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I am trying to create a portion of a website that is restricted to paying members.

There will be videos hosted on the members only section, but I am struggling to find a service to host these videos.

The problem is that I want to restrict access to these videos so that members cant just download or email a link to the videos, they have to be logged in and can only view them on a page.

WHL
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2 Answers2

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YouTube allows you to have private videos, so only users you specify can view them after logging in. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/157177?hl=en

This would also theoretically block the plethora of YouTube downloaders as they would not have the proper access. You would have to have your paying members include their Google or YouTube account (the same thing usually) when they make the payment so you can add them to the list of allowed users.

I used this feature for several website clients who needed a member only section before the videos went live, and there was never an issue with privacy leaks.

jpd527
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  • thank you for your answer! I have another question, if you dont mind. Wouldn't that require them to first sign in to the members-only portal, and then sign in again to view the video? I had thought about youtube but dont want to overcomplicate the process, and the client (who can be convinced otherwise) seems to have a problem with using youtube. – WHL Sep 20 '13 at 21:06
  • It would depend on how you setup your site's login. Ideally you could have a login that could be merged with their Google account and then they would not need to login twice. I don't know the specifics of how to setup your site's login with Google accounts, but given the number of sites nowadays that have the feature to "login with Google" or "login with Facebook" etc I imagine it's not too much work. – jpd527 Sep 23 '13 at 18:30
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Well, unless you implement some sort of DRM (Digital rights management), your "authenticated" users will be able to download/forward your videos. There are tons of tools to record streaming videos by a click of a button...

google for stream capture tools, and tons of it...

DRM's are usually expensive, plz look for any cheap DRM's, I found a thread in stackoverflow featuring a free DRM, didnt test it, plz have a look on it also.

Is there an open-source DRM solution?

Another easy way would be to, store your files in one location, and you could generate some unique ID, which would get expired after a pre-set duration, or after x number of times, and you could use some programming logic to send the content of the video files, upon client submitting the unique ID (TransmitFile in C#)

Community
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Aby
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