authentication over HTTP.

So no one would be able to access the video:

http://www.site.com/video.avi

They will be prompted to input their username and password when accessing the video. Or they can download it using a similar URl pattern to:

http://username:[email protected]/video.avi

Upvotes: 1

talha2k
talha2k

Reputation: 1

The answer to this question is simply NO. you can not prevent your video from user to download it. One who can see your video can get your video by using different downloaders or direct linking, if you'll try to prevent it by any other mean, user can steal video by using some sort of screen capture softwares like camstudio or getcam etc.

Hence you can not do it by anymean. you can do it in one way but it is not accurate that HotLink protection. protecting those file extensions which you don't wish to be downloaded by the user.

Hope this helps.

Upvotes: 1

Steve Barron
Steve Barron

Reputation: 944

As you've found, if you make the video (or whatever else) available via a URL, it will be downloadable.

One alternative would be to create an ASP.NET page that checks that the user is correctly signed in and then redirects to the file - without revealing the URL. Other ways of supplying the video without a direct link would be by embedding it (or access to it) in something compiled like Java or Flash.

Whatever solution you might choose, not revealing the URL - or not making the video directly accessible on the Internet in the first place - is going to be the key. Once a URL is available, it is EASILY downloadable.

Just FYI, there are plenty of video capturers out there in the world. Even if you do hide the URL, they will be able to "download" it to some extent.

Upvotes: 3

Chris Chilvers
Chris Chilvers

Reputation: 6479

Short answer, No.

Longer answer, it depend upon your purpose there are 2 possibilities.

If you want to prevent people embedding your videos in their site (thus using your bandwidth) the problem is similar to that of hot linking images. This involves things like, checking the referrer (not all user agents supply one though). Another option is to make the URL for the video user specific, e.g. temporary URL that times out, embed an anti-csrf token in the URL, check this matches a cookie, etc.

If you want to prevent downloading the actual video by a user then you can't, see How to prevent downloading images and video files from my website? and How to prevent user from downloading or saving an image?.

Upvotes: 0

Nahydrin
Nahydrin

Reputation: 13507

Even if you hide the URL, or add token viewing, there is always a way to download the video using video downloader plugins.

Upvotes: 1

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