Let's start with the “The Golden Rule”:
Anyone who can watch your video, can steal your video.
The best way to deal with it, is to minimize the number of times the video is stolen.
The most simple method of stealing, is to use a video capture technique.
video capture is an application that captures whatever is displayed on screen. It is possible to define a certain area or window (i.e. the video screen), play the video and tell the utility to capture it.
What can be done ?
An effective way to deal with that, is to apply watermarks, for example a graphical logo with a link to the author domain. Even if someone uses such video content, it will only advertise the author. Be aware, that it is simple to cut out logo of such type using any program for video editing, that's why, a good solution is to use a dynamic watermark which appear in different places, be shown during some period of time and faded.
Beside that, the best and most practical way to stop theft is to use a streaming server as follows :
1. First of all, use an encrypted streaming method( SSl streaming, RTMPE, etc.. ).
2. Secondly, use the following mechanism:
1) Client create an ID token, Update the server DB and send it to the streaming server.
2) Based on the ID token, streaming server find out the appropriate media file(Use a server that support plugins) and remove token from DB (If you want to be more secure , those ID tokens could have a limited time of use).
Advantages :
1. Your true streaming link is not exposed in the client.
2. Its not possible to use any software to download the media.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Good Luck.
Moris Oz
Caapi Technologies