Magazine
Protecting online video
Published on May 7, 2008
On the surface, online video seems to be one of the easiest content formats to control. Bandwidth and storage requirements for hosting videos are above what the average Internet user can provide, the videos are contained in specialised players, making them difficult to download, and manipulating the content itself is both difficult and time-consuming.
But as a quick search for the word “Reuters” on YouTube proves video content from prominent journalism sites is regularly being re-hosted, usually without permission.
Truth is, in the past few years, not only have new services risen to make hosting videos on the web easier than ever, but users have grown more savvy about working with video. They are using that knowledge to control distribution for themselves.
But as more news sites look to add video to their range of offerings, making the most of content means understanding what users are capable of and how to mitigate against - and even exploit - the widespread distribution of your video content.
Flash video: Non-protection
Many web users, novices and experienced ones alike, think putting a video into a Flash format is a great form of protection. After all, when you visit YouTube or a similar site, there is no obvious way to download the movie. Right clicking the screen doesn’t help and saving the page does not usually save the video.
Yet, if you search for “Download YouTube”, you find quickly that there are numerous ways that users can download and extract a video file from a Flash player. They include Firefox plug-ins, standalone applications and even websites that do all of the work without the user installing anything.
The problem is, sites that use Flash video embedding, including most custom players, do not actually embed the video in a Flash file. Instead, they create a Flash applet that reads and plays a separate, standalone video file that is in Flash Video (FLV) format.
An FLV file can be downloaded and played the same as any other movie format. There are even special movie players for that purpose. Anything that can be viewed on YouTube, Revver and sites like them can easily be downloaded and played.
Furthermore, those videos can, in turn, be re-uploaded to other video sharing sites. This is often how videos from one site, such as Revver, get scuttled over to YouTube or Blip.tv.
But even if the video can not be directly extracted, such as with some custom online video players, it can still be recorded using screen capture software or other techniques. Though more difficult than simply downloading the original file, these methods produce near-perfect copies of original video and put into a format that is ideal for either playing locally or re-posting elsewhere.
The end result is that video content providers can not be certain that their work will stay on their site and, with video tracking still in its infancy on the web, there is little way to follow it and stop it from being used elsewhere.
Currently, the best strategy is one that tries to take advantage of this copying by making the video more resistant to plagiarism and an advertisement for your brand.
Turning video around
Video is a visually and mentally powerful medium. It attracts user attention and provides new possible revenue streams and advertising possibilities. However, audience fragmentation can hinder that benefit. That makes it important to work as hard as possible to ensure that the audience is relatively unified or at the very least aware of the content’s source.
With that said, here are a few things that anyone seeking to put video on the web, journalist or otherwise, should consider doing.
1. Enable embedding: The No. 1 reason users move a video file to a site such as YouTube is to embed it on their blog. If you make video available for embedding, you encourage users to go that route - but in a manner that controls the user experience. You can count views, display ads and even disable the video at a later date.
2. Brand your video: Most video re-distribution is merely copying and does not involve any editing. Putting your company’s information on the video, as an overlay and/or as a credit, ensures that, even if the video is redistributed, users will know its source.
3. Offer higher resolution: If the videos on your site are of a higher resolution than what you can typically find on YouTube and similar sites, then users will inherently prefer your site to viewing it elsewhere. It is worth noting, though, that resolution is improving across the board so this may be a difficult edge to maintain.
4. Provide live streaming: Live streaming may not be practical for all news sites, but it is also something most video sites can not provide. While some personal streaming video sites exist, such as Qik, they are not currently prime destinations for news coverage.
5. Open up libraries: If you have a library of video content available, putting it in one place on the Web makes sense and provides a real benefit to users that other video sites can not. For example, the television show South Park has put all of their past episodes online, making their site the destination for people to go for videos and clips.
Not all of these techniques are appropriate for all sites, but they are some of the easier ways to reduce and take advantage of video redistribution on the web.
Conclusions
There may some day come a point in which tracking and enforcing video distribution is more practical. Sure, some technology exists to help, but much of it is still in the early stages of development and that severely handicaps any attempt to enforce distribution channels on video content.
Even companies such as Viacom, which have invested millions of dollars in controlling video distribution have failed. Copying of Viacom content is still rampant and seems unlikely to be swayed.
Enforcement alone is not going to address this issue, protecting video content means more than just chasing infringers, it means encouraging legitimate use and making any copying that does take place as beneficial as possible.
Fortunately, while video is a relatively new medium to the web and one that is hard to control, it is one that can be easily turned into either a viral promotion or a decentralised advertising opportunity.
Video offers both great opportunities and great pitfalls. Working with it is simply a matter of maximising the former while mitigating against the latter.
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