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I have a website and have been asked if I can host a video to be played online on behalf of a business. As the video is for purchase via other sources, I need to guarantee that it can't be downloaded or saved by people who come to my website to watch it.

I'm using the HTML5 <video> tag to play the video in MP4 format ( I will aso be doing an <audio> stream on MP3 format ), but how can I ensure that someone can't download or save the file that is being streamed?

I'm new to this side of things so I would appreciate specifics. Thanks.

Steve Gee
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  • Already answered here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9756837/prevent-html5-video-from-being-downloaded-right-click-saved – Koby Douek Mar 06 '17 at 12:56
  • So the short answer is You Can't? Is there any way of playing audio as a background sound, that can't be downloaded? – Steve Gee Mar 06 '17 at 13:03
  • In order for anything to be played in the browser, it must be downloaded. When it's downloaded, or just enabled to be downloaded, saving it into a file isn't all that difficult. The only way to really prevent it is through DRM; which BTW also never really works for the same reasons, it just makes it somewhat more difficult. – deceze Mar 06 '17 at 13:07
  • So @deceze, what's the alternative? I could host audio in Soundcloud and embed it on my site, or use YouTube for video in the same way, but I know youtube videos can be downloaded using firefox apps. Not sure about soundcloud! – Steve Gee Mar 06 '17 at 13:18
  • I suggest you play around with https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ to understand how impossible protecting public audio/video files truly is. – deceze Mar 06 '17 at 13:47
  • Well no offecnce but, if it's truly "Impossible", I'd rather not waste my time playing around with something, as enhancing and promoting the content of my website is my main priority. – Steve Gee Mar 06 '17 at 14:03
  • @SteveGee speaking as someone who's been working on premium content for a long time it's a complex, expensive, proposition to protect content and very few schemes are fool-proof. Unless your content is very high value you're probably best saving yourself the grief. If you can see it or hear it someone will find a way to rip it (headphone jack, DVR on DisplayPort etc) – Offbeatmammal Mar 06 '17 at 15:50
  • @Offbeatmammal It's probably more high value in terms of content as opposed to in a monetory sense. I was asked to stream an album by a band, playing it exclusively on my website for a 24 hour period, and wanted to guarantee that it wouldn't be stolen or copied by visitors so that I could do the same for others. As this looks like an unlikely thing to be able to guarantee, I would rather not host the audio files at all. – Steve Gee Mar 06 '17 at 17:42

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