Secure Video Streaming Plug-In
This addresses revenue loss for video sharing websites due to reduced traffic from unauthorized downloads, but it is incremental as it builds on existing Flash and RTMP protocols.
The paper tackles the problem of unauthorized video downloading from streaming sites by proposing a client-side plug-in that sends unique keys to the server for verification, preventing download managers from accessing videos and thus protecting site revenue.
Video sharing sites like YouTube, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Vimeo, etc. provide a platform for media content sharing among its users. Some of these videos are copyright protected and restricted from being downloaded and saved. But users can use various download managers or application programs to download and save these videos. This affects the incoming traffic on these websites reducing their hit rate and consequently reducing their revenue. Adobe Flash Player is the most commonly used player for watching online videos. It uses RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol) to stream audio, video and data over the Internet, between a Flash Player and Adobe Flash Media Server.Here, we propose a plug-in that enables the site owner control over downloading of videos from such website. The plug-in will be installed at the client side with the consent of the user. When the video is being played this plug-in will send unique keys to the media server. The server will continue streaming the video after verifying the keys. Download managers or application programs will not be able to download the videos as they wont be able to create the unique keys that need to be sent to the server.